Section 20 covers the first year after a child is born. Section 18 covers how much money and time raising a child costs. The years in between, ages 3 to 18, are in this section. The item on screen time by age starts at age 0, because the official tiers are 0–3, 3–6, and primary/secondary school; splitting them would make the guidance harder to use. This section first answers one question: when “don’t delay schoolwork” collides with “the body,” which things cannot wait. They cannot wait because they have time windows; once missed, they cannot be made up. Whether schoolwork should be that intense is not discussed here — only the windows and the numbers. Later parts cover school bullying and leave from school, parenting at home, and safety on roads and playing fields. The first eight items, item 12 (cycloplegic refraction), item 13 (pit and fissure sealants), items 15 through 19, and item 21 (head hit during sport) are scored on death and lasting physical or mental harm. Among them, items 16 and 17 are about how to parent at home: no hitting or yelling, and take a parenting class that teaches concrete skills. Item 18 is about not sending a child to a closed “internet addiction” school. Item 19 is about teaching a child which body parts are private and to tell you if they were touched. Item 9 (do not buy products that “cure myopia”) and item 20 (do not ride on the road under age) are scored on money. Item 10 (written rules on sleep, homework, PE, and rankings), item 11 (leave of absence with enrollment kept), and item 14 (when a child loves games) are scored on time. Drowning, traffic, helmets, and HPV vaccine are in Section 1. Infants are in Section 20. Scams against children and game top-ups are in Section 5. Red lines minors themselves must not cross are in Section 9. How to recognize an emergency and call a car is in Section 13. Children after a parent dies are in Section 29. None of that is repeated here.
English, Russian and Spanish use dlgrv’s unofficial translations. Newly revised entries appear in the Chinese original until a checked translation is available. The author’s latest Chinese text is authoritative. Translation revision: dlgrv/HowToLiveBetter · b25fa8a
Some illnesses are measured in hours. Sudden severe pain on one side of a boy’s scrotum may be testicular torsion: the blood vessels twist and cut off the blood supply. Treatment within 6 hours salvages 97.2% of testes; at 19–24 hours, only 42.5%. Do not wait until school ends. Go even if the pain has already lasted a long time.
Cost
No cost at all. Just take a half‑day off work and take you…
Benefit
Following the rules, 30 case series with 2116 patients with testicular torsion were collected and pooled. Of t…
Scoliosis is a sideways bend of the spine. A brace is a hard shell vest that holds the spine. Worn while bones are still growing, 75% of children never reach a 50-degree curve by the end of growth; observation alone is only 42%. The wearable window follows when bones finish growing, not the high-school or college exams — wait until after exams and you may miss it.
Cost
No monetary cost involved. This point concerns whether to…
Benefit
A multi-hospital trial enrolled 242 adolescents with idiopathic scoliosis who met criteria for bracing. Of the…
Children bullied by peers more often report suicidal thoughts and suicide attempts. Schools must investigate reports immediately, formally assess bullying and impose educational or disciplinary measures; serious cases must be reported to police. Report that day, request formal assessment and keep written records.
Cost
There is no cost involved. Speak to the homeroom teacher a…
Benefit
This conclusion is based on 34 studies involving 284,375 children and teens. Peer bullying is linked to suicid…
An extra 40 minutes of outdoor class each day in grade 1 cut new myopia over three years from about four in ten to about three in ten. The health commission’s dose is at least 2 hours of daytime outdoor time a day, or 14 hours a week in total. Cloudy days count.
Cost
There is no monetary cost. However, it requires setting as…
Benefit
Grade-1 students in 12 Guangzhou primary schools were assigned by lot at school level (intervention schools 95…
China’s National Health Commission says no screens at 0–3, and avoid them as much as possible at 3–6. For schoolchildren, non-study use should be at most 15 minutes per session and 1 hour daily. Prolonged close-up screen viewing can bring myopia earlier. Evidence linking screens to myopia is less firm; 2 hours outdoors daily has trial support.
Cost
There is no monetary cost. The real challenge is keeping s…
Benefit
Article 4 of the “Ten Core Principles for Preventing Myopia in Children and Adolescents” states: “Children age…
Myopia does not cure itself or reverse, and it is more than needing glasses. Compared with people without myopia, myopic people have more myopic maculopathy and retinal detachment, with the largest differences at 600 degrees in Chinese notation (6 diopters) or more. The further a child’s myopia progresses, the greater the future risk.
Cost
No cost involved. There is nothing specific to do here;
Benefit
A systematic review and meta-analysis compiled studies published up to June 2019, grouping participants into t…
Primary and secondary schools run one student health check a year. On the report, focus on overweight, obesity, malnutrition, abnormal spinal curvature, poor vision, and dental caries. Do not glance at height and weight and put the sheet away. If any of these are abnormal, take the child to a specialist that same year and get it clear.
Cost
No cost at all. Under China’s Compulsory Education Law, al…
Benefit
The 2021 Administrative Measures for Health Checks of Primary and Middle School Students requires all such sch…
U.S. prevention guidelines recommend screening children aged 12 to 18 for major depression; for age 11 and under the evidence is not enough. In the U.S., suicide is the second cause of death among ages 10 to 19. The school’s yearly mental-health assessment is only a census, not a diagnosis. If the child says they feel bad, go straight to psychiatry or clinical psychology.
Cost
Costs range from zero to just a few dozen yuan;
Benefit
In 2022, the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a recommendation statement advising that adolescents a…
The State Administration for Market Regulation explicitly states that “under current medical technology, myopia cannot be cured.” Phrases such as “recovery,” “restoration,” “reducing refractive error,” “curing myopia,” “myopia remedy,” and “repairing refractive error” are classified as illegal marketing claims subject to strict enforcement. If you encounter any of these terms, you can safely rule out those products without further comparison. Devices such as eye-care instruments are considered medical devices, and e-commerce platforms must verify whether sellers are qualified to sell them.
Cost
There is no cost involved;
Benefit
A notice issued by the General Office of the State Administration for Market Regulation between November 2021…
These rules are all laid out in writing: elementary students must get 10 hours of sleep per day, junior high students 9 hours, and high school students 8 hours. Elementary classes generally start no earlier than 8:20 a.m., and junior high classes no earlier than 8:00 a.m. In 2025, an additional requirement was added that schools must provide at least 2 hours of combined physical activity per day, and students must not be ranked based on test scores. If your child consistently fails to get enough sleep, use these rules as a reference point rather than blaming the child for being slow to get ready.
Cost
No cost involved. All you need is to know these rules so y…
Benefit
The *Notice on Further Strengthening Sleep Management for Primary and Secondary School Students* stipulates th…
A temporary leave of absence is a fully established procedure. Parents or legal guardians submit a request, which the school then approves and forwards to the relevant education authorities for final authorization. Each request is valid for no more than one year; if the child still needs time off after that, a new request must be filed. During this period, the school is legally required to keep the child’s enrollment status intact. Therefore, the idea that taking a leave of absence “ruins” a child’s education has no basis in current policy. Exact implementation details vary by province; parents should contact the school’s academic affairs office or local education bureau for specifics.
Cost
No cost involved. Parents or other legal guardians must su…
Benefit
Article 16 of the “Administrative Measures for Student Enrollment Records of Primary and Secondary School Stud…
Cycloplegic refraction involves using special eye drops that relax the eye’s focusing muscles, allowing an accurate measurement of refractive errors. This test is performed in hospitals and is the most reliable method for diagnosing myopia. The Health Commission confirms these drops do not harm healthy eyes and that vision returns to normal after they wear off. Do not rely on quick computerized refraction tests at optical shops for diagnosis, and do not withhold glasses from children out of fear that it will worsen their myopia.
Cost
The examination and glasses fitting typically cost several…
Benefit
The “Ten Core Principles for Preventing and Controlling Myopia in Children and Adolescents” outlines how cyclo…
Fissure sealing fills the grooves on molars’ chewing surfaces with resin, keeping food debris out. At 2 years, if 16% of unsealed surfaces would decay, about 5% of sealed surfaces do. Benefit persists at 4 years.
Cost
Each application costs just a few dozen to a couple of hun…
Benefit
This conclusion comes from 38 separate trials involving 7,924 children aged 5–16, all selected and pooled by C…
True “gaming disorder” is about two or three people in a hundred. If questionnaire cutoffs are low and only teens are sampled, the rate looks high. Looking at real logs from game companies, there is almost no sign that playing more or less changes happiness. By rule, minors may play only Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and holidays from 8 pm to 9 pm.
Cost
No cost. Check once a week what time the child goes to sle…
Benefit
A meta-analysis summarized 53 studies involving 226247 people from 17 countries. The prevalence of gaming diso…
Among Chinese secondary students, children who like the same sex or both sexes attempt suicide in a year about 3 to 5.5 times as often as others. Overseas research finds that teens strongly rejected at home attempt suicide far more later. Those parents send for “conversion” also attempt suicide far more.
Cost
No cost. The difficulty lies in parents first processing t…
Benefit
A domestic survey covered 506 secondary schools in 7 provinces, 150822 students from grade 7 through grade 12.…
Children who are often physically punished show more aggression and psychological problems, feel more distant from parents, and receive harsher beating. Whether spanking makes a child obey on the spot is unclear in the evidence. Adolescents who are often yelled at or called stupid at age 13 show more misconduct and depression the next year; warm parenting does not cancel that link.
Cost
No money. The hard part is stopping your hands and mouth i…
Benefit
First, hitting. One meta-analysis counted only “open-hand spanking of the buttocks or limbs.” It pooled 75 stu…
For children who were already hard to manage, after parents took a class that teaches concrete skills, hitting and rule-breaking went down, and parents’ mood improved. Parents also hit and yelled less — clearest right after the course, still there one to two years later but much smaller. Shanghai has tried this kind of class; it worked.
Cost
Parent schools run by schools and kindergartens, and onlin…
Benefit
Cochrane pooled 13 trials, 10 of them lot-assigned, 1078 parents. Children aged 3 to 12 all had behavior probl…
The law clearly bans treating internet addiction in ways that harm a child’s body or mind. At a special training school in Hefei, a boy just sent there was cuffed in a solitary room and died about 44 hours later. Yuzhang Academy (豫章书院) in Nanchang locked students in solitary; four people were sentenced, and when parents asked for tuition back the court did not support them.
Cost
No expense, and you save the tuition. The hard part is res…
Benefit
Article 68 of the Law on the Protection of Minors (未成年人保护法) says no organization or individual may intervene i…
Children who took anti-sexual-abuse classes clearly did more self-protection moves in drills with a pretend stranger. What they learned was still there half a year later, and they did not become more fearful. Whether real abuse falls has not been measured. Among people who sexually abuse children, acquaintances make up a high share, so teach which places others must not touch, and that if touched or told to keep a secret, they come home and say so.
Cost
No money. A few words while bathing or changing clothes, t…
Benefit
Cochrane in 2015 pooled 24 trials of school anti-sexual-abuse classes, 5802 students aged 5 to 18. Most classe…
You must be 12 to ride a bicycle on the road, and 16 to ride an e-bike. A 14-year-old scanned their mother’s code for a shared e-bike, hit someone into grade-10 disability, and the court ordered the parents to pay about 187000 yuan. An under-age child who is hit — even when the other side is fully at fault — has still been ordered by courts to bear a share.
Cost
No money, but you need another way to get to school — pare…
Benefit
Article 72 of the Implementation Regulations of the Road Traffic Safety Law (道路交通安全法实施条例) says that on roads “…
Children who keep playing after concussion take on average 44 days to recover; those taken out at once about 22 days. If something is off after a head hit, do not play again that day — wait until a doctor says yes. Repeated vomiting, growing sleepiness and not waking, headache getting worse, slurred speech, or seizures are signals to go to emergency at once.
Cost
No money. Take the child out;
Benefit
Concussion is a temporary disruption of brain function after a head hit;
