Comment by asark | Hacker News Reader

Comment by asark | Hacker News Reader

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With three kids (or even two!), any advice from someone with one comes off as at least as grating as advice from people with no kids did when I only had one.

All the time-consuming "just hang out with them and talk to them like humans! Hug them for ten minutes! Make them complex, healthy dishes for every meal! I do it and it all works so well! I mean I also have a night nanny and cleaning service but I won't mention that..." goes out the window when one kid's about to kill themselves with furniture, somehow, you're not sure where another snuck off to but you suspect the worst, the third's making some god-awful noise in the other room that you're pretty sure will end up being expensive one way or another (oh no... did they make that sound or did the dog?) and meanwhile if you take your eyes of this sauce for one second it's gonna burn and it'll be pizza night... again.

Yes it's not constantly like that but it's always kinda like that. I understand it gets better when they're older. And I've heard from multiple people with four or five that the difficulty levels off after three kids. Up to three it's certainly non-linear. When for some reason we're down to one it's about as easy as having zero, now. Yeah, I bet whatever crap you read about on the Internet works, one-kidder. F*cking anything would. One's nothing.

Yes - parenting three young kids is brutal. In my experience it does get easier for a while, once the youngest is past nappies, sleepless nights and is into kindergarten. Then you're in the sweet spot for a few years, until the teenage shit starts. Again, IMHO, boys are much harder work than girls under five. It reverses when puberty hits; teen girls make for highly demanding parenting. Dads get an easier ride from teen daughters than mothers, who really do get it in the neck...

When it comes to teenage brothers the line between "normal antics" and "unstoppable force of mayhem" (especially if one/both have jobs and therefore money) is very, very thin.

I've heard that as well, that 2 - 3 kids are more trouble than any other number.

Some people feel that after the third, you just accept chaos as your life. But I don't think it's strictly a quantity.

I think it's a timing issue. Multiple infants and toddlers are a nightmare to manage. One is ok, because you can dedicate all of your resources to it.

When you're having your fourth kid, your first is going to be around 3 at the youngest. But typically what I've seen is that the first is closer to 6 to 10 by the time the fourth comes along.

At that age, the kid is ready to start taking on some responsibility around the house. Your burden gets lighter to some degree. They're more autonomous, you don't have to worry that they're just going to accidentally kill themselves as much.

Nah. 2 kids or similar age are easier then one pretty much after year one. They spend a lot of time playing/interacting together while if you have one, you are sole source of social interaction.

Being the second in a family of six kids, I would never imagine my parents getting on a horse half as high as the one you're towering from.

I recommend it, view's great.

My brother-in-law, father of three girls, said going from 2 kids to 3 in a two parent family means you have to go from planning man-to-man defense to zone. At least one kid is never getting at least one parent's full attention at any given time, so now you need to triage and prioritize the greatest parenting need at any given time.

It looks like you're going through a tough period and lashing out on people who chose to have less than 3 kids.

Nah, not tough, totally normal. Newly-multi-childed parents deserve some Real Talk every now and then so they can get over trying to do (and feeling bad about failing miserably at) all the crap they now don't have time/energy/attention for from Internet parenting advice, and get on to counting any day that ends with no more than one bleeding injury per kid and $50 property damage as a huge win, even if it took yelling a couple times and some punishment not accompanied by a bunch of hugging and a long talk about Right and Wrong here and there to achieve such great success. That stuff's fine but at some point you can't be two places at once, and there are more than two places you urgently need to be right this second, so something's gonna get neglected.

It's OK. Internet parenting advice (or any that comes from the latest trendy book) rarely survives contact with an enemy that outnumbers you. That's normal. Be nice and attentive when you can but don't beat yourself up for not taking 15min to calm your 4-year-old down then walk them through Plato's notion of Justice when they're hitting their brother for the 5th time in as many minutes. You have not failed when you have to choose between that stuff and getting the kids out the door to wherever you have to be, or dinner on the table, or clothes washed, or whatever. And when someone else tells you how some system or other they read about on some parenting blog works so great and is so gentle and nice and it's just crazy that anyone would ever yell at their kids for any reason, smile and nod and silently wish them smart, energetic, willful twins next time around.

[EDIT] and it's not the living hell that that read like, now that I look back over that, it's just that discipline problems tend to shoot up the more kids are around and they tend to cluster, and they tend to crop up when you're otherwise busy, for obvious reasons, so when you need to bust out your strategy for dealing with bad behavior it's gotta be fast and take very little of your time or it ain't gonna last long. When things are bad, they're bad. Usually they're fine.

You are over thinking this.

In any life situation, people who have experienced that situation have more relevant than those who don't.

Hearing parents complain about their own life choices as though they are martyrs upon him parenthood was thrust by the universe is categorically more grating than any form of advice coming from anybody.

Doesn't sound like the poster is complaining or being a martyr. Just giving a humorous reality check.

There is a lot of well meaning, but completely impractical parenting advice out there that does nothing but make parents feel like failures. The best thing a parent can do in order to maintain sanity is learn to completely ignore 95% of all advice others give them.

Just do the best you can do... that is all that you really can do in the end.

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