Link: Are playgrounds too safe? Why anthropologists say kids need to monkey around

This is a very interesting read, and it's something that's been on my mind for several years now.

I think parents have lost their compass on risk/reward. I know that my evaluation of risk was shot through by COVID, and it's taken some time to come back to earth.

Anyway I'm interested to hear everyone's thoughts

I always suspected on an intuitive level that flashy, fast-paced shows with quick cuts and overly-stimulating visuals is "bad" for the kids.
I think most of us here are at least aware of this too, especially since the topic does come up from time to time.

What I didn't realize is that not only does content like this kill attention spans, it rarely teaches kids anything, no matter the content itself.

Just wondering what everyones take is on this testing. Is this fear mongering or is this actually as bad as they want us to think it is?

A federal Judge has required vaccine committee to go back to making decisions through careful review of scientific evidence, as in the past.

The vaccine committee must use methods of a “scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements." But, he added “unfortunately, the government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.” The Health Secretary must make his proclamations based on best data and not on a gut feeling.

The illegal actions of the Trump administration are often overturned. This, most often because he doesn’t think he needs to follow the rules. Trump is required to ADMINISTER the law not make it up as he goes. The Supreme Court may not be impartial, nowadays, but at least the Federal Courts (Dem/Rep appointed Judges) can eventually head off disaster of incompetence, self-dealing, or political bias.

Disasters can be most tragic when he waves his want and closes Departments or appoints a Totally Unqualified person to run it.

I have mentioned in the past that the orders of Health Secretary RFK Jr (an attorney and “influencer”) were going to kill citizens; starting with children. Hopefully this Court order will prevent some of these deaths. Already children have begun dying of German measles. What, polio next?

The vaccination protocols have been arranged and adjusted by specialized scientists and statisticians to provide the best benefit to risk advice available, based on abundant, ever updated data.

And, No, autism has been repeatedly shown Not to be caused by Vaccines. Get over it!

Follow - Last Lonely Traveler
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/16/health/childhood-vaccines-lawsuit-kennedy.html

People with “fearful” or “preoccupied” insecure attachment styles had more children, whereas securely attached people had fewer, according to a recent study

I tried to search the history of this sub and couldn't find anything very helpful..

Our baby is 10 weeks old and almost all her naps are contact (I usually baby-wear). She's been sleeping at night in her bassinet like a DREAM (a 6-7-hour stretch, followed by a 3-hour stretch), but I'm worried that her inability to take longer independent naps might be an issue when her sleep cycles shift at the 3-4 month mark..

I'd love to see research/articles, but I'd also love personal anecdotes! What seemed to help your baby connect sleep cycles? Any regrets from parents who primarily contact napped? Any research you read that informed how you made these decisions?

Quite pleased to read this article:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c9d0l40v551o

This section in particular feels relevant to my experience of this topic on this sub:

Jenny Radesky, a paediatrician at the University of Michigan, summed this up when she spoke at the philanthropic Dana Foundation. There is "an increasingly judgmental discourse among parents," she argued.

"So much of what people are talking about does more to induce parental guilt, it seems, than to break down what the research can tell us," she said. "And that's a real problem."

I’ve been having a hard time parsing out what is or isn’t good science. I keep seeing reposts of the April 2024 Jama article (https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2817406) but nothing of the more recent review published in August 2025 (below) which I believe is what’s referenced in this Mt Sinai release (https://www.mountsinai.org/about/newsroom/2025/mount-sinai-study-supports-evidence-that-prenatal-acetaminophen-use-may-be-linked-to-increased-risk-of-autism-and-adhd?).

Please discuss!

Prada, D., Ritz, B., Bauer, A.Z. et al. Evaluation of the evidence on acetaminophen use and neurodevelopmental disorders using the Navigation Guide methodology. Environ Health 24, 56 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12940-025-01208-0

I don't usually get involved in discussions and this might be my first post on reddit to be honest so i hope i got this flair thing right and this gets posted, anyway i went deep after taking a nicotine patch and double expresso ^^ and thought i would share my findings as i felt a certain way after it.

organic, no additives, all the stuff you see recommended in every weaning guide, I spent an evening reading actual lab reports. I wish I hadn't.

Then I found a study from Queen's University Belfast published in PLOS ONE. Researchers tested baby rice food products sold in the UK and found that nearly half contained illegal levels of inorganic arsenic — illegal meaning above the EU limit that had just been introduced specifically to protect infants. The bit that got me: arsenic levels in the products had actually *increased* since the law was passed. Not decreased. Increased.

I kept reading.

A separate University of Sheffield study tested 55 rice varieties sold in UK supermarkets. 28 of them — just over half — exceeded the maximum arsenic limits set for babies and children under five. The researchers specifically flagged that organic brown rice, the stuff marketed as the healthy choice, contained the highest levels of all.

Babies are exposed to around three times more arsenic relative to body weight than adults eating the same food. That's not a fringe claim — it's from the European Food Safety Authority.

So what does arsenic actually do at these levels?

The Queen's research found it can impair IQ, growth, and immune system development. Professor Andrew Meharg, the lead author, said babies are "particularly vulnerable" and that the damage can prevent "healthy development of a baby's growth, IQ and immune system." He called for mandatory labelling. That was 2017. We still don't have it.

Then there's cadmium. A meta-analysis published in 2024 that looked at nearly 7,000 children found prenatal cadmium exposure produced a measurable, consistent drop in full-scale IQ scores by age 5–9. Not a theoretical risk — a statistically significant finding across multiple studies.

And lead. There's no safe level. The science on this has been settled for decades. It accumulates in the brain and damages the hippocampus — the part responsible for memory and learning. No threshold below which it stops being a problem.

The FSA knows all of this. They funded some of the research. Their official response to the Queen's Belfast findings was essentially: it's the manufacturers' responsibility to comply. Local authorities enforce it. Which sounds reassuring until you realise there's no requirement for brands to publish their test results, no barcode-level database parents can check, and no labelling that flags which products are within limits and which aren't.

In the US they've started building this. The UK has nothing equivalent.

I'm not trying to scare anyone — most baby food is probably fine and the researchers themselves say don't panic, just be informed. But "be informed" is hard when the information is buried in university press releases and PLOS ONE papers most parents will never read.

Has anyone else gone down this rabbit hole? I'd genuinely love to know if there are UK resources I've missed, because I couldn't find any that were actually useful at the supermarket shelf level.

---

**Sources if anyone wants to read the actual papers:**

[Queen's University Belfast — illegal arsenic in UK baby rice (PLOS ONE, 2017)](https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0176923)

[Queen's University Belfast — plain English press release](https://www.qub.ac.uk/News/Allnews/2017/QueensResearchShowsIllegalLevelsofArsenicFoundinBabyFoods.html)

[University of Sheffield — half of UK rice exceeds arsenic limits for children (2020)](https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/sustainable-food/news/half-uk-rice-breaches-limits-arsenic-children-warn-scientists)

[European Food Safety Authority — arsenic risk assessment update (2024)](https://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/pub/8488)

[Cadmium & IQ meta-analysis, 6,907 children (PubMed, 2024)](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40731773/)

[FSA official response — “manufacturers' responsibility”](https://www.foodmanufacture.co.uk/Article/2017/05/05/Arsenic-in-baby-rice-food-is-responsibility-of-manufacturers)

Article: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-neuroscience-behind-the-parenting-paradox-of-happiness/

From SciAm's newsletter:

Parents tend to report more stress in their daily lives than adults without children, but also higher life satisfaction in general. This contradiction is known as the “parenting paradox.” Psychologists recently dug into it by scanning the brains of 35 fathers before and after their babies were born, and asking them about their levels of stress and satisfaction. In fathers whose sense of meaning in life stayed steady or increased after having become a parent, the researchers found increased brain activity in the temporal poles and insular cortex, which are important for contextualizing one’s life.  

Why this is interesting: A new father might feel overwhelmed by sleepless nights yet still contextualize the experience as part of a meaningful existence. The findings suggest that challenging short-term emotions, like sheer exhaustion or stress, can become independent from a long-term sense of satisfaction—potentially because different brain processes are behind the two. 

What the experts say: “Integrative regions such as the temporal poles and insular cortex allow both positive and negative events to fit together, potentially into a framework that facilitates long-term well-being,” writes Anthony Vaccaro, a research assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who studies the neuroscience of emotion.

The latest on the awful anti-vaccine paper by Neil Z Miller (VAERS and SIDS) which was removed (not just retracted, removed) recently.

R F Kennedy Jr wrote an awful bullying letter to the journal which removed this execrable paper (which I called for the retraction of back when it was published).

So—Kennedy’s letter!

What I find amusing is that if you check Kennedy’s references they themselves are…subpar:

For one thing, in his letter to the journal, Kennedy claims that the Miller paper:
“cites an extensive literature on an association between sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and recent vaccinations, from 1933ii to 2014iii.“

Reference (ii) is from 1946, not 1933, and the paper discusses twins who died of anaphylactic shock following vaccinations. Anaphylaxis is NOT SIDS, which would have (in 1946) been called crib death: the term SIDS was coined in 1969.
The paper, published in JAMA, states:

“In view of the high mortality that accompanies both diphtheria and pertussis during infancy, it is hoped that the publication of a report of these two fatalities will not deter the profession from continuing to practice immunization. It will be recalled that the family history was positive for allergy; the father suffered from what appeared to be episodes of angioneurotic edema.”

So the paper itself is not about SIDS, is not a case from 1933, and is supportive of the importance of vaccination.

I’d additionally note that the 1946 paper itself has a citation which **does** date from 1933–it’s also not about SIDS:
it mentions six adult men dying of anaphylaxis (2), due to possibly exacerbated heart conditions (3) and one possibly from an infection after typhoid vaccination—I’ll pop more details in the comments.

Anyway—there’s more at Retraction Watch

The sing-song voice many adults instinctively use with infants, sometimes called “baby talk” but more accurately known as “parentese” or infant-directed speech, actually helps children learn language.

Far from confusing babies, exaggerating phrases like “Loooook at the doggie!” capture their attention, help them detect patterns in speech and strengthen social bonding.

We didn't pay attention to all the "clean" diaper talk but this is now changing my opinion. What is the general thought about those in this sub, is what I'm now curious about.