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Comment by acuozzo | Hacker News Reader

> It's not an easy thing, but some of the histrionic claims about child raising on the internet are really out there.

Have you considered that objectively difficult infants/toddlers/children exist? Children with O.D.D., for instance, show symptoms early, but diagnosis usually doesn't come until much later.

Perhaps the comments you came across online were from the parents of those kids.

-A parent of a very challenging child with Level II Autism

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I think that might be the thing. Parents whose children are more challenging might more often "be at wits end" and turn to online communities for guidance, help, or other insights, whereas parents whose children are not as challenging just breezes through, and thus do not end up as a data point online on how difficult parenthood is.

Also, even though I don't know you, I am certain that you are a good parent, and that you are doing your very best, and that your child is lucky to have you as their parent. :) Stay strong.

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

No one remembers when their friends or family tells “we are doing well everything is nice”.

Everyone passes on or remembers horror stories.

This is true of many communities. The internet is full of complaints because people rarely take the time to say just “my car works just fine”. There’s no value in that info. People go out to talk about it when they have a problem, that’s a real conversation starter.

Discussion groups aren’t a balanced slice of how the overall situation looks like. They tend to sway towards the negative side because discussing about everything being fine gets old fast.

I can 2nd this. As a parent of a level II autistic son and then 6 years later a now 1 year old girl that does not appear to have any autistic traits. We delayed having the 2nd child by years because the first was so draining. They are night and day. During parental leave I found it hard to play with my son in ways where he acknowledged that it was fun. He mostly did repetitive activities alone like flexing a folding rule or similar. My daughter is completely different. As parents our son Ahmad thought us a lot about not projecting our expectations onto the children and meeting them where they are.

It's not that. IME people with kids with actual conditions are somewhat less likely to complain, and are far, far less prevalent than mums who just inhabit "complaining about my kids" culture.

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