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

Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 227 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#191

Post by andrepd »

social_quotient wrote: post #65

Might be off topic but a nugget from having two girls (5 and 11). Kids don’t care about budget or how much things cost. We have toys we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on only to have the near free to free one be a hit. I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you. Or said differently, to the extent it effects you it will effect them. Kids will generally have fu…

> I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you

That's partially true but there are also things for some hobbies/activities which are really expensive. I'm thinking musical instruments (+lessons), or robotics (okay, those were very expensive when I was a kid but maybe they're cheaper now :p).

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#192

Post by jraph »

arethuza wrote: post #32
jraph wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tell her that for this project she will be your project manager > end product That does not sound fun. I don't think I was envisioning things as management and products when I was a child. The first line of your comment does sound fun, however.

Our son was very fond of acting as a "project manager" when he was young - like 3 or 4 years old. His idea of playing with a (age appropriate) train set was to get his mother to set everything up under his direction, similarly going to the beach he'd direct me to build a dam... (which I was happy to do).

Good to know. I'll remember this as a tool for potential future use then.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#194

Post by linschn »

OJFord wrote: post #184
nickysielicki wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have such a weird culture around how we treat teenagers in this country. We all remember drinking and smoking as teens, but parents tends to rule with an iron fist and convince themselves that they have more control than their parents did, which means we force healthy normal curious kids to go out to a secluded area (probably by car) to get high or drunk or explore in other ways, away from an adult that could help…

I wonder how teenage alcohol abuse compares across countries, France in particular comes to mind since it's common to introduce wine relatively early (in moderation, and perhaps diluted, of course). I thought there was quite a young supervised with-meal drinking age too, but having searched for it perhaps that's changed (or I was wrong). If it's not some forbidden fruit maybe the run off with a bottle of vodka thing…

In France, diluting your wine will get you the guillotine ;-)

The legal drinking age is 16 for low alcohol content beverages (wine, beer, etc) ; 18 for all alcohols and tobacco.

At a family gathering or on a special occasion you may get a glass of wine starting around 14 or later I'd say, for most middle class families.

Binge drinking is not as much of a problem as in more northern countries, but binge alcohol consumption is a problem that is being felt at the University level.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#195

Post by strobe999 »

hpcjoe wrote: post #154
oblib wrote: post #141

I became a single parent when my daughter turned 1 year old. When she got old enough we'd go fishing, bicycling, swimming, and hiking a lot. We'd also go to a used book store twice a month (on pay day) so she could pick out a few books to read. She loved doing that. She had no interest at all in learning how to code or gaming but she loved helping in the garden and in the kitchen prepping and cooking meals. When she…

This should go on twitter as "Dudes posting their massive W's" :D Mine is 22, about to start grad school for a Ph.D. in applied math (I'm Ph.D. in theoretical physics, but am a secret math nerd ... wife is also a math nerd and an M.S. Physics). Early on we discovered how much she loved reading. So, we read to her, every night. For a while, I could quote whole sections of "The Sleep Book" (Dr. Seuss) from memory. As s…

as a young father. your piece elegantly summarizes what im hoping to be to my child. i wish you two many years of curiosity!

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#197

Post by dan-robertson »

dhosek wrote: post #133
wongarsu wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, AND, OR and NOT are enough to compute any function, and you can make all the other operators out of a combination of those three. For example A XOR B is just (A OR B) AND (NOT (A AND B)). Knowing things beyond AND, OR or NOT is useful, but not strictly necessary. XOR has useful properties though: with random inputs you get TRUE 50% of the time, allowing you to chain it without trending to 0 or 1; also it'…

Nah, all you need are nand gates. Everything else can be implemented from those.

Yeah, similarly in mathematics they often like to build everything up from ‘implies’ where the rule is implies(a,b) = or(not(a), b) = nand(a,nand(b, b)).

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#198

Post by dan-robertson »

andrepd wrote: post #191
social_quotient wrote: post #65

Might be off topic but a nugget from having two girls (5 and 11). Kids don’t care about budget or how much things cost. We have toys we’ve spent hundreds of dollars on only to have the near free to free one be a hit. I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you. Or said differently, to the extent it effects you it will effect them. Kids will generally have fu…

> I say this to make sure you know your employment status likely only effects your kids if it effects you That's partially true but there are also things for some hobbies/activities which are really expensive. I'm thinking musical instruments (+lessons), or robotics (okay, those were very expensive when I was a kid but maybe they're cheaper now :p).

When I was a kid I tried to do some robotics thing with my dad which was not terribly expensive (it failed due to the servos not being sufficiently powerful despite matching the spec from the book). But probably had the advantage that he knew about electronics a bit and could deal with the chemicals for etching a circuit board (and could borrow a uv lamp thing or oscilloscope or eprom writer from his employer). But these days you can have circuit boards printed for cheap and often there are ‘maker spaces’ which may have better equipment available (or just skip the PIC and use a raspberry pi).

For an expensive hobby I’d guess anything equestrian rather than music lessons though I don’t really know.

Also the OP doesn’t say they’re actively looking for work so they may be using ‘unemployed’ in the tongue-in-cheek sense of ‘I don’t have a job but I have enough money to live without one for a while and want to spend time with my kid’ rather than one of the more technical senses of ‘not employed and currently actively seeking/wanting/open to employment’, which even still may or may not imply tight financial constraints.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#199

Post by dan-robertson »

user_7832 wrote: post #30

Lots of good suggestions in this thread here, I'd just like to add - see what she's interested in , from a topic point of view. A lot of the suggested things here are science based. Is that what she likes? Maybe history? Museums and exhibits may be much more appreciated and exiting than science kits. Or perhaps biology? Bug collecting? A basic microscope kit might be better. It need not be educational in the traditio…

Modern USB microscopes are extremely good. Not in the sense that the quality is somehow superb but in the sense that they can be had reasonably cheaply and give you a sufficiently magnified view to see lots of details that would not be visible to the naked eye. Importantly, they don’t require lots of the faff that a ‘proper’ microscope does, e.g. no messing around with dirty objectives or eyepieces or light sources or slides or covering slips or stains or preparing samples or two different focusing wheels or oils or whatever. And it can be a further pain if you want to get an image onto a computer whereas with a USB scope it’s already there. The point is that the lower barrier of entry can build interest and the low cost means you don’t feel so bad if you only use it once or twice.

Re: Ask HN: How to keep my daughter busy while tickling her curiosity

#200

Post by MengerSponge »

analog31 wrote: post #61
FerretFred wrote: post #56

Maybe look at building up manual skills if possible. When my daughter was 11 y/o I as doing a lot of DIY plumbing in the house and I taught her to cut and bend (copper) pipes, and solder pipe joints. We used a gas torch, much to the horror of my S.O, but it was a useful skill learned and she got really good at it.

I think learning to "think with your hands" is not a recognized academic skill, but yet there's something real about it. If at all possible, teach her to ride a bike and to actually be able to get around on one if your locale is suitable for it.

One of my professors (a Distinguished University Professor and fellow of the American Physical Society) selects for "ability to think with your hands". Successful experimentalists know that building things that work is hard, and having experience with plumbing, soldering, etc. really helps.
Post reply on HN