What I Learned Hitting The ’10 Days And 100 Karma’ Rule When I Was Desperate For Parenting Advice
11:17pm, I’m leaning against our kitchen fridge, the hem of my sweatpants sticky with applesauce my son spilled at dinner, and my laptop is glowing bright enough to make my eyes hurt. My 12-year-old, J, is asleep down the hall, an hour-long homework meltdown finally over. We’re three months into waiting for his ADHD evaluation, and every night this week has ended the same way: me yelling that he just needs to start, him crying that he can’t, both of us going to bed feeling like we failed. I’d heard good things about a niche Reddit group for parents of twice-exceptional kids, so I’d made a new account that afternoon—no link to my personal profile, no connections to people I know, just me and all my messy, unspoken questions. I typed out 12 paragraphs about the meltdowns, the homework avoidance, the way I second-guess every choice I make these days, hit “post,” and got an error message in plain, unforgiving text: In order to post your account must be older than 10 days and have 100 positive karma.
I was furious. I sat back and crossed my arms. What kind of garbage gatekeeping is this? I’m here begging for actual help from people who get it, and you’re locking me out because my account is too new and I don’t have fake internet points? I considered making a new account with an altered birthday to trick the system, I considered jumping to a different, more open group, but I’d already read enough to know open groups are full of people selling essential oils and telling you to just enforce stricter screen time limits. So I decided I’d game the system: I’d get my 100 karma in 10 days, no problem.
I started scrolling, because I had nothing else to do at 11:30 at night while I waited for my tea to steep. I typed my exact questions into the group’s search bar: “homework meltdown” “ADHD waiting for evaluation” “12 year old work refusal” and up popped dozens of posts from people who had the exact same problem as me, posted months or years earlier. I clicked on one from a mom who shared the same exact story I had, posted three years earlier, and it had 274 comments. I read all of them. I’d never seen the tip about starting with 10 minutes of unstructured one-on-one time before opening the homework folder—no homework talk, just sitting and eating a snack and talking about his favorite Minecraft server. I’d always marched him straight to the desk after school, convinced if we waited we’d never get it done. I tried it the next day. That night, the meltdown lasted 12 minutes instead of an hour. I couldn’t believe it.
To get karma, I had to actually comment, not just lurk. That’s part of the rule I didn’t get at first: you can’t just upvote posts to get karma, you have to add something of your own. I commented on a post from a mom who was panicking because her 7-year-old still wouldn’t stay dry at night, I told her we cut the stress in half when we stopped reminding him and bought him his own disposable undies he could change privately if he had an accident. That comment got 18 upvotes. I agreed with a woman ranting about how useless our local school district’s IEP process is, that got 27 more. I shared my trick for getting J to take his multivitamin by hiding it in a chocolate chip, that got another 12. By day 8, I had 102 positive karma. I just had to wait two more days for the age rule to kick in.
I used to think that rule existed only to keep spammers and trolls out, and that’s part of it, I get that. But what no one talks about is how it forces you to slow down, when all you want is an answer right now. We’re so used to instant parenting advice: post your question on Instagram, get 10 replies in 10 minutes, call it a day. But when you have to wait, you end up finding hundreds of answers that already exist, instead of waiting for new ones. You don’t just get the top two comments that pop up in the first hour—you get months of people weighing in, people who tried the thing and it worked, people who tried the same thing and it didn’t, which is the honest, messy context you never get when you post a new question and only check it for a day.
I’ve told three other new parents who’ve joined the group about this, and they all said the same thing I did at first: that’s such a stupid rule. I tell them three small, concrete things to do instead of getting mad: First, spend those 10 days searching the group archives for your exact question. 9 times out of 10, someone has already asked it, and you get way more context than you’ll get from a new post. Second, comment on 2 or 3 posts a day that you actually have something to add to, even if it’s just “this happened to us too, I’m sorry you’re going through this.” It takes 5 minutes a day, and you’ll hit 100 karma way faster than you think, and you might even help someone else along the way. Third, don’t jump to another open group just because you can post immediately. The slower process usually gets you better, more honest advice anyway.
When my 10 days were up, I posted my question. I already had three new tricks I’d tried that had sort of worked, so I added those to the post, and got 40 really thoughtful replies. We’re still waiting for the evaluation, we still have a meltdown once a week or so, but it’s not every night anymore. I still go to that group a couple of times a week. I comment on new posts when I have something to add, I upvote people who share my same struggles. I still think the rule is a little clunky, and I get why it’s frustrating when you’re sitting at 11pm desperate for help. But it turned out that forcing me to wait, to stop and actually be part of the community before I took something from it, was the best thing that could have happened to me. I don’t know if that’s what the mods intended when they set the rule, but it worked for me. Some things don’t need an instant answer, anyway.
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