I do know some kids have real legit physical issues (colic being a big one). And if you don't figure out how to mitigate their distress quickly, they simply learn to scream when they want to communicate.

But when I hear "some kids are just assholes", I tend to see some underlying problem (possibly something you just can't do anything about at this stage, but it exists) that they're responding to. It's not standard baby behavior to make parents miserable.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

You sound like my brother after his first, who was a saint of a child.....the second however.....great kid but "not a sleeper" as they say.

None of my kids slept through until they were 3....10 years of broken sleep

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 3 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

This is the one thing my kids did well. First one slept through the night day one. Second took about a year to stay asleep once she was asleep.

And I'm gonna be a hypocrite here. Sleep is a learned behavior which needs to be constantly reinforced. I know parents with super easy kids who never set boundaries around sleep time which caused their kids to be difficult sleepers. Don't ever allow them to get up after bed time and you'll suffer a lot less. Our super difficult second kid learned we will only come into the room for short periods to meet her needs during bedtime. We started setting timers of a few minutes to let her learn that we aren't coming in immediately when she started crying. Saved our sanity and slowly taught her to self sooth. I know it doesn't work for all kids. But IMO a lot of parents will try to solve issues without the assumption their children can't learn to tolerate mild inconvenience. It's a huge cultural issue in the US.

[–] absGeekNZ@lemmy.nz 4 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

We tried a lot of techniques....

Rigid schedules, no schedules , big feeds, lots of little feeds...nothing seemed to work. For one kid, he wouldn't sleep unless he was next to one of us; one of the others wanted to be in the same room but not the same bed....

But once they hit ~3 it was like a switch flipped, and now they all sleep with no issues.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 2 points 8 hours ago

Good parenting my dude. I kept telling myself that repeating the same failing routines was insanity, so I ran experiments on her. Some kids are just soooo difficult.

[–] pahlimur@lemmy.world 1 points 8 hours ago

I think it's easy to dismiss the possibility of this kid existing. I am absolutely not a perfect parent but this kid is literally an asshole. Still love her though.

My wife and I think we are mild abuse victims from this kid. We confirmed it's hereditary with my MIL. My wife as a child was the same monster this kid is. If you listen to her scream she just purposely eggs herself on. She broke our nanny and almost a dozen daycare people. I always say she has like 3 toddlers worth of personality that she is trying to figure out and only recently she is starting to sort it out.

We tried everything related to colic and nothing changed her. Gripe water with fenel seed sort of worked. Omg im just remembering, hiccups 100% of the time after feedings. She almost never ate more than a ounce of formula. My wife had mastitis which killed milk production. Kid was so noise sensitive that I couldn't close a car door outside the house while she was napping. She needed a pacifier to sleep but would purposely spit it out. She whale tailed for almost a year. Naps were more stressfull than awake time because she needed to sleep 1.5 hours or she would screem constantly during awake time. We think she also had measles at one point, the hospital didn't do anything about it even after confirming what it likely was.

Kid broke my brain to the point where I understand where PURPLE crying is needed. My memory and anxiety are only recently recovering.