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by bcrosby95 429 days ago
As an aside, this worked for 2/3 of our children. For one of them if we gave them choices like that they would just scream back "NONE". We never really found what worked for her, usually we just let her cry it out a bit then offer a metaphorical olive branch (oftentimes our oldest would let her play with one of her toys, which tended to make her happy, but only if you let her be upset for a long enough period of time first... otherwise she would just reject/throw it).

Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.
3 comments
scruple 429 days ago
One of our twins is this way, her sister will accept making a choice based on options we present and so will her younger brother. Bit of a tangent but, basically everything I ever I believed I understood about the nature vs. nurture argument have broken down completely in the face of raising (fraternal) twins.
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thaumasiotes 429 days ago
> Bit of a tangent but, basically everything I ever I believed I understood about the nature vs. nurture argument have broken down completely in the face of raising (fraternal) twins.

I read something speculating that a major contributor to Americans' general disbelief that family members are usually very similar to one another is that most of their exposure to "family members" is actually to the members of fictional families on television who are played by unrelated actors.

(I know you're making an observation about how clear the differences between your children are. But I submit that if you compare them to a few unrelated children, you'll find that they are indeed very similar to each other overall.)

We have a lot of public pronouncements about what children, or people generally, are like, but almost all of it is completely uninformed by facts or experience.

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thaumasiotes 429 days ago
> Anyways, kids are people. Try different things.

There's a really surprising amount of resistance to the idea that an effective way to work with one person might be counterproductive when working with a different person.

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shawndrost 429 days ago
"THOSE ARE NOT MY CHOICES. THOSE ARE YOUR CHOICES."
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