There is a photo of me, my face buried in my hands, simultaneously concealing and wiping away the tears. On Thursday, the person who made me cry will turn five. F.I.V.E—yes, like five fingers on one hand— as she would say. Parenting is an enormous challenge if only because parents know so little about it beforehand, a thing that is not taught. Knowledge comes, if it does, through experience and inadvertence and sometimes from bouncing off a series of struggles and challenges.For a few, knowledge comes at a gravesite, beside a hospital bed, or within prison walls. A recent Canadian report on the well-being of children casts a long view of childhood and leaves us fixed on those first 988 weeks upon which their entire lives depend.
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