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

The unusual ways Western parents raise children

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

551–560 of 684 posts

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#551

Post by megameter »

rsync wrote: post #249
alistairSH wrote: post #29

Of all the "weird" things we do as parents in euro/anglo nations, sleeping arrangements seems nowhere near the top. IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid. Edit - and this isn't really a western thing, "Tiger Mom" and similar probably pre-dates this…

"IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid." It's a weird and tricky balance that one has to strike, in the US, in 2021 ... On the one hand, I feel strongly that kids should have free time and energy to explore and experiment and I am reinforced daily i…

I would suggest approaching this in two structured phases - "breadth" and "depth".

In the breadth phase, you instruct the kid to study the topic of interest at a distance, collect information, attend events casually and give some reports explaining what they like. Make the thing of "pursuing an interest" just a little bit academic and intentional on their part. With a lot of topics they'll have their fill and loosen their grip pretty quickly, and when that happens, allow them to go on to the next thing.

If they can't shut up about it, that's when you go towards the depth phase and push them towards a more intensive effort, to take the class, read the book, join the club. Set modest goals that still take a committment, and indicate that it's very likely that some kids will be ahead or pick up the material faster. They should still report how things go and get your feedback so that you can spot issues, or teach them how to seek out good feedback where you lack competence. But there's a definite thing here of getting them to see the struggle itself as something rewarding, not the outcome like "being the best" or "making a career". Because if they get a feel for that, they will reach adulthood with some sense of balance and intention to what they pursue and why and a sense of their strengths and weaknesses.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#552

Post by skeeter2020 »

gdubs wrote: post #171

One of the hardest thing about being a parent today is the constant shame and confusion about the “right” way to do it. We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t. There’s lots of wisdom in that way of life, and sure we could learn from it — but there’s enough anxiety as it is, parents don’t need more of it. We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.…

My wife has joked about writing (yet another) book on parenting but "chill, just go with it and do whatever works" isn't much material for an entire book.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#553

Post by throwaway0a5e »

gdubs wrote: post #171

One of the hardest thing about being a parent today is the constant shame and confusion about the “right” way to do it. We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t. There’s lots of wisdom in that way of life, and sure we could learn from it — but there’s enough anxiety as it is, parents don’t need more of it. We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.…

The constant stream of "you should be doing X" is only shameful or confusing if you think the people imparting it on you have any credibility or their opinions have any validity.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#554

Post by throwaway0a5e »

zamfi wrote: post #544
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You forgot to multiply by the likelihood that the timer (or some other "too small to take the baby out" distraction) goes off mid bath.

When you say "the vast majority of parents appear to take 'never' to heart" I can't help but suspect that missing factor is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#555

Post by zamfi »

plutonorm wrote: post #546
zamfi wrote: post #537

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. 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 separat…

> 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

This is exactly the kind of "common sense reasoning" put-down that makes parenting so challenging.

Do you actually know -- I mean, have actual evidence of harm? Obviously it "sounds idiotic". But bloodletting to reduce headaches also makes "common sense" -- or at least did pre-modern medicine.

The critical part here is that sleep training does not happen in the absence of other effects. If the alternative is heavily sleep-deprived parents, is a few nights of distressed sleeping worse than 3 extra months of extremely exhausted parents? To me this is much less obvious.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#556

Post by zamfi »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #554
zamfi wrote: post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You forgot to multiply by the likelihood that the timer (or some other "too small to take the baby out" distraction) goes off mid bath. When you say "the vast majority of parents appear to take 'never' to heart" I can't help but suspect that missing factor is doing a lot of the heavy lifting.

I assumed that it happened once per bath, but this is very context- and parent-dependent too.

If you don't perceive of a 1-minute absence as a problem, presumably you are much more likely to step out of the bathroom.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#557

Post by m-ee »

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.

I remember listening to an NPR show where a doctor talked a lot about this, and how all of the shaming of co-sleeping might contribute. She claimed a non-obese, non intoxicated parent sleeping with the child on a bed isn't all that dangerous. That same situation on a couch is deadly. But the messaging is more abstinence than harm reduction, so all many people hear is "co-sleeping is dangerous"

Consequently, exhausted parents accidentally fall asleep on the couch holding their babies when they would have been better off just lying down and napping.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#558

Post by sunny--tech »

So I've recently become a father and have done a lot of reading into co-sleep, crib, etc out of my own paranoia of being a bad father and such.

I could go on and on about the back and forth. The one thing I do want to say and point out that is many articles like this BBC one use statements like "the rest of the world" or is "common in many other cultures" when discussing co-sleep and other "older" practices.

But what percentage of the world actually practices co-sleeping? While it is indeed common in Asia and Africa, only 40 percent of documented cultures practice co-sleep regularly [1]. So it has become a minority practice in the world at large, despite the fact that many blogs or articles make it seem like Western society is strange for not doing it as much.

So instead of Western society being novel and strange, could it be that we're onto something? Saying "it's always been done this way" isn't a scientific statement. While having babies sleep in cribs is a newer practice, there is still a lot of data backing it.

There is indeed some bad research when it comes to demonizing co-sleeping (equally equating co-sleeping parents who use drugs and alcohol with those who don't). But even when controlled for those variables, it still has been shown that co-sleeping still increases the risk of SIDS when there are no hazards present, although not as much as some studies suggest [1].

As a data driven person, when I read all of this, I opted to not co-sleep. It's just what a lot of data supports, so I don't see why it still gets demonized a lot.

I'm not saying you shouldn't co-sleep. If you like it and want to do it, go for it. But I just don't understand the vilification of Western practices when it's been shown to work in many cases.

1: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/05/21/6012896...

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#559

Post by [deleted] »

plutonorm wrote: post #546
zamfi wrote: post #537

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. 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 separat…

[deleted]

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#560

Post by lhorie »

NovaJehovah wrote: post #309
gdubs wrote: post #171

One of the hardest thing about being a parent today is the constant shame and confusion about the “right” way to do it. We don’t live in a hunter gatherer society anymore, we just don’t. There’s lots of wisdom in that way of life, and sure we could learn from it — but there’s enough anxiety as it is, parents don’t need more of it. We have three kids and we sleep trained them. (Not a pediatrician, standard disclaimer.…

I'll probably get downvoted, but I strongly disagree with this mindset. Raising kids is not a fun hobby or a side project that will fit into a neat little drawer in your life. 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. Like anything else in life, you can do a good job or a bad job at being a parent. If you're pr…

> You have an obligation to do the best that you can

The problem I have with this attitude is the pronoun. If you have some standards, great but please try to keep them to yourself. There's a lot of toxic "you should do this, you should be like that" type of talk in parenting circles, a lot of which is frankly condescending and non-actionable and add a lot of unnecessary stress, especially for insecure people.

People like to armchair-coach about what a parent ought to be doing, while completely ignoring that the parent's emotional well-being is a pretty big component in a healthy relationship w/ their kids.

This is exactly why others are saying to ignore unsolicited advice: because a lot of it isn't actually advice.

Post reply on HN