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Comment by mrmffh | Hacker News Reader

The most important thing, in my opinion, is peaceful parenting. That is, no hitting and no shouting - teach your kids to reason, even if they're being unreasonable.

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I would call it respectful parenting. My sister has raised great kids because she and her husband always treated the kids with respect. They talked about things and explained the reasons why they wanted something from the kids. Otherwise they would let the kids do their own thing. Whereas my and my sister's parents never explained anything.

For example we had to be nice to adults and authority figures just because. If somebody had told me that it's in general good to be nice to other people because they will treat you nicely too I think my social development had been much better.

I don't think I ever had a satisfying conversation with my dad.

Easy to say...

Easy to do, if you're rational that is

And have the privilege of not suffering from other life stresses...

Such as parenthood?

No, I meant stresses other than parenthood. When you have to work 2 jobs, have to decide whether to use your paycheck to pay overdue bills or buy groceries, and never get enough sleep, it's quite difficult to remain rational while your child is acting irrationally. The stresses of parenthood (never enough sleep, worrying if you are doing the right thing) just exacerbates those. After all, we aren't robots. Emotional state is a tough thing to override.

Which you're not, seeing as how you're human and all.

It's certainly possible, and very much worth doing, but I wouldn't call it easy.

When your kids destroy your sleep pattern and cry most of the time when they are awake during the day, good luck staying rational and yourself. Everyone has limits and kids are very good at finding them.

Kids don't destroy your sleep pattern unless you abuse them by going against millions of years of co-sleeping and throw them in a crib in a different room (doubling their risk of SIDS). In a year and a half we've had exactly one "troubled night" and that's because she had hand foot and mouth disease. Children cry because something is wrong. Sometimes that may be "I want to pull the cats tail but she's running away" but more often than not it's something that can be addressed by a parent. Love, attention, and affection has solved every bout of crying so far.

Are you suggesting there's only a single pattern of kids and that all kids follow your experience? Because I can tell you, it's not the case.

I think you were lucky. My sister's kids were all different. One was extremely easy and the other one was very difficult the first few years. Same parents, same methods, different outcome. People are different,so are kids.

err... I don't know about easy, I'd go with hard, but doable

I defy you to get through the difficult teenage years without resorting to shouting.

My mother managed that, with three teenagers, as a single mom. Maybe she was exceptionally good?

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