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Comment by ido | Hacker News Reader

I understand, and as I wrote above that may actually be the case (or part of the case) described above, but there could also be a background we're unaware of (the children's personality).

As a father of 2 little children I can tell you you're constantly being judged by people around you for for not doing good enough a job parenting - especially by people who aren't parents themselves but think they'd be much better at it. In these situations there's often a lot of background information the casual observer simply has no way of knowing.

Just saying we should maybe give the parents in the anecdote above a bit more benefit of the doubt before judging how wrong they handled the situation.

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You're definitely right in that children are very different from another. In my experience, however, fear almost always comes from a previous bad experience or it transfers from other people. I've done the "first time at the hairdresser" with both of my children and they still love going there, ten years later. Back then, we took our time looking at all the tools and watching other people's hair being cut. With the permission of the hairdresser, I let them play a bit with the revolving chair. No talk about how it might hurt or anything.

In the story above, the only explanation I can think of is that the boy already had a previous bad experience with a hairdresser. (Didn't look like it but I can't be sure.) Even then, I'm not sure this was the best way to handle it.

>In my experience, however, fear almost always comes from a previous bad experience or it transfers from other people.

children with autism often react badly to hairdressers. There can be all sorts of reasons for some behavioral pattern.

If they can cope with / get used to the intense new sensory input, I imagine the same tricks would work (point out interesting things, make sure they understand what's going on so they know what to expect (but without making it an ominous future event), etc). That might require making the hairdressers' quieter or less crowded, though. (Timing your first time well is probably important; I'd aim for somebody else to watch first, but not large crowds, but it depends on the child.)

> In my experience, however, fear almost always comes from a previous bad experience or it transfers from other people.

One day, my nine-year-old child spontaneously developed acute anxiety of car rides. She had ridden in cars daily for years prior to that. Long road trips, everything no problem. And then, out of nowhere, it was a source of acute—we're talking screaming and crying meltdown—terror. There wasn't a single negative car experience that led to it.

Emotions are complex and kids are highly variable. I'm glad you got lucky with your kids and haircuts (mind don't mind them either), but not every emotional experience with kids has a simple narrative explanation.

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