Everything in NPR science correspondent Michaeleen Doucleff's life had been relatively easy until she had a two-year-old daughter.
"She's a wonderful kid. She's super smart and ambitious and motivated, but at two she was just a huge handful."
On a work trip to a remote Mexican village, Doucleff wasn't expecting to "fix her parenting problems" but while there her was mind blown by the calm parents and their "incredibly kind, respectful kids".
Some time later, Doucleff set off - toddler in tow - to live amid three ancient cultures and experience their parenting practices first-hand.
Her book, Hunt, Gather, Parent, explores what ancient traditions can teach us about helping kids thrive.
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Parents in other cultures told Doucleff that it was crazy for her to think a toddler could be consciously pushing her buttons, testing her boundaries and trying to manipulate her.
"Instead, they would tell me that [my daughter] Rosie is just this irrational creature who ... doesn't have understanding yet and she doesn't know how to respond or control the feelings that she has. She doesn't know what to do with them.
"I started to view that [her behaviour] is not personal. This is just her. This is what kids do. It's your job as a parent to respond to her in a way that she can then learn is the proper way to behave.
"Once I understood this - it took a couple of months - I was able to have ... much more composure with her because if you think a person is manipulating you and pressing your buttons, it's just gonna make you defensive and angry.
"I think a lot of the Zen-like, calm composure that I saw [in those other cultures] is because mums aren't taking it personally. When their children misbehave, there isn't this personal thing of 'Oh, now I'm a failure.'
"It's more like, 'This is how kids are and if you yell and argue with them, you're just stooping to their level.' But I'll also say that this calmness probably comes from the fact that [the parents] have all that support and they know that."
Humans evolved to have three, four or five parents, she says, not just two.
"[Babies] are so needy - they're sick, they need so much help, so much food, so much energy - that in Western society the mum and the dad are doing a job that five or six people are built to do and have done for 100,000 years."
In different parts of the world, Doucleff says it's very common to see parents helping each other raise children as a collective job.
In the Arctic, where people support each other in a way that's "really beautiful and wonderful", a woman on the street offered to look after Doucleff's toddler so she could get a break.
"She just saw me there by myself doing this and she was like, 'This is crazy that you're doing this'.
"One of the mums in the Arctic even said to me, 'Rosie [is] tired of you and she's acting out because she needs a break from you. She needs more people in her life."
Integrating children into adult society from a very young age is another important aspect of raising a child who likes to be with you, Doucleff says.
This teaches children to cooperate and work with you, unlike "child-centred activities" that can teach kids that it's your job is to entertain them.
Play dates can be problematic if they lead a child to see their role in the family as a "kind of special" person who gets to do special activities, she says.
"We create all these things in our society for children that aren't real and they don't prepare the child for growing up and being in the adult world.
"They also don't teach the child the skills they need to help their family and work together with their family.
"This is unheard of in many parts of the world, where the parent's job is not to entertain the child, it's to get the work done and to live and to welcome the child into that life and teach the child how to do those things."
In many non-Western cultures, children aren't told what time to go to bed, Doucleff says, and learn at a very young age to put themselves to bed when they're tired.
"It's a skill that kids learn what tiredness means and then ... when you feel that way, you go to bed.
"Children in Western society don't develop the skill because they're being told when to go to bed starting at a very young age, and there's a lot of tension and stress around that process."
In the world's hunter-gatherer communities, people often live in groups of about 20 to 50 and work together to raise children, get enough food and live.
"The key thing is that they're coming together to help each other. This is valued and intentionally done and thought of as a good way of living."
Doucleff raises her kids with the help of a couple of other families who have shared values.
"They're more of a family than I've ever had with my blood relatives and they take away that stress.
"You don't need a huge group. You just need one or two families that can share your desire to work together. And it's really beautiful. I love it. It has made our lives so much better in so many ways."
When it comes to raising kids, the 'tool' of science isn't proving as effective as ancient knowledge, Doucleff says.
"In all cultures throughout history, how to raise a child and interact with the child was passed down from generation to generation and you have this wisdom, this deep, deep ancient wisdom that you're given to by your parents, by your neighbours, by your grandparents.
"About maybe 200 or 300 years ago, we started losing that wisdom … we've kind of gone on this weird path."