It’s always kinda easy to just pick out the nonparents in these threads. Parenting always looks like one of those “why don’t you just” things - the answers are

It’s always kinda easy to just pick out the nonparents in these threads. Parenting always looks like one of those “why don’t you just” things - the answers are so obvious and these parents are just idiots. Except, every human that has ever existed has had parents. Is every descendant a bunch of idiots that just needed someone to tell them “why don’t you just?” When you become a parent you’re faced with impossible situations regularly. You feed your kids, get them to bed, they’ve got school at some scientifically proven harmful early hour, all the lights are automated for circadian lighting, you do a quiet story time, everything is peaceful, but your kid hasn’t slept more than a few hours a night for two weeks. They’re hysterical, you’re at your wits end, because you also haven’t slept, or really done any of the million grown up chores that happen once your kids fall asleep and if you don’t pay the bills soon your utilities will be cut off and then evicted - not for want of money but for want of time not consumed by your insomniac crazed child. You are doom scrolling parenting forums with parents posting horror stories of their life melting down and begging for advice. Throughout the forums are smug parents saying “yeah man, did that. Melatonin. Just saying, by the way it’s the hormone all vertebrate animals secrete to induce sleep since animals began.” But you really don’t want to be drugging your kids, and you remember posting on HN a bunch of “why don’t you just” threads before you had kids and feel the need to be intellectually consistent. Surely if you turn the lights down 10% 30 minutes earlier this won’t happen tomorrow?? Maybe the story you read is too over stimulating? Maybe they just need to run for five hours tomorrow at the park?? What else did I tell people to do??? Every time you are getting ready for bed at 4am after consoling your weeping child shrieking “why can’t I sleep daddy???” until they suddenly switch off like a light at 3:30am, three hours before they have to wake up for their absurd school start time designed to stunt intellectual development out of malice by school administrators that wish they had studied a different subject, you can’t help but see your bottle of melatonin. Finally you can’t take it and you go to the pediatrician. They look at you like you’re dense. “Have you tried melatonin? It’s perfectly safe in moderation and can help reset a sleep cycle that’s been disrupted.” You shift uncomfortably and stammer something about drugging kids and hollowly repeat some “why don’t you just” advice you posted on HN a few years before your first child. The doctor shrugs and says “lack of sleep will clearly harm you and your child, and melatonin is a fundamental hormone in the sleep cycle of all animals - it is safe. Relax.” Dejected and exhausted, feeling like a hypocrite, you get the smallest dose gummy you can find at the store. With a deep shame for destroying your child’s life, you mutter something about medicine and give it to your kid before you brush teeth. They’re shaking with fear about the upcoming struggle to sleep, but you guys go through the motions you know won’t work and you grind your teeth waiting for the struggle to finally break you. Then half way through the story, you hear it. A slight snore. You fold the book and rest your burning eyes. You consider revisiting all those threads you posted, maybe deleting the posts or adding edits apologizing. But you’re just too tired right now. The warmth of the bed, the blessed peace is too inviting. The next thing you know, you wake up fully clothed in their bed late for school. Listen, you should NEVER judge a parent that hasn’t been convicted by a jury of their peers. There is nothing in life harder, and no one who hasn’t lived it can ever understand it. That’s not an insult or telling you to shut up or your opinion is wrong. But it’s a frame of reference so different from all other human experience that it’s impossible to judge from outside.