Luck vs. Parenting Ability

When I had gone on Facebook and shared a photo of Sammy and mentioned that he had the first official cold of his life (he’s over 2.5 years old) someone asked what we owe that to. Truth is…I don’t know. Is it luck or does it have something to do with the decisions we’ve made?

My response was that it was probably a lot of luck mixed in with some of our parenting decisions. He’s been a healthy kid for over 2.5 years now. We also know that could all change tomorrow. He started sleeping through the night at about 4 months old. My assumption is that won’t change tomorrow. Overall he has a really fun, friendly, cooperative personality. I hope that doesn’t change tomorrow.

So how much does luck have to play into it? I really don’t know and nobody does. The only thing I can say is when it comes to how we choose to parent him I feel we are open minded and try to make common sense decisions.

We have always pushed healthy food but have allowed things like animal crackers, graham crackers, and frozen corn dogs into our lives because, well…it’s easy. I will say this though. The kid eats a TON of fruits and vegetables, daily! He also eats more sushi than I do…yes, the raw stuff. He drinks water and only water. No soda, juice, or milk.

Oh, and before I forget I should say that we are VAXXERS. He has had ALL vaccinations up to this point. I say that proudly. I’m not knocking the anti-vaxxers but our kid has had all of them and still seems relatively normal at this point.

He’s also active. We get him out and about every day. We don’t hit him. There is a lot of laughter in our house…especially when we have friends over…which we do often. He’s had a lot of time with me since I was the work from home parent until recently when Annie started working from home more. He gets a lot of both of us.

He hasn’t gone to daycare until about 2 or 3 weeks ago when we put him in the gym daycare where Annie goes to work out. That said he has been out and about a lot…to wineries, restaurants, parks, etc. That simply means that yes, he has not been exposed to the melting germ pot of an all-day daycare but the kid has been exposed to a lot of other crap and not been sick.

I don’t know. Luck? Sure. Parental decisions? I can’t answer that because I don’t like taking credit for anything good. I just know that the fact he only chooses to drink water and nothing else, in my opinion, is super darn healthy. Soda and juice are all sugar and the human body doesn’t like all that. So who knows…all we can do is keep doing what we’re doing and be thankful that he has been so healthy.

We have plenty of friends that have not had our experience and it pains us to know what they’ve had to go through. All any of us can do is take it all in stride and do what feels right for our individual families in the moment. Parenting is hard enough without the weight that other parents put on us. You’re doing good…give yourself a pat on the back.