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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

In fish...

I read a book by a professional nanny and she believed that the behavioral individuality that you would find in babies already at a few months old (liked to sleep a lot, often grumpy, often giggly) would follow them to adulthood. I think there's some truth to that.

That sounds logical to me. I was just pointing out that the headline is linked to a Nature article that is specifically about fish (genetically identical fish) which makes it considerably different than what most people would assume from the fish-less headline

This aligns with Montessori beliefs that babies have personalities and are whole humans, not half baked automatons.

Whole humans have personalities too. Doesn't mean they can't change.

I am interested. Would it be possible to share the name of the book? Thank you in advance.

Oh, that's a good question. It's been a long time. I'll do my best to find it but I very few memories about it, other than what I mentioned and that the premise was (in part) to nurture your child based on their personality. It was actually one of the best books I read when my daughter was born, so I'll really try to find it for you.

Edit: I think it's "Secrets of a Baby Nurse," by Marsha Podd. (Maybe. It's been a long time.) I hope that's it because so many of those books were uninformative or simply reassuring (e.g. "Yes, it's normal ..."). This one talks about how your baby is communicating with you from the start and how to watch for that to make both of your lives easier.

Thank you!

As parent I’d agree that there was some innate behaviors and individuality of personality that persists from the start. No idea how to quantify it but have witnessed it.

and humans

source: am parent of more than one child, each of whom had distinct personalities from birth

This should be something that is easy to study! There are many parents with multiple kids (I am one!) and they can tell you if all of them were just a tabula rasa with no personality or if they were all different on day one. I will say that all of mine were. Of course environment guides how they grow but the way they interact and interpret the same environment seems to be different.

New dad here. How do you mean?

I love my 2 month old but her personality mainly seems to be "I enjoy drinking milk and sleeping"

How fast they get annoyed, how loud they are, the proportion of time they are delighted vs distraught. Those are all pretty obviously different by two months.

Have another baby and compare.

Have two. They did nothing but cry, eat, sleep, and shit for the first six weeks. After that they’re a little more aware of the world and perhaps developing something that will become a personality pretty soon, maybe by month two or three.

I won’t definitively state newborns don’t have personalities, but my unscientific hunch is sleep-deprived parents are simply projecting and seeing what isn’t really there.

I love both my children, but for the first six weeks they are simply base creatures, outwardly.

I have 3, and they were all extremely different from even before birth. My first would kick your hand off if you held it on her mom's belly, continue kicking until you removed it. She's continued to be as stubborn as a mule and protective of her space. She didn't cry too much, was never needy, and still remains very independent. My second was a colicky baby that always wanted to be held. He's 12 now and still won't sleep in a room alone, loves attention. My third is only 2, and has been by far the easiest going. She has always been easy to soothe, and lights up rooms. Maybe your babies are just very similar, or maybe you're just inobservant.

All three of our children were obviously different in the womb.

The oldest was pretty lazy and quiet during the day, but did get bouncy when my wife tried to sleep. The combination of couch potato and getting active when stimuli stops and the boredom hits is present in the kid to this day.

Middle child was super-active the whole way through labor and came out active. Was surfing furniture standing up at eight months.

I could go on at length.

Main point is - we saw the differences before they were born.

My first kid was never content unless she was being held, she was very fussy during the witching hour, and never slept long stretches at night. Our second kid was immediately different--she never really cries and is very content, she just wants to be nearby and have a view of the parent. She also sleeps through the night in much longer stretches. There are definitely differences in babies immediately from birth.

Sure, but if you had 2 different 2 month olds you may notice how they differ

I doubt it not, Elros son of Earendil. Yet I have but one.

In general these sort of studies can be generalized to other species as the genetic mechanisms in animals are similar. This study has more to do with the relationship of genetic, environmental and pre-natal environmental and individuality so none of it is really specific to fish.

Of course, humans are still a different species and our offspring have a much more complex ontogenesis and so I would venture and say our individuality development is even more sensitive to pre-natal environmental, post-natal and genetic factor changes.

But ultimately, we are all animals here so we are governed by very similar broad rules.

Thanks! I wish titles on posts were accurate.

There's no problem in this case; the finding is no less true for humans than fish.

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