This is fraud

As a brittle, childless spinster, I don't have child-rearing experiences of my own to draw on. Yet every day in clinic, I make reassuring eye contact with haggard looking, applesauce-spattered people, and explain to them how to raise their children. I have no data to back me up-only snippets I've overheard from people who actually know what they're doing.

This is not evidence-based medicine. This is fraud. As someone who has never had the pleasure of ignoring a breath-holding spell or a tantrum, I feel like a total jackass telling parents to do it. But what's odd is that when I speak as if I have a clue what I'm talking about, they obediently bob their heads at me and hang on every word that comes out of my mouth. It is completely absurd.

More on this at a later date.