I would like to push back on the points in your comment. I think parents in this forum are familiar with the concept of weighing a for sure benefit against much more uncertain risk. Caffeine, White noise, and temperature control can have a very significant and immediate benefit to parental and child well-being. For caffeine, I think most parents would report that it helps for thinking straight and staying calm to have that kind of cognitive boost in the morning. Maybe things would be different if we were 50 years into the future, and caffeine became a scheduled drug based on its addictive properties, but given that caffeine usage is so common, and the benefits are so great, I don’t think it makes sense to be advising parents to avoid caffeine at this time—It’s not going to make your kid worse off than other kids in any meaningful way (unless you are having an unreasonable amount of caffeine). If you are worried about your child’s brain development, there are many other interventions that have much less of a negative effect on the parent that I would advise doing instead, like iron and vitamin D fortification, and filtering flouride out of tap water. Similarly for white noise and temperature control. If baby is not sleeping that’s probably much worse for their development, and also much worse for everyone’s well-being, than any risks associated with white noise and temperature control.
Overall, I would say that this level of worrying and research about these kinds of details is counter to my parenting goal of trying to enjoy the experience of being with my kids. Anything you Google related to parenting will come up with risks. The only reliably helpful parenting advice I’ve found is stuff by Emily Oster, an economist who looks at the data and writes about what is actually worth worrying about, and what isn’t.
I would like to push back on the points in your comment. I think parents in this forum are familiar with the concept of weighing a for sure benefit against much more uncertain risk. Caffeine, White noise, and temperature control can have a very significant and immediate benefit to parental and child well-being. For caffeine, I think most parents would report that it helps for thinking straight and staying calm to have that kind of cognitive boost in the morning. Maybe things would be different if we were 50 years into the future, and caffeine became a scheduled drug based on its addictive properties, but given that caffeine usage is so common, and the benefits are so great, I don’t think it makes sense to be advising parents to avoid caffeine at this time—It’s not going to make your kid worse off than other kids in any meaningful way (unless you are having an unreasonable amount of caffeine). If you are worried about your child’s brain development, there are many other interventions that have much less of a negative effect on the parent that I would advise doing instead, like iron and vitamin D fortification, and filtering flouride out of tap water. Similarly for white noise and temperature control. If baby is not sleeping that’s probably much worse for their development, and also much worse for everyone’s well-being, than any risks associated with white noise and temperature control.
Overall, I would say that this level of worrying and research about these kinds of details is counter to my parenting goal of trying to enjoy the experience of being with my kids. Anything you Google related to parenting will come up with risks. The only reliably helpful parenting advice I’ve found is stuff by Emily Oster, an economist who looks at the data and writes about what is actually worth worrying about, and what isn’t.