A couple of days ago, I took the baby for a bath and weighed her while we were there. She is now eleven and a half jin. For a three-and-a-half-month-old baby, that feels right in the middle—not especially heavy, not light either—so I am quite satisfied.
She has been breastfed all along. Her weight gain has not been particularly fast, but her overall condition seems good. During a voice call with a colleague, he heard her shouting in the background and laughed that her lung capacity sounded impressive. His child is two months older than mine, but the voice is not as loud. His baby has been on formula and has grown very quickly, reaching an astonishing seventeen jin at five months.
This also gave me a new understanding of what people often call the “second-month fussiness.” After talking with several parents, I noticed that many babies who go through that difficult period were born before forty weeks. Babies who stayed in the womb beyond forty weeks, especially around forty-one weeks, seem much less likely to have it. This fits the common explanation: many babies’ digestive systems are still immature. When they begin growing rapidly around the second month, their demand for food increases, but digestion cannot keep up, which can lead to gas, bloating, and long crying spells. Babies who developed longer in the womb may have a more mature digestive system, so these problems are milder or may not appear at all.
So whether a baby is “easy” or “hard” to care for is not simply a matter of temperament, nor is it proof that one child is better than another. There are often physiological reasons behind it. If parents do not understand this and only compare their own child with someone else’s, they may easily reach the wrong conclusion.
I have always felt that babies are like blank sheets of paper. They do not understand much yet, and most of their reactions come from instinct. Parents should therefore have more patience. Adults often assume babies are clever enough to understand everything, as if a child should immediately grasp whatever we explain. Objectively, that is not realistic. A baby may indeed be smart, but many early behaviors are more likely rooted in instincts carried in the genes.
Human beings have evolved for millions of years to reach where we are now. Many things have been written into us during that process. For example, some people instinctively fear snakes, rats, or certain insects. It is likely that our ancestors suffered losses when dealing with these creatures. Today, many people are no longer afraid of them, perhaps because human beings have become stronger in many ways and that fear has gradually weakened in some people’s inherited memory. Whether a child is clever or not, growth still has to follow its own order. It cannot be forced like pulling up seedlings to make them grow faster.
This thought came back to me recently after I read about Zhang Xinyang, the so-called prodigy who became a doctoral student at sixteen. Even though he became a PhD, I still feel there were problems in the way his parents educated him. As an outsider, it is not appropriate to judge another family too harshly, so I only want to talk about the lesson it gives me as a parent.
In educating children, grades should not be the only thing we look at. Moral character, intelligence, physical health, and aesthetic development all matter. If a child has a gift for studying, then parents should probably spend more time helping the child grow in other areas instead of pushing them to skip ahead endlessly. Of course, I am not against learning more. Subjects such as Chinese and foreign languages require a great deal of reading to consolidate and improve. If a child has energy, it is also fine to explore more mathematics or other subjects. But physical fitness cannot be neglected, and basic common sense should not be neglected either. Parents should not use being busy at work as an excuse to avoid accompanying their children as they grow. Children need to be taken out to see a wider world.
When I was in Guiyang, I talked with my older brother and others about children’s education. One topic that came up was Beijing’s education pilot reform: the 2025 Beijing high school entrance examination would remove chemistry, biology, geography, and history, while keeping mathematics, Chinese, English, physics, physical education, and morality and rule of law. They found this hard to understand. Everyone knows that in our education system, whatever is included in major entrance exams becomes the focus of intense effort. If history, geography, and biology are removed from the exam, will students still study them seriously?
Even under the current system, many people already know very little history. If history is no longer tested, then even if these students become excellent at physics or mathematics, will they still remember the history of their own country? If a person does not know the history of their country, how can they talk about patriotism?
My brother gave another example. When he was working as a village-based Party secretary, he met a young man who had just started working and had grown up in the city. The young man thought peanuts grew on trees and did not know they actually grow underground. When my brother corrected him, the young man became somewhat embarrassed and angry, and the two nearly got into a conflict.
Thinking back, I only learned that peanuts grow in the ground after my family planted peanuts for the first time. For things we have never seen, we really may know very little. Children in cities mainly get knowledge from books. They do not necessarily have the chance, as rural children do, to spend time close to nature and see all kinds of plants and animals with their own eyes. If schools reduce this kind of knowledge in the classroom, children in the future may make even more basic mistakes.
Of course, national policy is not wrong in its direction. Science is the primary productive force, and for national rejuvenation it makes sense to emphasize science and engineering. There is nothing wrong with that. But under these circumstances, parents have to make another effort at home. We should take our children out more, walk around with them, and teach them more common knowledge in daily life, including but not limited to history, geography, and biology. Only when school education and family education work together can quality education truly be achieved.
After wandering through all these thoughts, I should return to the recent parenting details.
In my previous parenting notes, I mentioned that the baby’s digestion was not very good, so we bought lactase for her. Later experience proved that lactase is not a cure-all, and it also has drawbacks. It really should not be given casually.
Lactase helps digestion. When digestion becomes faster, bowel movements may also become faster. Once the baby empties faster, she gets hungry sooner; when she is hungry, she wants to eat again. This can easily become a repeated cycle and seriously affect sleep. After giving it to her for a while, we found that she cried a lot at night. We consulted a doctor, who suggested stopping it. Sure enough, after we stopped, things returned to normal.
So my current understanding is that lactase is only an auxiliary product. When a baby’s stool has bubbles, it may indicate poor digestion, and giving a little can be acceptable. But once digestion becomes normal, there is no need to keep using it, because it may interfere with the baby’s normal rhythm. For new parents, my advice is not to believe everything online. Many things are promoted by businesses trying to sell products. As long as the child has no major problem, it is better not to interfere too much.
One of her aunties gave her a simple rocking chair. The structure is very basic, but it is genuinely useful. After lying in bed for a long time, she can be placed in it for a change of environment. Compared with lying flat, the slight incline gives her a different line of sight and lets her see the world from another angle. The only downside is that once she lies in it, she likes to look around constantly, and the hair on the back of her head has been rubbed away quite a bit. It looks almost bald.
Now that her weight has gone up, there is noticeably more flesh on her face, and her hands and feet have become chubbier too. She likes grabbing things, and her fingers are surprisingly strong. There is a decoration on one of her outfits, and she pulls at it every day. Half of it has already come loose. In a few more days, she will probably tear it off completely. By then, that outfit will probably be ready to retire anyway, because it is already getting a little tight.
I am still teaching her simple numbers. For a while, I even talked through addition between single-digit numbers, but I do not think her memory can hold that much yet. After going through addition from 1 to 9 once, I gave up on that and returned to basic number recognition.
Right now I use my fingers to show the numbers. My next plan is to upgrade the method: print the numbers on white paper so that images and sounds enter her mind together. Even if she cannot remember them, leaving an impression in the brain may still help deepen familiarity. I also want to add simple calculations on the cards. For example, for the number 2, I could pair it with 1+1=2. As she grows, these number cards can become more complex, with subtraction, larger numbers, and so on.
Of course, she is still too young right now, so I will not start this plan immediately. I am thinking of trying it after she turns five months old. While doing that, I may also begin making self-media content by turning the cards into videos, just to see whether it can open up a new direction and perhaps bring in some extra income.