Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

scientificamerican.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 238 posts

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#211

Post by allcentury »

ben7799 wrote: post #55
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like more of a factor of where you live and whatnot than anything; I was fortunate enough to grow up in a normal sized town (~6000 inhabitants) and had friends living within walking / cycling distance (not to mention streets you could actually walk on). Not nearly as sprawled out as some cities / suburbs are.

You're an adult... lots of us grew up in towns like that but those same towns/neighborhoods are not like that anymore in the US.

Those towns exist all over, but I agree suburbia for our generation is not as attractive for other reasons.

Personally, I want to raise our son in a suburb and my wife doesn't. I do because my childhood was great in suburbia but there are major family and career trade-offs to do so.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#212

Post by guy98238710 »

PeterisP wrote: post #208
guy98238710 wrote: post #195

Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children an object rather than the subject once again. Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nua…

As the first line says, it's about giving children more sense of control over their lives. Not more control, but more sense of control - it's not about reality but about their perception of it.

That's one of the many nuances here. You have to think about other things. When is illusion of control going to be harmful? When is the illusion going to crack? When is the illusion going to stick and become reality? When is increased control equivalent to removal of boundaries? When does it turn into abdication of parental responsibility? When does it reach levels of neglect? When is withdrawal from child's life going to make the child feel deserted?

There is no way to resolve these ambiguities upfront. You have to listen and observe. That's why parenting resembles conversation that is unique for every parent-child relationship and that evolves over time.

Following advice in this book or any of the many similar books is going to result in crude, clumsy parenting. Particularly so when authors argue for a side in order to stand out or to keep the book focused. That's why these books feel so artificial and kind of extremist.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#213

Post by snowwrestler »

guy98238710 wrote: post #195

Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children an object rather than the subject once again. Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nua…

It is literally the job of parents to arrange their childrens' lives. For example parents have to provide food, shelter, clothing, health care, education, entertainment, and emotional support to children. They also have to create a schedule to fit all that into each day, plus leave sufficient time for sleeping (kids need a lot of sleep).

The question is, how best to do all that?

You're right that parenting is difficult and nuanced. You're wrong to use that as an excuse to tune out experts who study child development for a living.

The difficulty and complexity of being a good parent is a reason to seek information and input, not reject it.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#214

Post by mildweed »

PeterisP wrote: post #208
guy98238710 wrote: post #195

Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children an object rather than the subject once again. Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nua…

As the first line says, it's about giving children more sense of control over their lives. Not more control, but more sense of control - it's not about reality but about their perception of it.

see _Parenting with Love and Logic_ by Jim Fay.

Relevant bit here: give kids choices, yes, but you (the parent) limit the selection set to things you can live with them choosing.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#215

Post by snowwrestler »

PeterisP wrote: post #208
guy98238710 wrote: post #195

Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children an object rather than the subject once again. Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nua…

As the first line says, it's about giving children more sense of control over their lives. Not more control, but more sense of control - it's not about reality but about their perception of it.

Sense of control and control are not mutually exclusive and can bias either way. In fact a major issue in U.S. society today is that adults who actually do have a lot of control over their own lives, don't have a sense of control, and it leads to depression and anxiety.

The article is about parents creating space for kids to actually have more control, which will over time improve their sense of control.

It's not about fooling or manipulating kids. That's a pretty crazy interpretation that makes me wonder if you read it the whole way through.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#216

Post by snowwrestler »

tboyd47 wrote: post #9
stinkytaco wrote: post #4

There's a certain irony in this. By putting restrictions on kids (no screens, digital downtime, etc), we expect them to become self-driven. This is a great idea in theory, but it also seems pretty likely that a kid will go to their friends house to watch Youtube videos, when I would just as soon have them (and their friends, if necessary) at my house doing that where at least I have some sense of what they are watchi…

For some reason, whenever I hear parenting advice (especially related to technology usage) and see that it's from someone my parents' age, I automatically stop listening. I feel like they are so far removed from the challenges of parenting in this decade that they have nothing to offer us. Not that our challenges are harder than theirs, but just that they're such a different set of challenges that we can't relate to…

I'd suggest there is a difference between parenting advice, and information about how children develop physically and mentally.

Sure, any jerk on the street can offer advice on parenting.

But humans are physical, deterministic meat machines. They work in a certain way, and that way does not change over a decade or two. The technology surrounding us does, but not the human. And there are people who study how humans work. It's worth listening to them on that subject.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#217

Post by triangleman »

amerkhalid wrote: post #163
Alex3917 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason it's recommended that kids under age two have zero screen time has nothing to do with the content though, it has purely to do with whether the rapidly changing imagery is increasing the risk for ADHD and damaging their executive function or whatever.

If this is true, next generation will be really interesting. Every parent I have to talked to, says that Youtube and smartphones are the best thing for kids. Whatever we do, their kids are on the phones; restaurants, homes, car rides. And these are really young kids, some as young as 1 year old. If their phone dies or there is network issue, these kids start to cry if it takes too long to fix the issue. I assumed thi…

So, my 2-year-old daughter is naturally high energy and short attention span, like most 2 year olds I assume.

Now, I have never ever placed a phone in front of her during dinner. Occasionally I have had to employ "here comes the airplane" which is what my parents did, following their parents' "here comes the choo choo train", which I assume followed something like "here comes the horse and buggy" or the like.

I also have a friend with a daughter one year older. He tells me that he puts the phone in front of his kid during every dinner time because "it's the only way she will eat", and furthermore he has to pause the show so that she will chew, and then unpause the show as a reward for chewing and who knows what else.

I can tell you, my kid can eat her own food with no assistance and no complaints about half the time, and I think that's pretty good for age two.

In short, I think our parents had a decent idea of how to raise kids and we throw that out in exchange for new technology at our peril.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#218

Post by dang »

whataretensors wrote: post #15

Look at reward signals. Elementary through high school is a little sliver of what a collapsed marxist society looks like - no positive rewards signals just negative arbitrary ones. I was programming at 8 but apparently to be "well rounded" I had to do all this other stuff that non-coders deemed important. Meanwhile there was no "safe base" for me or anyone else who grew up poor. But at least now I can also now see sc…

Just the word Marxist is flamebait enough to make the downstream discussion about that. Could you please be more careful about not dropping lit matches in HN comments? We're all responsible for not setting this place on fire.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#219

Post by spyckie2 »

In my experience, the topic of parenting always elicits the worst case of "everyone in the room is immediately an expert". People are incredibly opinionated and judgmental about the subject, and often take a dismissive attitude rather than a learning attitude about it.

Part of the reason is as a population, we talk about parenting advice in a universal, context-independent way but the sheer amount of distinct situations in parenting makes it easy to poke holes in universal advice.

Another reason is that we each have our own experience of being parented (often not positive), and may subconsciously judge advice based on its potential to lead to a child experiencing the same bad experiences we had, rather than the overall objective merits of said parenting direction.

A third reason is that we underestimate the amount of negotiating, manipulating, and psychological back and forth that managing kids adds to parenting decisions. Even if the parenting direction is good, executing it properly is an entirely different matter.

Having said that - I agree with most of this article. Control or the illusion of it is a very strong ingredient for mental stability and confidence, especially in undesirable environments. Lack of control in a undesirable situation leads to a feeling of helplessness, which can have cascading effects on mental health.

That said, like most parenting advice, I don't think this qualifies as universal advice. It fits a large body of contexts, but there are several parenting situations I can imagine this having largely little to no effect in.

Re: The Case for the “Self-Driven Child”

#220

Post by closeparen »

0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #111
munificent wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it makes sense to lump all of uses of technology into a single conceptual bucket any more than it's useful to say, "Kids will use things that are made of plastic when they grow up so we shouldn't restrict access to plastic things." Watching unboxing videos on YouTube, posting selfies on Instagram (and getting judged by them), programming a videogame, compulsively clicking notifications and skimming soci…

They pulled it off effectively with the personal computer of the early 90s. Edit: Unwittingly.

In the early 90s, your friends hadn't necessarily all moved their social lives to the computer.
Post reply on HN