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Why Parents Hate Parenting

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Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#91

Post by jasonlotito »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68
jasonlotito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as hard as it seems. Patience is key, but it all comes naturally. Really. I was nervous, but honestly, it's rather easy. Yes, having the relatives close by helped. The best way to look at the situation is to remember that people have been having babies for thousands of years under much more difficult situations. Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. Edit: Oh, and, of course, Congratulations!…

>Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. I disagree. I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them. Watched Ch…

> I disagree.

You would, because you are taking things far to seriously.

Of course loving a child is just not enough. There are a monumental number of other things that need doing. There are mountains of books. A small post on HN isn't going to be the definitive "How to raise your child" post. It was merely a response to a person who is preparing to have his first child.

> Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her

No, they don't.

> When you say "it's rather easy" that sends up a few flags for me.

You are making this much more than it is.

Being a parent is easy. That doesn't mean it doesn't have it's challenges. That doesn't mean you can't mess up. That doesn't mean some days you can't help but pull your hair out.

Being easy doesn't mean can't be challenging.

It's easy, because it's worth it. It's easy, because even when it's difficult, it's rewarding. It's easy, because I love being a father to my son.

You ask me two questions of how I would handle things, as if their was a definitive right answer and everything else is 100% wrong. I know enough to know that their is no right or wrong answer. I can only say what I've done for my child when things arose, and I've learned from them as much as he has.

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#92

Post by jasonlotito »

kenjackson wrote: post #80
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. I disagree. I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them. Watched Ch…

Regarding your 15mo there's a good book called The Hungry Monkey. It's about a food critic who is trying to get his child to eat well. The upshot of the story, and from talking to various chefs in the story is that kids eat what kids eat. It seems that the palettes of people continuously evolves, so even if he devours ice cream and doritos now, he may end up being the food writer for the Times when he grows up. The k…

My wife's grandmother has a garden out back.

I swear, the kid eats better then I do. He get's fresh pasta sauce all the time. >_<

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#93

Post by Tichy »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68
jasonlotito wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not as hard as it seems. Patience is key, but it all comes naturally. Really. I was nervous, but honestly, it's rather easy. Yes, having the relatives close by helped. The best way to look at the situation is to remember that people have been having babies for thousands of years under much more difficult situations. Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. Edit: Oh, and, of course, Congratulations!…

>Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. I disagree. I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them. Watched Ch…

I don't have a kid yet (3 months to go), but so far my take would be definitely no force feeding. I can't imagine a kid would go so far as to not eat when hungry? Would they rather starve to death than touch a vegetable? If you start fretting over food, of course you give the kid leverage over you - now they can refuse to eat to punish you...

And with respect to chess, why would you encourage him to forget the game???

Letting him win - maybe there is a better way, like correcting his moves so that he really wins? I only played with a guy who did that once when I was a child, and I was really impressed. Or instead of playing games, work on chess problems together (nobody wins or loses)? Or play together against opponents on the internet?

I can imagine it is difficult to find the right way to handle it right, but then again, maybe to play or not to play chess is not the most important matter in the world either? If you screw that up, it seems likely your kid would still find other things to get interested in.

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#94

Post by jtheory »

axod wrote: post #86
pbhjpbhj wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally. I disagree. I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them. Watched Ch…

>> "Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her and so give her everything she asks for." That's not love. That's the point Roald Dahl is making (IMHO). The only family in the story that really knows and understands what love is, is Charlies' family. He is the richest boy in the world, because he has a family that truly loves him. Even though they are financially poor. Love isn't about giving people wha…

This is trivially true: "Love isn't about giving people what they ask for, it's about giving them what is best for them in the long run."

...but the more I learn, the more I find that my intuition has been often wrong on "what's best for them in the long run". Usually just in subtle ways, but sometimes in larger ones.

Being a relaxed parent is good advice, though that was more how I was a good uncle (but I'm learning to make adjustments to become a good parent).

It's super-important to understand that kids are not little adults, even once they start talking and can seem that way. So I don't agree with your game advice (I don't think the lesson you're teaching will be the one the child learns), but you're probably quite right that they'll grow out of it anyway. :)

And I'll stop there, because my opinions are based on tons of reading & talking with parents, but only about a year of being a parent myself so far....

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#95

Post by Tichy »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #71
dugmartin wrote: post #43

I think the parents in this article need to grow up. If you have so little emotional maturity that your kid's tantrum makes you upset you have a problem. They are the children, you are the adult. Act like one. I have two kids, 3 and 6. My 3 year old is at a stage where she throws epic tantrums, mostly when she is tired but this heat wave we are in on the east coast doesn't help. When she is in full flail I look at he…

>When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I have a friend who has 2 girls, he did this sort of playful taunting with them and it had similar effects to yours. This sort of thing has not worked at all with my eldest (and we're just entering the tantrum zone with the youngest, hold tight!) who would simply do worse, smashing, hitting, kicking, biting in respons…

I guess that is when you remember stuff like "never negotiate with terrorists"?

Presumably it is kind of the job of kids to test their parents' limits...

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#96

Post by axod »

jtheory wrote: post #94
axod wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> "Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her and so give her everything she asks for." That's not love. That's the point Roald Dahl is making (IMHO). The only family in the story that really knows and understands what love is, is Charlies' family. He is the richest boy in the world, because he has a family that truly loves him. Even though they are financially poor. Love isn't about giving people wha…

This is trivially true: "Love isn't about giving people what they ask for, it's about giving them what is best for them in the long run." ...but the more I learn, the more I find that my intuition has been often wrong on "what's best for them in the long run". Usually just in subtle ways, but sometimes in larger ones. Being a relaxed parent is good advice, though that was more how I was a good uncle (but I'm learning…

Yeah I agree with those points.

I must admit I didn't read anything really to do with parenting before becoming a parent. It seems like there are so many different variables, every child is totally different, that reading books might even spoil things, and you might start looking to books for solutions rather than your intuition. (This might just be my personality - I don't like reading programming books either that teach specific programming style etc). But then I haven't read books on relationships either, but think I do ok there (My wife hasn't divorced me yet ;) ).

I can only say what I think worked with my Son when he did similar things playing games. But then I can't be sure if he 'learnt the lesson', or if he just grew out of it naturally. Seems like trying to play at around their level is best, although that's sometimes pretty hard :) If I had identical twins at least I'd be able to do proper A/B testing! ;)

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#97

Post by Tichy »

bitwize wrote: post #15

A time out in his crib? No wonder she hates parenting. If I threw shit at my parents it would have gotten me the mother of all whoopings.

In some countries it is actually illegal to beat your child (or other children).

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#98

Post by Tichy »

dasil003 wrote: post #29
bobbin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think using pain to control a child's behaviour is good parenting. I'm sorry you where abused.

I would never spank my own children, but that's a parenting choice. This societal moralizing about every single aspect of how one should raise their children is a big part of the problem described in the article. For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse. For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness. Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated. Is everyone who was…

Think about spanking like this: would you beat up your colleague at work because he won't implement your specifications properly? If no, why not? If yes, would he be more likely to implement your specifications properly after you have beat him up?

Would a kid be more likely to understand your arguments than your colleague? If no, why would he be more likely to respond to spanking?

Ultimately, how can it really be justified to spank a kid???

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#99

Post by jtheory »

yason wrote: post #14

Parenting is about showing the kid his boundaries. And by showing the boundaries I don't mean canonically forbidding all nice things and always being "the bad guy". Limits and boundaries have a bad rap in some literature. The concept of boundaries is universal: boundaries don't enforce anyone to choose one option over another: they just enforce one to choose. Showing the kid his boundaries is not an easy undertaking…

Some of this I agree with, but be careful assuming that a child's reason can function like an adult's. Giving them choices sometimes helps them take control of their lives, but sometimes (if they're already cognitively overwhelmed) being forced to choose is an unwanted stress.

Absolutely, consistency is important, and putting some thought into what lesson the child is learning from your interaction (often not what you're trying to teach them).

And the almost-always overlooked key to boundaries/rules is that the boundaries that are convenient to you are cruelly restrictive to your child, whose burning purpose in life is to do what you're doing -- reading your book, using your phone, typing on your laptop, exploring your food, putting on your makeup, etc..

This is learning; unfortunately it's inconvenient when they do physics experiments with the juice glasses, etc..

I've found it very eye-opening how much easier my toddler is once I realized that she could have access to almost everything as long as the interactions were carefully controlled and she learned rules along the way (the same rules we follow, really). Now she's far less excited by the laptop, phone, coffee mug, dinner plate, etc. because she's had a chance to explore them instead of being tormented by them put constantly just out of her reach. She has also learned not to tear book pages (we started with things headed for recycling anyway, and if she tore a page we were sad & took it away for "repair"), so she can flip through "grown-up" books safely -- another thing off the "frantically interested" list. She's most of the way to learning that she's allowed to see almost anything as long as she is careful not to drop it or mangle it.

No punishments involved -- why punish someone for something they didn't know was wrong? -- it's all just learning, and she knows that things get put away when she doesn't interact with them the "right" way, so she has lots of motivation to learn the right way.

Re: Why Parents Hate Parenting

#100

Post by brc »

Well, as a parent who has to split time between child rearing (2.5 and .5 years old) and writing software, I can tell you that most of this article is true.

The problems are many: for me the two main problems was about 17 years of independent life and good times funded by good wages. Travelling, sports, parties, all-night coding sessions. All of these have been put into the too-hard basket.

The second main problem is the idealised view of parenting fed to us through movies, TV shows and advertising. You're meant to enjoy the bonding times, but running the bath for the 800th time to bathe a wriggling toddler is tedium no matter which way you slice it, and cleaning up poo for the thousandth time is horrid work you wouldn't wish on anyone.

The keys to success I think are a rock-solid partnership going into the child raising, family support available, and lack of other stresses like housing or income or illness. When your tired you just can't handle things in the same way, and with young children in the house, you're going to be tired as you battle to maintain your adult habits of staying up late while children take up your waking hours.

Once you've done it, there's no going back, so you have to work on finding a new level of happiness and honestly say goodbye to your old lifestyle for a while. Friends will slip away, interests will be put on hold, careers might slide for a few years, your house will be messy and ruined. That's the choice you've made, might as well find new ways of getting joy.

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