Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Book 2)

by Emily Oster

one of the great themes of your parenting life: you have way less control than you think you do.

you do have choices, even if not control, and these choices are important.

you basically cannot defeat a crying baby with hard work. There may be some things that improve this in the moment, but babies cry—some of them cry a lot—and there is often really nothing you can do. In a sense, the most important thing to understand is that you are not alone and that your baby is not broken.

If you have an infant who cries a lot, whether it is true colic by the formal definition or not, the most important thing is to try to take care of yourself.

in the first weeks, a feeding schedule is a bit of a pipe dream. If you want to collect data and make pretty graphs, go for it. But remember that this is the illusion of control, not actual control.

Perhaps the most important thing is to ask for help when you need it, and not to expect so much. Many cultures have a tradition of women basically doing nothing for a month or so after birth, while older women in their family take care of them. This isn’t common in the US, but it does give a sense of what this time is like.

It wouldn’t be a bad idea to have every adult in the household do a depression screen a few weeks after the baby is born, and then periodically after that.

If you want to do this right, you need to confront the idea of risk, think about how to make it smaller (if you can), and then think about whether the (minimized) risk is one you are willing to take.

Regardless of what childcare you choose, have a plan for who is in charge when the nanny or the kid is sick. Fighting about who will miss work in the moment is a bad idea.

Putting this together leads to some general advice: offer your very young child a wide variety of foods, and keep offering them even if the child rejects them at first. As they get a little older, do not freak out if they don’t eat as much as you expect, and keep offering them new and varied foods. If they won’t eat the new foods, don’t replace the foods with something else that they do like or will eat. And don’t use threats or rewards to coerce them to eat.