I spent my career in tech, but wasn’t prepared for its effect on my kids

When you eat with someone multiple times a day, every single day, for decades, sometimes eating is just a utilitarian task you are performing to fuel your body and to not be hungry. Why does it always have to be social? When I was a kid in the 80s, we often would just get plates of food and go back to whereever we had been doing whatever we had been doing.

I am someone who grew up to hate notifications: my phone is on silent; and when I am present with you having an actual meal, you have my 100% attention in a way no one else I know does anymore. I say this to make it clear that I didn't grow up to dislike social dinners: if anything, I grew up to love them as they were never forced on me.

I'm a retired geek but I do tractor work, I just pulled a 14 hour day and I'm having some wine so salt heavily.

In my opinion, the best thing you can do with kids is create boredom. If they have access to a shop, or some lumber, they will start to build stuff. If kids are bored and they turn that into building, that's the first step towards getting into a good undergrad school. Building stuff is good.

The hard part, as parents, is creating that boredom. It's so easy to give them the video game babysitter. I haven't done well at that. I wish I had some magic statement that made that part easy but that part is super super hard.

The other thing I'd say about kids, and I hate this, really hate this, is private school. It's better. My kids went and were on track to go to Los Gatos High School which is a pretty decent school. For various reasons we found kirby.org and both of my kids go there and it's a shit ton better. I hate private schools, I think kids should experience the full range of people, not just the rich kids that get into private schools, but wow, the private school was so much better. So much better. Hugely better. My younger son who hates that school, it's a nerd school and he's a jock, came to me and said "yeah, I want to go there, it's better than Los Gatos". My older kid is applying to schools and he has a shot at the ivys, that's all the private school.

I'm ashamed to admit that I like private schools, but wow, have they been good for my kids.

"Meaningless and endless" is a curious objection. Are you sure that this is what you find objectionable about it? Most of what we adults entertain ourselves with is pretty meaningless too.

there are things beneath the surface that must be set. the mind takes shape at certain levels during certain ages. if they take an unfortunate shape, the child will carry that burden with them forever. if you abuse a child, you can make this happen. it is universally accepted that childhood abuse can cause life long behavioral problems. what is not universally observed, however, is that child abuse has a kind of opposite. you can mold a young mind into being poorly adjusted and you can mold a young mind into being extraordinarily well adjusted.

not everything in life is conscious. in many situations that are new or ambiguous, a child will make a decision based on his or her disposition, his or her feeling. a well adjusted child has feelings about things that will help them. of course, those feelings and instincts dont guide all decisions, im not saying that.

and here is where our opinions intersect: the reason to control and form a child in their early development is because it provides a good foundation for the next step, which is self motivated learning. no child can learn anything unless they learn it themselves or if it is taught to them in an extreme way. by extreme, i mean that you take your kid aside and look him in the eye and you put on a face more serious and deadly than you have ever before and you say to him in a low voice "crossing the street without looking is not acceptable." those lessons should be few. what you want is to spark a chain reaction of learning by first teaching the child how to learn and then allowing them to build their knowledge on their own.

learning to learn comes naturally to some and not to others. being forced to learn complicated things forces one to learn how to learn. usually people get this in their twenties when they set a hard goal, like passing a chemistry or physics class in college. i believe that this can be done deliberately by the parent at a much earlier age.

so, my overall point is that a child must be raised deliberately.

Appropriate webcomic: https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015/05/11/a-recognized-p...

These are activities you enjoy. They might be novel to your step kids, but they aren't activities which they actually enjoy.