> It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there.
Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later.
Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids.
-A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism
I think that might be the thing. Parents whose children are more challenging might more often "be at wits end" and turn to online communities for guidance, help, or other insights, whereas parents whose children are not as challenging just breezes through, and thus do not end up as a data point online on how difficult parenthood is.
Also, even though I don't know you, I am certain that you are a good parent, and that you are doing your very best, and that your child is lucky to have you as their parent. :) Stay strong.
This is true of many communities. The internet is full of complaints because people rarely take the time to say just “my car works just fine”. There’s no value in that info. People go out to talk about it when they have a problem, that’s a real conversation starter.
Discussion groups aren’t a balanced slice of how the overall situation looks like. They tend to sway towards the negative side because discussing about everything being fine gets old fast.
I can 2nd this. As a parent of a level II autistic son and then 6 years later a now 1 year old girl that does not appear to have any autistic traits. We delayed having the 2nd child by years because the first was so draining. They are night and day. During parental leave I found it hard to play with my son in ways where he acknowledged that it was fun. He mostly did repetitive activities alone like flexing a folding rule or similar. My daughter is completely different. As parents our son Ahmad thought us a lot about not projecting our expectations onto the children and meeting them where they are.
It's not that. IME people with kids with actual conditions are somewhat less likely to complain, and are far, far less prevalent than mums who just inhabit "complaining about my kids" culture.
Have you ever met someone with a true addiction to food? I'm not talking about someone with a habitual craving for sweets. I'm talking about someone who consumes food compulsively like a chain-smoker; someone who, in the absence of whatever their favorites are, will consume and consume with little regard for what the food is: an entire jar of pickles, multiple pounds of grapes, a whole rotisserie chicken, et al.
I used to be one. I once ate six baked white onions¹ in one sitting before vomiting everywhere and rethinking my life.
I broke through naturally, but I wish GLP-1s had been prevalent at the time. Want to know what made breaking it so challenging?
1. Unlike other addictions, you have to continue consuming this one or else you will die.
2. Nearly every social event in the USA is tied in some way to food which means that you have to exercise willpower __constantly__ if you have a social life.
3. People are more interested in shaming you than supporting you. Most want you to fail.
Younger Dryas, definitely. It very likely abruptly stopped progress in human agriculture, before allowing it to abruptly restart again. Makes the Medieval warm period and little ice age look like a joke. Two massive shifts that punctuate the timeline of early human prehistory.
> The Younger Dryas (YD, Greenland Stadial GS-1) was a period in Earth's geologic history that occurred circa 12,900 to 11,700 years Before Present (BP). It is primarily known for the sudden or "abrupt" cooling in the Northern Hemisphere, when the North Atlantic Ocean cooled and annual air temperatures decreased by ~3 °C (5 °F) over North America, 2–6 °C (4–11 °F) in Europe and up to 10 °C (18 °F) in Greenland, in a few decades
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