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

by Emily Oster

The authors of this paper created a website, www.newbornweight.org, where you can enter the time of birth of your child, method of birth, method of feeding, birth weight, and current weight and learn where they are in the distribution.

A common definition of colic (although not the only one) is the rule of three: unexplained crying for more than three hours a day for more than three days a week for more than three weeks.

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants be in their parents’ room through at least the first six months, and ideally the first year, of life as a guard against SIDS. The theory is that parents can be more attentive to the baby if they are in the same room.

the evidence suggests that bed sharing increases the risk of death by 0.14 per 1,000 births. The death rate from car accidents in the first year of life is around 0.2 per 1,000 live births.

Areas with more educated parents actually have, on average, lower vaccination rates.2 This suggests it is not necessarily lack of information getting in the way of choosing vaccination.

National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which protected companies from being sued over mandated vaccinations. People who claim to be injured by vaccines can appeal to the federal government for compensation, but they cannot seek damages from the vaccine manufacturer.

The largest of them includes 537,000 children—all the children born in Denmark from 1991 to 1998. In the Danish data, the authors were able to link vaccination information to later diagnosis of autism or autism-spectrum disorders. They found no evidence that vaccinated children are more likely to be autistic; if anything, the results suggest vaccinated children are less likely to be diagnosed with autism.9

Kids are more likely to try to eat it with what researchers call “autonomy-supportive prompts”—things like “Try your hot dog” or “Prunes are like big raisins, so you might like them.” In contrast, they are less likely to try things if parents use “coercive-controlling prompts”—things like “If you finish your pasta, you can have ice cream” or “If you won’t eat, I’m taking away your iPad!!”

You should also invest in a good general pediatrics book, which can do a more complete job at listing childhood symptoms than I can here. There are some references in the back; my favorite is The Portable Pediatrician for Parents by Laura Nathanson.

and being a very good talker before two is by no means a decisive determinant of early reading or other achievements.10

If you start training at twenty-seven or twenty-eight months, you can expect to be done by around age three, but it will take ten months to do it. If you start at age three, you finish later, but it’ll likely take you less than six months to fully train.

Potty training