Ask HN: Is This Parenting or Scrum?

As my partner and I raise our nearly 1 year old child we are constantly looking for her to reach milestones. The prescribed advice from our doctor as well as reasonable online resources has us tracking development in stints that seem to go about a month each. And it is stressful, not unlike pressure of software development. My partner, who is not a software engineer, finds the process almost overwhelming. As we are getting near the release of version 1.0 (her first birthday) I have to wonder: is this right? Frankly it is not what I was expecting nor would wish for. I do not want to raise a daughter like a scrum project. It seems that child development ought to be paced more naturally.

Wow. Yeah it sounds like your intuition is calling out an important issue. Personally I have three almost-teens and we had to learn the best parenting style for each kid as well as for ourselves and the ways we interfaced with those children.

When we got medical advice that was really off, we generally ended up changing providers. Overall it was most important to learn each child's pace and preferences early on, so we could support them rather than building all this unnecessary scaffolding.

If you are looking for objective resources and inputs, checking with strangers like this is a good idea in that you can get a nice sample in some ways, from people who may think like you. You might also check in with your doc, share what you're doing in practice, and tell them that something has got to give here, see what they say. If the doc thinks nothing can give, that's where I'd start to check in with other medical professionals and see what's going on and what other options you have.

There are thousands of different child development perspectives, philosophies, and practices. In the end, you, your partner, and your child will be the ones who really have to be comfortable and compatible with whatever tools you use. Good luck to you and please take care of yourself. Healthy kids are great but healthy parents are also important.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt as I’m a teenager, not a father (yet) but am indeed a son of two wonderful parents. I’d say track up to whatever you feel comfortable, maybe set relatively small and spaced out milestones for your child. I think the most important thing would be to be comfortable with your partner and of course have a happy child.

Your daughter will be fine even if you ignore all these milestones, there is so much variability between kids that it causes lots of anxiety in parents.

You are most certainly good enough parents to give her a bright future. You seem to care! Continue to put in time and focus on the small things in your shared life. Read stories together, eat together, play etc.

If you want to really cure yourself of this, just get a few more kids ;-) First kid is always the biggest challenge and most associated stress around if they develop “right”.

I forgot about this stage of parenting. It only happens with the first child. If you have a second child the order, pace and progress will be completely different, but you'll already have the experience of the first to understand that none of it matters.

It seems strange that a doctor would keep you anxious about these milestones.

Just try to survive and enjoy everything.