[stdbrouw]

I am really happy for you if that has been your experience, and I fully acknowledge that the fact that the extremely neurotic style of modern parenting so many people seem to practice is incompatible with pretty much anything does not imply that all kids and all kinds of parenting leave no room for anything else... still, please, recognize that there is an enormous amount of variance in what kids are like and that some things just cannot be "metabolized" that easily. I might have written something like what you wrote if we had only had our second kid, also given my experience with how wildly effective certain interventions (e.g. sleep training) can be. Knowing what our first is like, who by the way has no medical issues but just happens to be a pain in the ass, your remarks instead sound completely ridiculous.