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Reaction to a child falling across cultures is so interesting in its differences. In a lot of countries in Latin America, when a toddler falls, all adults look away, to pretend as if we did not notice the child fell. The logic goes that if the child has an audience, they will cry, otherwise, they will just dust it off and keep playing.

I've had other parents explain to me that if you run to your child and make a huge fuss, that they will react as such. So in future if they fall and don't hurt themselves, they will cry.

I don't know what the efficacy of this is, but it doesn't hurt to try.

I am from EU and have similar attitude, I mean if child would be hurt it would start to cry, if it ain't really hurt they just expect from parent what to do - I just say to my child "it's nothing" and it continue playing, if it hurts a bit child call me to blow it without crying and cry really only when has reason to cry. Then I see other children who just fall down, nothing serious, they seem fine but their mother arrives saying oh you poor thing, did you hurt yourself etc pushing and pushing child to start crying making drama out of nothing. It's basic psychology child repeat reaction after parents, if you make it big thing child will make it big thing too.

Sadly I can't say this would be really national thing because I see way too many people with approach I don't agree with. But you can usually see difference between more laid back fathers and stressed mothers and also overprotective grandparents (which ain't really bad considering their physical abilities, but sadly despite being overprotective they just don't realize some real dangers like my mother thinking when it's 33C in shadow and i prefer to stay in AC place with my child instead of baking outside).

To the guy below saying men on HN don't take care of their children, my wife went to work and I was home with our first, now with second (and also the first) we are both at home and I am helping around taking care of older, cooking etc.

> other kids could fall over and scream for an hour over the smallest of falls. Why?

From what I have learned so far by reading various parents' comments etc, all kids are very different and making general conclusions like this one seems to be pointless / incorrect.

Your first kid may be calm and chill and your second one can be agitated (or vice versa) while your parenting style stays the same. Why? Because these are two different humans and not something else.

Ahh, Nurture vs Nature..

Of course two children could be totally different. But you cannot deny that the influence you have as a parent.

I gave the scenario of my mother-in-law, and her two daughters. My mother-in-law is 1 of 3 sisters, a very anxious person. Her two sisters polar opposites. Their mother a very calm, very hands off parent. Right there is a great example of your point. 3 children, 2 similar, one the same.

Now where it gets interesting, is my mother-in-law had 2 daughters... both as anxious as their mother. Where my mother-in-laws two sisters, whom are very laid back and hands off as parents. Their children are also laid back and relaxed, much more so than my wife and her sister.

This is anecdotal for sure, but so is cherry picking comments from online and drawing a conclusion.

I'm not saying that my comments are 100% accurate, not even close.. I'm saying in my observations this is the driving factor in the parenting choices I've decided to make for my daughter, and no one else's.

> you cannot deny that the influence you have as a parent

for sure, I agree with you.

It seems to me that it is better to make conclusions looking at grown adults and families in total - like you did with your in-laws.

I just wanted to say there might be a tendency to look at screaming (or in this case, it would be anxious) kids and generalize and criticize their parents for bad parenting skills / inability to deal with kids / whatever; meanwhile, it's not their fault. Just good to remember that.

(Edits: minor formatting)

I think it’s unfair to judge another parents ability to parent based on a single action. I agree with you there, every parent is different, just like their children.

I’d like to believe that more often than not a child is similar to the parent, If that’s nurture or nature, or culture I don’t know. Fun to wonder though.

Do you all live in Norway?

A lot of men in tech don’t spend a lot of time looking after their kids. They then criticise their wives parenting methods. I’m not saying this is what you’re doing, but it’s made me a cynic about most of what I read on HN.

That’s quite the generalisation. I don’t know many parents in tech, but the ones that I know spend a lot of time with their kids.

I devote a large amount of time to my daughter. The other parents who are in tech are quite similar.

Perhaps I live in a bubble here in Norway.

There’s a reasonable amount of evidence that fathers still don’t do their share of parenting in general:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/05/childca...

Though I’d be interested in more stats on this.

I’ve known enough HN’ers and tech fathers in real life who talk a lot but don’t look after their kids to have become cynical myself.

Ahh yes. I agree. Men don’t do their share of parenting as a whole. I thought you were saying this is specific to tech, of which I’d disagree. It’s more wide spread than that.

Yes, my phrasing was not ideal. I don’t know if it’s particular bad in tech. But it is a general problem I’ve seen (and also noticed in tech).