The unusual ways Western parents raise children • Hacker News Board

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#541

Post by recursive » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 12:44 AM UTC

NovaJehovah wrote: post #455

heleninboodler wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You have an obligation to do the best that you can. Yeah, it's hard. Yeah, it's stressful. Like it or not, that's what you signed up for. So step up. I'm not downvoting you but I strongly disagree. You have an obligation to do an adequate job of this. I think it's also important not to become a slave to the idea that you must always do more because it's "supposed to be hard." Doing a great job of raising kids doesn…

Who said it has to be a grueling slog? I said do your best, not wear a crown of thorns. I don't think it necessarily has to be hard, but people often make it harder than it needs to be because they're unwilling to make personal sacrifices. I just don't think we should give people participation trophies. If you're not doing a good job and you know it, you should face reality and fix it, not be told "there's no right o…

I inferred that you thought that gdubs was not doing their best. You used the phrase "strongly disagree". I'm not sure which part you strongly disagree with. Nor can I tell why you think gdubs is not doing their best.

For what it's worth, I definitely agree with gdubs point of view. I'm less clear on what you're saying though. When you say "unwilling to make personal sacrifices", does that mean unwilling to ever make any sacrifice? Or does it mean unwilling to make some under certain circumstances?

In my experience, my kids' sleep seemed to actually improve when engaging in the "extreme" practice of sleep training. That seems consistent with gdubs. How then, am I not "doing my best"?

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#542

Post by exporectomy » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 12:46 AM UTC

kinghtown wrote: post #396

eurusdac wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, my advice to any new parent would be to listen carefully to advice about how not to drown your child while bathing them, and how to make sure they're not suffocated by their bedding. Both real issues where some simple practices avoid the small risk of an absolutely catastrophic outcome. Then take all other advice with a pinch of salt. Just follow your best instincts and do what seems right. Your child will b…

Father here. I agree. So much of the parenting advice I see dips into micromanaging and min/maxing to an almost paranoid degree. Just learn about what could kill them in the first year and avoid that. Really, six months and under is the true window for SIDS with freak occurrences. Definitely be on the lookout for any poisonous cleaning products While you’re at it and put them high off the ground. The pro parents who…

Trusting your instincts is how intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect happen. If you were raised well, then yes, otherwise you have to work consciously to reject your harmful instincts.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#543

Post by paulryanrogers » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 12:55 AM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #368

bluGill wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is truth to both. The problem with charting your own course as a kid is you often don't really know what is worth doing. "Underwater basket weaving" might be interesting, but it won't prepare you for any future. There are a lot of good choices though, you don't have to be a doctor just because your dad wants you to. And your dad might still be under the illusion that lawyer is a great paying job, when for the m…

I think there's a difference between a parent saying, "You should consider the economic ROI of what you choose to study, the risk of success/failure, and what life it could lead to" vs. "be a lawyer". If your kid really wants to act then they can go to LA and learn what the best way to do that is. I think parents bias to being risk-adverse in advice for their kids because they only experience the downside risk and li…

Downside risk being having to support adult children who can't support themselves?

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#544

Post by zamfi » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #508

thebruce87m wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never leave them for even a second in the bath (drowning) and never leave them alone with food (choking).

This is like saying "don't speed if you don't want a speeding ticket". Yes, you can use absolute qualifiers like "never" and "always" to stupid proof general advice to a greater extent than you can with phrases like "common sense" and "where reasonable" but that doesn't automatically make the advice any more useful.. I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing somethi…

It's not like that. Everyone knows the risk of a speeding ticket comes with speeding.

Not everyone knows that it takes 20 seconds for a baby to drown in a bathtub.

> I'm perfectly fine with the size of the drowning risk that comes with spending ~1min removing something from the oven when the timer goes off

Completely making up numbers here, say you do this for every 20-minute bath, your child bathes 1x/day, and they fall over in such a way that they might drown were you not there once every 10000 baths. Doing the math... 5% chance of being absent at the critical moment * 1/10000 baths * 365 baths/year = 0.18% chance of death in first year of life.

You may be willing to take that risk, but given the 4 million infants born each year in the US, that would be 7,300 infant deaths from drowning in the bathtub annually -- so as a societal rule, saving 7,300 infants a year seems worth the use of the word "never".

The actual number of deaths attributed to bathtub drowning each year is much lower; I'm glad the vast majority of parents appear to take "never" to heart.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#545

Post by brewdad » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 12:59 AM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #193

lqet wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that there is an obesity problem (although I am not an American), but I am not so sure that demonizing french fries, Chicken McNuggets and hot chocolate from age 4 will have the desired effect. E, to answer the question below: because my personal experience from being a child and caring for a child is that anything that is demonized by the parents becomes extremely attractive.

Why do you think that?

Anecdote: My son had a close friend growing up whose parents didn't allow candy in the house. Every time a friend's birthday party came around, he would eat himself sick on sweets.

Eventually he learned some restraint but there was a solid 5-6 years there where my son's friend could not be around sweets without ruining his day. Better education combined with a bit of modeling moderation by his parents, might have saved him a lot of miserable evenings.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#546

Post by plutonorm » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 1:02 AM UTC

zamfi wrote: post #537

NovaJehovah wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby that no one will respond to its distress. I'm glad you feel it worked out well for you. I honestly hope it doesn't cause problems, because it's very widespread. Based on our reading of the available evidence, we weren't willing to take the risk. Our lives certainl…

> In my experience, "sleep training" is just a more palatable euphemism for "cry it out". My view is that however you slice it, you are conditioning the baby that no one will respond to its distress. You claim to be doing a lot of "research" in other posts but also drawing on your "experience" -- "sleep training" is not "cry it out", and in fact modern sleep training is explicitly about telling your child that you AR…

You have kids. You step up. Yes it's hard, but it's your absolute unshakeable duty to do your best by them. Putting them down to sleep away from you and then expecting them to suck it up and deal with it when they get distressed is one of the most idiotic things that I hear otherwise intelligent people say. To a child, separation from their parents is the most stressful experience possible because in the wild separation means death. What is the most dangerous time of day? The night time. So you compounding the most stressful thing you can do to your child by doing it at the most dangerous time. The idiocy of people beggars belief.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#547

Post by kinghtown » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 1:04 AM UTC

exporectomy wrote: post #542

kinghtown wrote: post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Father here. I agree. So much of the parenting advice I see dips into micromanaging and min/maxing to an almost paranoid degree. Just learn about what could kill them in the first year and avoid that. Really, six months and under is the true window for SIDS with freak occurrences. Definitely be on the lookout for any poisonous cleaning products While you’re at it and put them high off the ground. The pro parents who…

Trusting your instincts is how intergenerational cycles of abuse and neglect happen. If you were raised well, then yes, otherwise you have to work consciously to reject your harmful instincts.

Well, sure but I’m advocating to trust your instincts in terms of their general health and well-being. Abuse or gross neglect are entirely different matters. Abusive parents are probably not going to be online doing heavy research on what is the optimum thing to do as a parent. They probably just feel tired and bitter about their children, or worse.

A lot of modern, new wave parenting to me feels an awful lot like meddling in natural child development. Like too much of a good thing, helicopter parenting.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#548

Post by LegitShady » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 1:08 AM UTC

genrez wrote: post #467

LegitShady wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, this article is written poorly, the headline is pure clickbait, and its worthy of any criticism it garners. It's great to steelman someone else's arguments in a discussion. It's terrible to let BBC print garbage with clickbait headlines without criticism, because it will keep happening, and its bad for society. It doesn't make the point your making, and the way it goes about making its point is not something I…

I agree that the article is poorly written, and doesn't more than tangentially make the point I was making. I think I can understand why you would want criticism a poorly written article in the supposedly high quality BBC. My curiosity is peeked about the inclusive society point. Nothing in the article ran afoul of my speech norms. I don't think my speech norms are particularly well developed though. What part of the…

If we're accepting of other cultures, you shouldn't call one weird because it doesn't' conform with other cultures. Isn't the point to celebrate differences? The whole premise of the article is nonsense.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#549

Post by forgotmypw17 » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 1:11 AM UTC

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #411

gumby wrote: post #403

As a parent myself I have only one piece of child rearing advice. First: Read a bunch of books (which will contradict each other) Then: a) do what you think is right and b) when someone tells you to do X (especially, but not only your mother or mother in law), if you disagree just say "Funny you should say that because I just read the exact opposite" and hand them a random baby rearing book. This sounds like a joke b…

But the books are also well-meaning busybodies. Worse: The books that most resonate with you may well be the ones you need to ignore. Take strict vs permissive parenting, for example. Say you're by nature a more permissive parenting. The books that say you should be permissive will resonate more with you than the books that say that you should be strict. But it's the ones that say to be strict that you need to hear,…

I'm confused... Why would I want to ignore something which resonates with me? Isn't that the whole point of "resonance" and "feelings", to use them to guide our reason?

I would read the books on permissive parenting not to convince myself that it's right, but to find techniques and strategies which work.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#550

Post by rightbyte » Thu, Feb 25, 2021, 1:13 AM UTC

mordechai9000 wrote: post #458

a2tech wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much believe SIDS is a real thing. I also think that many cases of SIDS are babies being smothered by soft cloth that bunches up and constricts their breathing and by accidentally smothered by their parents while they're deeply asleep. When kids are small I think co-sleeping is a great thing (where you have a small basinet or something similar next to your bed where you can reach out and touch your baby but th…

I knew someone - a co-workers sibling - who lost a baby that got stuck between couch cushions while sleeping. And they told everyone it was SIDS. I don't know if the cause of death was actually recorded as SIDS, though.

If you know the cause it is not SIDS, by definition, right?