The Relentlessness of Modern Parenting

Looking back on my own childhood, I'm skeptical how much anything alleged to "enrich" the children actually made a difference. I recall most of all piano lessons. When I was a kid, every kid had to learn piano. Today, no adult I know ever plays piano; they forgot how because they don't like it and no one wants to hear it because it's boring. I know one serious professional musician. He taught himself guitar for our high school punk band and got super interested in guitar technique.

Now, you could say they learned "discipline" from the piano lessons. But how do we know? I don't see any relationship between who took the most piano and who became a doctor, etc. My view of piano lessons, and other enrichement, is that they are sort of homeopathy for parents' anxiety about their kids' future. Even when there is nothing to do for someone's medical condition, lots of people will turn to quack treatments out of anxiety, and these quack treatments involve a host of immeasurable concepts like "toxins" proposed to imitate the kind of causation we know of for better-known treatments. Same with piano lessons: your parents are too anxious about you to sit on their hands, so they make you practice piano and tell themselves, and each other, that you're learning "focus," some magic property that will stay in your brain one day even when they're not around. I don't buy it. Nobody made their kids take piano because they read a bunch of studies proving it makes your kid choose to go to med school or whatever; they clung to it automatically because they wanted to believe in it.

One was a pretty typical (for the time) drive by; someone in my after school youth group wore enough of the wrong color of clothing to catch the eye of the 'other' gang. We just had Saturday game night, and so were walking to Taco Bell for our unofficial after games social. As we stood at a corner waiting for a crosswalk to turn green, two or three gangbangers in a passing car opened fire with fully automatic machine pistols. I don't talk about the results.

Another time I was hanging out near a chain link fence chatting with a couple of friends when some other guys came by on the other side, talking shit. We talked some shit back, and they threatened to come back with a shotgun. We blew them off, ignored them and continued with our chat. Well, one of them did indeed come back with a shotgun. Fortunately the weapon was loaded with bird shot, so we were only slightly injured.

An 'amusing' story:

My grandpa, who raised me, along with my grandma, listened almost nightly to the police frequencies. We heard a helicopter circling above one night (a not uncommon thing), and the cops were talking about chasing an armed suspect on foot. The 'copter was circling one street over. It's easy to tell because their floodlight constantly points to whatever the action point is below.

Suddenly, from outside, we heard a fully automatic rifle fire a long burst. Seconds later, the 'copter reported that they were taking fire, and so were forced to orbit at a higher altitude.

Crime in Southern California in the 1980s was no fucking joke.

When my grandpa passed in 2003 (grandma in 2000), my dad sold that 850 square foot house for something $500k.

> MacGyver episodes

See my other post for a substantive reply.

I watched MacGyver quite a bit as a teenager, it was fun.

But...how does MacGyver the TV show relate to violence in southern California? Thanks. (:

The policy we are taking is to have specific expectations, but vast freedom outside of those expectations. We specifically are interested in allowing our child (~2) to have highly unstructured play, within specific limits.

- Child does go to specific play groups, 1-2x/wk. - Child does have to sit still and have a book read to them, several times per day. - Child does have to treat the cat right. - Child does go out to eat with us- and has to behave correctly in the restaurant.

On the other hand, child is supplied with several kinds of blocks, toy buses & trains, dolls, stuffed animals, and other bits for an imaginative play; maybe 70% of child's waking life is undirected play; 10-20% of that is parent by the side.

Child is naturally athletic & enjoys music and we plan to take them to games & orchestra - probably enroll in kid gym?.

The notion we're aiming towards is autonomy & judgement, with adequate exposure to make good decisions. Child will be administratively exposed to many things; but this mass scheduling of life and running hither and yon constantly is for the birds. Child needs to be able to put their feet up and dream languorously, thinking thoughts that aren't poured into them.

I think over prepping is bad. It can be suffocating. I think kids needs a few key points at pivotal times, between these they'll probably hover around fine in the herd.