Comment by geoffbrown | Hacker News Reader

Comment by geoffbrown | Hacker News Reader

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If I could go back and have one piece of information its about dialing in my expectations. I find that there are (at least) two types of babies/young children. I call them chill babies and intense babies. If you get a chill baby then you can expect a subjectively normal pace of achieving milestones and overall less trouble. I'm not saying its easy with a chill baby, but its overall your stress levels will be lower. If you get an intense baby, you really need to take a step back and play the long game. They will take longer to get to the milestones, they will try your patience more, they will be more frustrating to respond to your inputs. Its like there is something interfering with their response system. While this can feel like you are doing things wrong at first, it can be confirmed when people give you advice about sleeping, eating, or gas and its clear they've never experienced what you are going through. Also, if you have one of each like I do, you can make the mistake of thinking that one is normal and that there is something wrong with the intense baby. Don't worry about the intense baby's lack of milestones or responses the odds say they will come out all right. (I was pretty sure my 1st born had ADD/Autism from week 3. ;)) The good news is that either way you get a little break from the frustration around 3 and they pretty much equalize around 7 or 8. Just be ready for either and figure out a way to spend lots of time with them.

How old is your "intense" kid now? I believe my stepdaughter falls in that category, and my wife and I seem to have the same worries you do (or did) about ADD and other psychological ailments.

She's clearly very smart. She's really good at math (she's in first grade but already has a good grasp of 3rd and even some 4th grade stuff). It took a while but now she's good at reading. She's creative, usually kind to others, VERY social (a challenge for both of us being introverted and shy to an extreme), and doesn't cause trouble anywhere.

However, every conversation with her is a challenge. She's stubborn, sticks to absurd ideas and gets really angry if we try to show her she's wrong. This is contradictory with her ease at math, but she has a hard time following logical things like if A -> B and B -> C, then A -> C, so there are daily verbal arguments with her that are very frustrating. It's practically impossible to have a 5 minute conversation with her without it drifting into nonsense.

Do you notice the same in your "intense"?

I would say the main difference between my boys at each perspective age was the speed with which they could process reasoned input. The chill guy by age 2-2.5 or so would listen and generally abide by instructions almost immediately to the best of his age ability, the intense one would take days or weeks at the same age to get to the same level of practice and disagree and try to argue in favor of his ideas or actions. It was very frustrating at first (I would have to take a walk to cool down) but then I would catch him a few days later behaving in the directed way. I didn't say anything about it, but I was just wtf?? After all that, now you're fine? Slowly I saw the pattern emerge that he WAS processing the information, but that the appropriate behavior came later. Sometimes weeks. That's when I stopped worrying about it so much. He 'gets' it, he just needs time to process it in his own way. I'm not sure I handled it the best, but I would calmly explain the desired behavior or information and leave it at that. I acknowledged that he disagrees and move on. Honestly, I worry more about my integrity as an authority figure than his displeasure or the rightness or wrongness of the issue being discussed. (That's what I meant by the long game) I do a lot of image processing in my side project and his behavior reminds me of image thresholding. He needs to see or be exposed to an ideas a certain number of times before it takes. I have no authority to offer any real advice, other than I understand your frustration.

I suspect the milestones thing is more a matter of birth weight and how well they eat. I've got an intense baby who just turned 10 months and is literally running around the apartment, trying to climb the furniture, signing a dozen or so words, following simple instructions, and biting when you make her angry. Of course she has consistently been ninety something percentile in weight. My wife is constantly amazed. The babies in her family are generally very chill, but ours hates strollers/carseats, refuses to nap more than an hour a day total, wakes with night terrors every hour or two, and screams/chases if her mother gets more than about 5 feet away. Each one is different I guess.

"Each one is different I guess"

This is the core of the issue. But its still frustrating to see other children doing the things your child refuses to do or has a meltdown about. Especially simple things that you thought you could take for granted like pushing a baby in a stroller or napping.

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