This really brightened up my morning. A great story and surprisingly, a good twist. Much like his Dad, I had no idea what Guy was up to until the end. It really shows you how tuned in kids are. For any parent, this is a great lesson: let your kids lead the way. They may seems a bit crazy, but this is evidence that usually, they're not. Hands down, though, my favorite part of this whole story was imagining Guy running up to Home Depot employees by himself to ask for help. Adorable.
A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
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Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#52As the proud parent of a very chatty daughter of two, I wonder: what would be an equivalent sort of project for girls? At the moment she likes Duplo/Lego because it's one of the few areas where we connect over the gender divide, but her other roleplay and games are all about caring and she's very empathic with other children (worrying when they cry etc). I do wonder whether pointing her towards hackerdom would really…
I've got two daughters 9 and 11 and so far they've built projects just like the one in the article (although our stuff ends up looking a bit less refined at the end).
It seems like our girls turned less "girly" once they started school and of course it helps both my wife and I are engineers. Pink spray paint is always an option...
Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#53This guy thinks his kid is cute, because it's his kid, but I don't like the part where he deliberately irritates everyone in the hardware store. I don't think your kid is cute, so please keep it out of my way.
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Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#54This guy thinks his kid is cute, because it's his kid, but I don't like the part where he deliberately irritates everyone in the hardware store. I don't think your kid is cute, so please keep it out of my way.
And stay off my lawn!
Community? Maybe this kid will be fixing your house when you are too old and gimpy to do it.
Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#55Typical enterprise developer:
1. User knows exactly what he wants.
2. User can only express that in his own language.
3. Data flow diagrams, best practices, structured design, etc.
4. Dev still doesn't know what user wants but builds anyway.
5. 2 years later, project scrapped.
1. User knows exactly what he wants.
2. User can only express that in his own language.
3. Developer patiently encourages user to express himself.
4. Eureka!
5. Much learned; happy ending.Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#56Great story. Two comments:
- I think the people at our Home Depot would not have been as irritated and would have led the way to the paint department, maybe it's regionally different
- My girls go for spray paint 10 out of 10 times
My daughter had a 4th grade "invention convention" project and she chose to build a anti-kick board for her desk so the boy sitting opposite couldn't kick her. It also had comfy footrests. The boy's side had an Italian and her side had a German flag (the respective nationalities) spray-painted. It ended up looking really nice and the teacher let her keep it on her desk for a few days. That project encouraged her to build some tables for her room.
Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#57Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#58This story has a great moral, and from a younger-person's standpoint, I think it's something every parent should consider: enable, and don't obligate.
Encouragement itself is a dangerous path, since it can lead to an unhealthy zeal and interest. Unless you're parenting in an unique way, parents usually are seen as an authority figure by the kids. Because of this, over-encouragement could be seen as forcefulness, and act to discourage the child by creating a sense of obligation. This is exactly what happened to me on multiple occasions. I swam breast stroke competitively when I was younger, and stopped training completely when my coach and my parents decided I should train for higher level competition. I also played badminton on a provincial level, and basically the same thing happened. This isn't me being lazy. I trained 9 hours a day last summer at the Shaolin temple on my own will.
On the other end, everything I've built (or done, other sports included), I've done so on my own accord, either with no support from my parents, or just a slight tinge of interest. I guess every child is different - just make sure not to make them feel obligated.
Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#59Parents who give their kids a regular diet of "High Praise", "Agreeableness", "Supportiveness" and "Positive Interaction", but don't send them to college create children who have higher socioeconomic statuses than children of disconnected parents who send theirs to college. Multiple studies done confirm this. http://books.google.com/books?id=XDq9Xf_NbrMC&lpg=PT28&#... Adam Savage from Mythbusters claimed his love of…
I'm not trying to be pedantic, but that is a book, not a study. I've seen multiple studies that show parents who withhold praise raise higher achievers (personally, I don't like that, but none the less - the studies do exist)
> I've seen multiple studies that show parents who withhold praise raise higher achievers
Ok. I don't like that either.
I'd rather raise a healthy, curious, creative, passionate, and happy child.
I couldn't care less about what he achieves.
If he achieves nothing, so be it. In fact, on average, he won't achieve much ... but when he does achieve something, it'll blow your mind.
And that little drone you raised, who is desperately trying to catch your attention? He'll focus on titles and milestones. He can verbalize that. He can quantify it. He can get others (and you) to easily recognize his "achievement" ... more to the point, he will always be trying to put you in a position where you MUST give him praise, because you constantly hold it back.
You want to know what that looks like? BA, BS, MS, Phd, JD, 100K salary, BMW, etc. etc. ... easily quantifiable status symbols that can be placed in a study and can be easily used to force the parent to render praise. Is that really achievement?
I'd rather my kid start the next Apple.
Re: A lesson on the importance of encouraging your children with their projects
#60As the proud parent of a very chatty daughter of two, I wonder: what would be an equivalent sort of project for girls? At the moment she likes Duplo/Lego because it's one of the few areas where we connect over the gender divide, but her other roleplay and games are all about caring and she's very empathic with other children (worrying when they cry etc). I do wonder whether pointing her towards hackerdom would really…
The point is that she will find her own way, but she needs to see what different paths exist. So, don't hesitate to show her hackerdom, she can help so many people with hackerdom and even better show her this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xYSmp3bjP_0&feature=relat... and the really cool woman who made that http://web.media.mit.edu/~cynthiab/research/research.html . That's what made me realise I wanted to build robots when I grew up.
The thing is that kids in general tend to be pushed into stereotypes. This isn't just an unsubstantiated hypothesis I actually remember how adults used do this, for example they don't play with you if you pick up the wrong kind of doll, they don't look at you properly and so on. It's just subtle cues but a child picks them. (every child depends on these cues to learn and develop)
What worries me is that if you continue treating everything with the "over the gender divide" attitude she will get attuned to it, and it will kick off a pretty vicious cycle. So, please do realise that labels are for jars and just let her be, like this awesome dad did for his son.
P.S. - There is this comment http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2758516 right above that might answer your quandary in a definite manner