Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids • Hacker News Board

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#151

Post by potato3732842 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:32 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #85

opdahl wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago? Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely…

> You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood! Japan itself could fit into the US 25 times by area. Are kids raised in SF the same as those raised in Alabama? Or NY vs Phoenix? It'd be insane to make any generalities about a country so large and diverse, IMO. Heck, kids in…

>No, I reject that you can tell anything meaningful about the environment by country. Or even state. Or even neighborhood!

This. The standard deviation is too damn high to make predictions. You might as well toss a coin.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#152

Post by albert_e » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:34 AM UTC

Author Oliver Burkeman discusses this marshmallow test in his book Meditations for Mortals.

Paraphrasing from memory -

Who is to say that stockpiling as many marshmallows as you can is inherently more virtuous or objectively more positive than enjoying one marshmallow in the moment you and the marshmallow are ready for each other.

"Now" is the one moment you are truly alive. Rest is a concept.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#153

Post by potato3732842 » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:35 AM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #149

silisili wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You do not object to premise, only to granularity of defining environment geographically. Correct. I just picked those two because of stark differences of two well known areas close to each other. But it can go down to even neighborhood, or even street in said neighborhood. Sorry if my rambling seems confusing. I'm not against the idea that environment affects children. I'm against broad brush stroke categorization…

> I'm against broad brush stroke categorization about how different countries behave. Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman? Or for a less gender-charged example, chances of an average Saudi eating Pork vs an average American. Note…

>Ok - pick any conservative country (say India or Indonesia). Now tell me that the chances of an average Indonesian woman wearing a bikini to a beach (pretty normal in most Western countries) is same as an average French woman?

The strongest predictor for both the French and the Indonesian is almost certainly going to be the individuals physique and and the second is probably going to be the country and prevailing culture in which the beach is located (i.e. what everyone else is wearing).

This kind of illustrates the point you're trying to disagree with. You can't just look at some sort of demographic based average and shoot from the hip and expect to hit anything.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#154

Post by atoav » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:36 AM UTC

One of the most important points about parenting is that kids learn from watching you. That means what you say has far less impact than people colloquially think it does. What matters is whst you do and how that relates to the words you say.

E.g. if you want your kids to value culture, it is way more effective to live in a way that shows you value it, instead of just saying culture is important and never touching it with a ten foot pole yourself. You could never say culture is importsnt and go to the theater and museum every other weekend and that would be way more effective than telling your kid about the importance every day.

The latter doesn't teach the kid that culture is important, it teaches them that there are certain things your parent wants you to be, that they themselves don't manage to do despite them thinking it is important. As a kid your parents are likely the most powerful figure in your lifes, so if they aren't able to do it, how could you?

Any parents needs to have a keen eye out for these implicit lessons they are teaching their kids. The crazy thing is that these implicit lessons can at times be the polar opposite of the lesson you want to teach them.

And it is okay to fail, if they see you are trying to improve yourself, guess what the implicit lesson is? That working on yourself is not only normal, but a good thing that even parents do.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#155

Post by eloisius » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:40 AM UTC

efdee wrote: post #64

ipnon wrote: post #18

There are no iPad kids in Taiwan. You go to a restaurant and all the toddlers are quietly eating. When the tantrums flare the parents gently put a lid on it. It’s truly remarkable, and I don’t have a good theory for it. But it makes going out for dinner a consistent pleasure. I don’t know how to raise kids with an even keel but I am certain that putting a nonstop algorithm in their face and becoming outraged when the…

My kids love their screens. They use it for "productive" things (Minecraft, ...) and "unproductive" (shorts, ...). We have certain time restrictions and there are two days a week where they're not allowed to use them. We also don't let them take screens to restaurants. They get to take a bunch of crayons and a book and they're very much fine with this. I feel that it's a matter of sticking to principles and being pre…

Sounds like you give them some reasonable guardrails without being a hardass. Some digital indulgence is impossible to enjoy with tight time limits (e.g. Minecraft) but taking two days off is a good way to stay anchored in real life.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#156

Post by patrickwalton » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:41 AM UTC

desunit wrote: post #98

silisili wrote: post #33

I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood? The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to…

I didn't mention race in the post, but culture. I think culture has a significant effect on a person, and to prove my point, I'd refer to the book The Culture Map, which was a revelation for me and explained a lot of things I had noticed while working in a multicultural environment. Genetic factors typically account for about 50% of individual differences in traits like personality, cognition, and psychopathology, le…

Do you have a source for 50% attribution? Studies I've seen suggest single-digit genetic attribution.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#157

Post by vanderZwan » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:42 AM UTC

silisili wrote: post #33

I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood? The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to…

> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?

Ignoring the fact that you inserted a narrative that wasn't present in the article, YES OF COURSE THIS HAS A MAJOR IMPACT.

I'm a half-Dutch, half-Chinese man who spent the first years of my life in Ghana being blissfully happy and welcomed in the local community, and then the rest of my childhood being miserable in a Dutch village because I was excluded from that local community, all because I was "the local ethnic minority".

And I'm half-Asian, with parents from a higher-education background who had a good income. I only had to deal with "diet racism" compared to pretty much any other ethnic minority/social background in the Netherlands.

I've lived this and the fact that people like you keep insisting that my life experiences do not exist because they did not experience it is infuriating.

Anyway, fair points about the phone being a serious issue. But for goodness sake stop pretending that race and socio-economic background has no impact just because it makes you a little uncomfortable.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#158

Post by technothrasher » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:43 AM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #128

silisili wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject that premise. It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive. But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.' I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of cours…

> I have a math brain. You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary. A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes. I know sociology has poor reproducibility, bu…

I've got a buddy who's dad is an American who was stationed in Korea, and his mom is a Korean citizen. He talks a lot about the cultural clashes he faced growing up and having trouble feeling like he fit as either a Korean or an American. It's clear the two different cultures really pulled at him strongly from two different places.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#159

Post by desunit » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:50 AM UTC

timthorn wrote: post #13

Going off on a tangent, but what's the point of washing an orange?

She is 1.9 years old and anything that looks like food will be bitten. But to tell the truth, you even need to wash bananas: pesticide residues (you can transfer chemicals to your hands and then to the editable part), can collect dirt/bacteria/rodent excrement.

Re: Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids

#160

Post by itronitron » Thu, Feb 13, 2025, 11:53 AM UTC

makeitdouble wrote: post #54

autoexec wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of things the marshmallow test might signal, but most kids probably aren't spending a lot of time performing cost benefit analysis when faced with the problem. I wouldn't doubt that kids with trust issues would tend to do worse. Certainly the ones with behavioral/executive function/developmental issues do worse than others.

Kids are pretty used to calculations related to stuff to eat. I think anyone who grew up with siblings has an extremely developed sense of how much they're willing to risk vs how much reward. Like would I eat my brother's pudding knowing we'll be fighting to death when he's also back from school ? Yes, of course. That's risk/reward that made sense back in the days.

Whenever my sister and I had to share a single food item, like a brownie. Our mom would have one of us cut the item in half, and the other would get to pick their half first. Deciding which half was never a casual assessment.