[hotpotamus]

I was watching a documentary about Steinway pianos awhile back, and there are several parts where the piano comes off the line and then has to be extensively hand-fitted for some part or other; that is to say that each one takes a lot of individual attention in spite of using some mass production technique (they're about as high-end a piano as there is).

Children are semi-random genetic combinations of their parents and aren't amenable to mass production; I've long suspected that generic advice is close to worthless and once you mix in the replication crisis, all the science seems close to worthless. I think you just have to take the time and figure out what works for each kid.

[gillyb]

I feel that's a little like saying 'Everyone is unique, so psychologists are useless'.. Although everyone IS truly unique, there are still common patterns that emerge, and many commonalities in our upbringings.

We don't act completely randomly, not as children and definitely not as adults. We exist within a common environment with a common set of laws or norms that most people live by (excluding extreme cases, for various reasons).