Every night, you struggle to get your child to sleep at a reasonable hour. Other parents have their children in bed asleep, maybe taking the time to relax, read a book, but you are spending a couple of hours with this nightly challenge. You mention this struggle to someone knowing what they are likely to say. I did this or that and my child goes to bed with no problems getting their child to bed at the time society feels is a good time.
Often this comes across as an indication the parent is doing something wrong. Do these people ever think that maybe the reason this or that worked for them is their children are naturally prone to sleep at this time. Did they ever try and get their children to sleep hours earlier than this normal time or keep them awake hours after this time. Those simplistic ideas they keep throwing out, might not work as well as they seem to think.
Just one of these atypical issues can add an hour or more to the amount of work a parent has to do in a given day. It becomes even worse if there is more than one of these issues to deal with. As a parent, you may have little time for other aspects of life, making up for the time loss by sleeping less than you need or spending more money to save time in some other way. Frustrated and exhausted, the last thing you want to hear is someone making you feel like you are not doing something right. Even if there is some way simple way to solve the problem, it may not be obvious. Professionals are often unaware of conditions if they are rare enough not to exist in more than one in ten people.
Sure some parents do absolutely little in the way to try and deal with these issues. But those of us who put lots of work into these issues often have little in the way of success. Advice is welcome, but if we say we have seriously tried it and it did not work, then the advice may just not work in this particular case.
Just as there is a nature side to our physical appearance and abilities, there is a nature side to our brain. No one blames the parents when a child is shorter than average or unable to walk and in a wheelchair. Society does not consider being shorter than average as being a disorder, consider the person to have a bad attitude or consider this one aspect of the person as an indication they are of less value overall. Often the parents and the children are putting in huge amounts of effort to try and fit better within society's mould.
I figured I would start a thread about these kinds of issues society often blames the parents for.
