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Comment by cryptonector | Hacker News Reader

It's so easy for parents (and teachers) to misdiagnose strange child behaviors. TFA is a wonderful example. Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else.

Young children will not figure these things out by themselves. Parents need to "debug" these problems. Doctors may not be able to help until you have some idea.

It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for.

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> "It might be interesting to collate a compendium of strange child behaviors with simple explanations, and other problems to watch out for."

I couldn't disagree more. This seems like a step in the wrong direction. The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we already do into the bucket of "strange." Actually, even saying that parents need to "debug" these problems may be going too far. Humans are much more complicated than a machine that must work "just so."

Humans are definitely more complex than machines. But that complexity often causes people to jump to incorrect assumptions, or even just shut down in the face of that complexity. Breaking the problem down into what you know and then solving for what you don’t is an incredibly helpful method for addressing issues that can be fraught with emotion.

Yet, many human behaviors are simple cause and effect. You don’t have to label it and the random things kids do would end up quite extensive. However, there is a definite need for parents to understand and help kids with detrimental behaviors. It is possible to do this without pressuring kids. When you are staring down a behavior like the author was and you have reached your capacity as a parent it can be very demoralizing. So, safe to say, parents need a “debugging” skill and human consciousness, especially at younger ages, while very vivid and complex, is also shockingly simple. Cause, effect, response from kid. Dry air, hands dry;hurt, make them not dry. I could go on, but, I think the spirit of the idea is correct. At times you just need to detach and analyze to help your kids out. Other times being organic and experimenting are great.

I think it's a fallacy that labeling and categorizing automatically implies judgment and condemnation. Some weird child behaviors are harmless and should be ignored; some (like the one in the article!) may indicate actual problems that should be addressed. Either way, it doesn't seem obviously bad to give parents diagnostic information.

We already apply this technique to medical issues. Currently if we Google around we will find the answer if the symptom is common enough. A "WebMD" for a range children's behavior seems to be what OP is getting yet. Not such a bad idea. However, I agree that labelling them and treating them as a "disease" is going overboard.

I think you misunderstood GP. Knowing the cause of a previously "strange" behavior makes it relatable and discussable. Being able to explain a behavior is beneficial even to kids themselves, because it allows the kid introspection, and, ultimately, a chance to disarm triggers that lead to the behavior. This gives a bit of control back to the kid, as she no longer has to rely on adults to tell her off.

> The last thing we need to do is label even more human behaviors than we already do into the bucket of "strange."

I couldn't disagree more. Having had a proper manual for my human body would have been amazing.

I had a less intense but somewhat similar issue to OP's child. I was licking my lips and therefor got bullied for using "lipstick". Both stopped only after on one of those occasions a kid in their mentioned licking can cause it, while i pretended to ignore them. I'm quite thankful to him and wish i could help others just like that.

Another is being lactose-intolerant. No idea when I became that, must have happened quite late. But it took me embarrassingly long (mid twenties) to figure out, change my diet and thus get rid of those messy bowel movements.

I see little value in not having those kind of knowledge available and instead having to find out yourself. And parenting would hardly be possible without understanding your child's behavior. If you have a problem with calling it "strange" or "debug", I'm fine with calling it something else. But i doub't many here care about (those) labels.

I don't believe you replied to the spirit of the parent comment, since having red lips, and having messy bowel movements are not human behaviors, but are symptoms.

I bet what the parent has in mind is, for example, behaviors such as stimming.

Stimming = self-stimulating.

I didn't know that word (but knew the sorts of [repititive] behaviours -- like rocking, hand waving -- as an indicator for ASD.

Who said anything about labeling anything??

> Parents need to watch for things like blood sugar problems, autism (e.g., failure to make eye contact), skin problems, mild food allergies (why does the kid not like _fill in the blank_, maybe it's because it tastes "spicy" to them), and much else.

But this attitude is precisely the issue! Most of those problems are mild and fairly benign, and not all that common. We've gotten ourselves into this terrible mindset that allowing children to experience any little discomfort is a sign of bad parenting, while ignoring the damage our overbearing vigilance is causing — both physical, as with auto-immune diseases that seem to be linked to excessive hygiene, and psychological (in all sort of fun and destructive ways).

I think you missed the point.

For example, as a young child I hated meat, and it wasn't until years later that I figured out that it was because my jaw got sore very quickly when having to chew a lot. My parents tried very hard to get me to eat meat back then, but if they had not pushed me, but instead let me be and listened to me, they might have figured it out. This one sounds a lot like the hand-licking case in TFA.

For another example, as a child I sugar-lowed very often. More than once I went to my parents feeling very sick and my dad just took my temperature and said "you're fine" when in fact the temp. was rather low and a sign of sugar lowing. It would have been very nice to have figured this out years earlier than I eventually did. The worst sugar low I remember happened while I was 16 and driving home from a movie theater (where I'd had a huge candy bar and soda), and I had no idea what was up. At one point I was driving on a long, windy, hilly, busy two-way street, with a passenger, and I felt like I was going to die at any moment. I could have killed someone because of something trivial that no one stopped to think about.

Here's another: I used have episodes of losing eyesight for a few seconds. My dad actually took me to an ophtalmologist's office where they did a battery of tests on me and never found the issue. Eventually I figured it out one time when I passed out after a blood draw: I was having low blood pressure episodes. This one is a case where doctors were unable to figure out something rather trivial.

Here's another: as a kid my mom used to be punished for what turned out to be bad eyesight. What the heck!

Books like "What to Expect While Expecting" and "What to Expect the First Year" are fantastic and very useful to parents. Imagine a "Debugging for Parents" book that taught, among other things, not to see every odd behavior as misbehavior. Wouldn't that be fantastic?! I think it would be.

To me, the point of the essay was the opposite of what you just said, instead: listen to and trust your child.

I think you're both right. By listening and trusting your child, you'll be able to successfully and properly debug. That's what happened in the blog post.

Exactly.

The point of a compendium would be -more than anything- to teach parents that things are not always what they seem. The hand-licking behavior might seem like misbehavior, but if you stop and think about why it happens, you might understand that there may be a much better explanation.

Seems to me that far more often the problem is one that the young child has figured out and even articulates to the adult, but the adults ignore it because they wouldn't find that same issue a problem, and they don't understand why the child does.

I don't understand when will medicine recognize the cause of all health complications instead of trying to individually path each and every problem. People can then start correct precautionary measures. All health issues that we see on rise today were virtually absent in pre-industrial era and are directly result of our newly adopted habits and environment. We are paying so much of cost to live in a "modern" world.

We also have higher life expectancy rates and lower infant mortality. No need to go tin foil hat philosophical about all things scary and ‘modern’, it paints a black and white view of the world, progress, and the general concept of change.

We already know the causes and cures for most common ailments. People aren't exactly queuing up to do more exercise, eat healthily etc, etc.

Yes and no. I think parent has a point in the fact that the predominant idea seems to be to patch a "current ailment" and get on with life (reactive mentality), instead of actually investigating a root cause of whatever causes that "current ailment" (proactive mentality).

For example, I'm having my sixth pharyngitis in less than a year. When I go to the doctor, the doctor only thinks "pharyngitis -> Pills A and B -> here, take these pills".

This will fix the problem. For now. What will happen in less than two months? I'll be back, to repeat the same procedure. Is this how the rest of my life looks?

Shouldn't the doctor try and discover what's the root cause of this? Pollution, some allergy, stress, what would i know...?

This is my personal case and it's becoming frustrating, but the problem is i know about many other similar cases. I really can't complain about the health service in my country (Spain, Barcelona specifically) because you will get the attention you need to not die, whatever happens to you, unlike many other places. But for things that are not critical as a punctured lung? "Take these pills and get out me office."

The world is not that simple.

Are you saying dry skin on a child is caused by a modern lifestyle? That sounds a bit far fetched, to say the least.

The pre-industrial era didn't have modern diagnostics & healthcare, so why would you expect to see the same ailments or the same desire to have them treated professionally?

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