That's the number one thing about all these advice articles. Every kid is different. That's great to have tips of things to try, but there's absolutely no secret formula and 4 kids is a really small sample size.
Same. I personally found it very difficult to tell the difference between actually asleep vs. starting to fall asleep.
I use the paci as a cue. Once it falls out of their mouth, they're usually asleep. (Usually...)
None of my kids would ever even take a pacifier. There are so many different babies that there is certainly no one true method.
Absolutely agree. Every baby is different. Took a couple months for my last one to take a paci because he had a small tongue tie that we had to work through.