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Comment by sanderjd | Hacker News Reader

I think parenting is the worst possible space for N=1 anecdotes. I have two sets of friends who did what you did and have never slept alone or through the night for coming up on five years. For our oldest, also coming up on five years, we did like one night of sleep training at 18 months and immediately started sleeping through the night like magic. For our youngest, we never had to do anything, he just always slept through the night no problem. All of these anecdotes mean nothing, just like yours. Parents need to experiment and figure out what works best for them and their kids, and everyone who isn't them needs to butt. out.

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Yep, the thing I always tell new parents when asked about kids is that every single kid is different. Your kid might be a good eater and a bad sleeper. Maybe the reverse. They might be extremely needy or be completely chill and independent. This is especially obvious when you have multiple kids of your own. Some knowledge generalizes, but a lot of the personalized experience is different (e.g. what they respond to in terms of incentives or "training"). I was always about 10/90 in my opinions of nature vs nurture (90% nurture, 10% nature) but after having kids its so obvious nature is much higher than I thought. Not sure what the end ratio is, but I'd say at least 50% nature.

You make a good point, each child is different. It's almost as though children are people. Maybe there's some kind of a lesson in that, but I can't see it.

> everyone who isn't them needs to butt. out.

Exceptions:

• if somebody asks for advice.

• if somebody mentions they're about to try an arsenic-, lead- and powdered asbestos-based nasal spray on their kid.

The capacity of the parents is also a bottleneck: time spent paying attention to your uninformed advice is time spent not paying attention to the child(ren). Unsolicited advice is not relaxing, and doesn't help put food on the table; it probably doesn't help.

Though, I think posting on an internet forum might fall into the "if they're asking for advice"; most people visiting such websites are there because they've looked something up, and they expect to be wading through anecdotes.

This resonated with me. The only two bits of advice I ever give to any new parent are:

-everyone has an opinion about parenting, and many are not afraid to share it

-don't compare yourself to someone with an older child. You will start out a level zero parent, but you get a level zero baby. You'll level up with them. No one starts out a level 20 parent.

This is the only good comment in this entire thread.

Agreed! Kids vary significantly, and much advice I’ve read about sleep doesn’t apply to our kid.

You’ve just gotta do what is best for your family, not what is best for some internet stranger’s child.

Sometimes? Yeah. And random advice spamming doesn't help, and just makes it worse. MDs tend to be the worst at this, but there are exceptions.

However, sometimes the parents are doing things that are unintentionally dangerous, or are so sleep deprived and exhausted they're being abusive and can't process that and get themselves to a better place on their own.

It's more common than not, from what I've seen. As is denial and avoidance on the topic.

Ideally, they would have experienced parents who know them (grandparents) who would be intimately involved and give breaks, intervene in important situations, help them with known working parenting techniques in the situation, etc.

But 1) a lot of folks don't have grandparents who could positively contribute here no matter what anyway, and 2) socioeconomics means it's nearly impossible for this setup to coincide with HN demographics except for certain specific ethnicities, and 3) a lot of boomer parents - the demographics involved - are explicitly not interested in that kind of thing, and a lot of current folks in the child rearing age range have been left adrift with nothing but pop-sci articles to guide them.

It's a shitshow, but I guess that's always been the case.

N=1 anecdotes are exactly the things that give new parents a range of ideas to mentally try out and see what fits.

I'm all for that! But what I'm talking about is people (like the person I replied to) that present their N=1 anecdote as the gospel of how to parent right.

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