“Saturday nights with my future Olympian. I think I finally found someone who likes practice more than I did.”
A Florida pediatrician is sharing her best parenting advice for early childhood development.
In an Aug. 11 video posted on Instagram, Dr. Meghan Elizabeth Beach Martin, MD — a pediatrician and mom of four — opened up about the stress many parents feel in the early years of parenthood.
“We stress ourselves out so much as parents, especially of infants and toddlers, and the decisions we make — what we’re feeding, how we’re feeding,” she said in the video.
But do those decisions really matter once a kid grows up? According to Martin — not really.
“A couple of years down the line when they’re starting kindergarten, first grade, second grade, it doesn’t matter,” she said. “The teachers don’t care. They can’t tell the difference most of the time anyway.”
Martin — an emergency medicine physician at Johns Hopkins All Children's Hospital — posted the video after dropping her kids off for school for the 11th year in a row.
She joked that a lot of the things parents stress over were irrelevant by the time kids reach grade school.
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When children were potty trained, when they took their first steps, when they learned their first word, baby-led weaning vs. purees — Martin says these things never come up when kids start school.
“Everyone just wanted to know, “How are they getting picked up? Is it the car line, is it bus?” she joked. “But other than that, they’re just like, “Cool, we’re gonna have a great year.”
Martin’s best parenting advice as a longtime pediatrician
Instead of stressing over the wrong things, Martin shared what really matters in a child’s early years.
And she started with two of the most important things — reading and talking to your child often.
“The more they’re hearing words, the better,” she said. “Even if you just do a couple of books, a couple of times per week, that’s enough.”
She also challenged parents to “build up your kids starting early” by telling them how awesome they are and loving on them hard.
“Make sure that they know that you are a safe place,” she continued. “Make sure they know how amazing they are — how smart and kind and brave and thoughtful they are.”
“The world is going to tell them other things and they need to know how amazing they are,” she added.
Lastly, she wants parents to model behavior — because children are always watching and listening.
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“Modeling things like self-control, how to apologize, how to speak to other humans, how to speak about other humans when those other humans are not around,” she advised.
