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Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

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Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#161

Post by EasyMark »

lm28469 wrote: post #64
xkbarkar wrote: post #47

I feel the destructive behaviour of bored kids is forgotten a bit. Growing up in the late 70s early 80s we were kicked out of the house until dinner. We did a lot of really dangerous things exploring. Among these, -Playing in storm drains. Inside the narrow tunnels I might add. -Abandoned construction sites. -Railway tracks. Putting things o the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks…

Boys will be boys, we all did these things back then and the extreme vast majority of us survived, I'll take that over 10 hours of screens per day from age 3

My band of miscreants had two female members, let’s not assume that only boys run around in mini-not-so-evil gangs.

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#162

Post by CleaveIt2Beaver »

coldtea wrote: post #56
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that's intuitively not a fate I would want to wish on my own kids. I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing . Now, the kind of device I would provide is another story. Unfettered access to the Internet at large, including social media, is probably not well advised - access to Wikipedia probably is. Questio…

> I'm just old enough to have spent the first ~14 years of my life without any personal computing devices, and I remember the boredom being agonizing. If you lived in a farm 200 miles from any kid in rural Nebraska maybe. And even there there would be tons of adventures to have on one's own.

Trying to argue around the circumstances of a one-line anecdote is peak HN. Your experience of the world doesn't invalidate theirs, and vice versa.

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#163

Post by asielen »

brohoolio wrote: post #11

For my own kids when they are bored there is a flow of requests. First they ask if they can watch TV. Then they ask if they play video games. Then they ask if they can goto a friends house that they like. Then they ask if they can see a neighbor kid who they are kinda meh about. If I keep saying no to all the distractions they typically will enter a complainy phase about how they are bored, but after a bit of boredom…

Same exact thing with my 4 year old. We give him very little screen time but it is always the first thing he asks for. Once he (begrudgingly) accepts that he isn't going to get to watch TV and he has to play by himself (if we can't play with him for some reason like coming dinner or taking care of his infant brother) he goes into an amazing creative state where he will play by himself for hours, narrating and creating new games with rules. Or drawing on his easel.

Once he is in the creative zone, he takes charge of his time. He will ask us to help with something and then tell us to go away and then have us come see what he built while he tells us elaborate stories.

There is a kids book called the boring book that captures this process pretty well.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/the-boring-book_shinsuke-yoshi...

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#164

Post by BobbyJo »

watwut wrote: post #159
BobbyJo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We obviously aren't going to achieve 0 unless we lock every kid on earth up in a padded room, which we aren't doing, so "more" or "less" is fine if the reward is worth the risk. Which is exactly the discussion being had right now.

I am not saying current US tradeoff is necessary ideal. But, when people argue by "human history" they should not ignore what actually happened during that history. Because as of now, kids ARE better off then they generally were for majority of human history. The gooses thing was memory of my grandmother. It is not some kind of distant medieval history, it was the norm around WWII.

No one here is saying the 1880's are the goal. We're discussing if kids not going outside and messing around and getting hurt sometimes is good or bad.

I brought up "human history" as the logical extreme of the counter argument, not to argue that's the goal.

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#165

Post by medvezhenok »

thefz wrote: post #126
xkbarkar wrote: post #47

I feel the destructive behaviour of bored kids is forgotten a bit. Growing up in the late 70s early 80s we were kicked out of the house until dinner. We did a lot of really dangerous things exploring. Among these, -Playing in storm drains. Inside the narrow tunnels I might add. -Abandoned construction sites. -Railway tracks. Putting things o the rails waiting for the train to see what happened. Everything from rocks…

Yet over these experiences you socialized, bonded, explored, got scared, risked and got away with it, promised not to tell parents, had general fun and discovered things you would have not otherwise. Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

We’re also looking at strong survivor bias. My grandfather played in the fields after WW2 (Eastern Europe) and had friends who died or had limbs blown off by undetonated mines from the war (preschool/school age). You likely never heard their stories since they didn’t make it to present day.

There are definitely many benefits to socialization outside, but let’s not forget the tradeoffs. Mental health can be repaired (I.e. ozempic for the mind?), permanent injuries - much less so.

(I picked an extreme example to prove a point, I’m not suggesting the risks of playing outside today are equivalent. But the risks are real nonetheless)

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#166

Post by thefz »

medvezhenok wrote: post #165
thefz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet over these experiences you socialized, bonded, explored, got scared, risked and got away with it, promised not to tell parents, had general fun and discovered things you would have not otherwise. Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

We’re also looking at strong survivor bias. My grandfather played in the fields after WW2 (Eastern Europe) and had friends who died or had limbs blown off by undetonated mines from the war (preschool/school age). You likely never heard their stories since they didn’t make it to present day. There are definitely many benefits to socialization outside, but let’s not forget the tradeoffs. Mental health can be repaired (…

There is no pill for a sheltered existence

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#167

Post by medvezhenok »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #136
VMG wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Kids survival was actually pretty poor for most of human history. Probably why the families were much larger

Yes, but that was less because of accidents and more about malnutrition or other health problems.

It was actually both. The accident rate was significantly higher, it was just dwarfed by the other health problems so it didn’t seem so bad in comparison

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#168

Post by ZhongXina »

medvezhenok wrote: post #165
thefz wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet over these experiences you socialized, bonded, explored, got scared, risked and got away with it, promised not to tell parents, had general fun and discovered things you would have not otherwise. Any of these beats becoming a rotbrain in front of YouTube kids for hours.

We’re also looking at strong survivor bias. My grandfather played in the fields after WW2 (Eastern Europe) and had friends who died or had limbs blown off by undetonated mines from the war (preschool/school age). You likely never heard their stories since they didn’t make it to present day. There are definitely many benefits to socialization outside, but let’s not forget the tradeoffs. Mental health can be repaired (…

> the risks of playing outside today are equivalent

In Ukraine they are / will be for many years.

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#169

Post by watwut »

BobbyJo wrote: post #164
watwut wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not saying current US tradeoff is necessary ideal. But, when people argue by "human history" they should not ignore what actually happened during that history. Because as of now, kids ARE better off then they generally were for majority of human history. The gooses thing was memory of my grandmother. It is not some kind of distant medieval history, it was the norm around WWII.

No one here is saying the 1880's are the goal. We're discussing if kids not going outside and messing around and getting hurt sometimes is good or bad. I brought up "human history" as the logical extreme of the counter argument, not to argue that's the goal.

Right after WWII is not 1880s. It is much closer.

The problem with that logical extreme is that kids died a lot by our standards. They also had no protection against abuse. You had more of them due to non existent anticonception, which made their "value" go down.

Re: Children should be allowed to get bored (2013)

#170

Post by seoulmetro »

EasyMark wrote: post #161
lm28469 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Boys will be boys, we all did these things back then and the extreme vast majority of us survived, I'll take that over 10 hours of screens per day from age 3

My band of miscreants had two female members, let’s not assume that only boys run around in mini-not-so-evil gangs.

No one assumed that.
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