271–280 of 467 posts
So far that seems to work pretty well. But they are only single digit ages.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> School is exhausting. Between rising unnaturally early (which leaves kids tired), rushing and bustling kids on their daily commute, most of the daylight hours blocked for school then homework when you get home I will point out though that, if one is inclined to argue that school should prepare children for adult life, it sounds like this system is a pretty good mimic of the working life any given child is likely to…
What sort of job do you have that has homework? Mine certainly doesn't. More generally, i don't think we should make kids lives suck to prepare them for the fact that the rest of their life is also going to suck. That's not the way to make happy people who appropriately prioritize work/life balance.
Everyone is different though. Some people have lower stress jobs where they work for a single company and have plenty of time to learn new stuff on the job (or never really need to acquire new skills). But I work in consulting, so acquiring new skills while maximizing my billable hours is part of the game.
> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
Yes, it's like they are despair to find a simple explanation for their child disinterest in things they want her to be interested in when it's just their child growing up.
The parent says "my daughter was a creative genius, and then..." as if to imply that she isn't any more. But it sure sounds like she has creative pursuits to me:
* "She wants Roblox. All the kids have it, and it seems harmless enough. She’s building her dream house" This sounds like a creative pursuit to me.
* "She wants to talk with her friends. I don’t see any harm in FaceTime." She's talking with her friends.
* "She says she wants to do a TikTok while we’re in the “aesthetic” woods" She's creating TikToks! How cool is that, and how creative! Again we see she's not a passive consumer, she's still a creator - it's just that the medium has changed.
The real problem here is that the daughter used to pursue creative activities that the parent approved of (sewing, drawing). Now she does creative activities that the parent does not approve of or understand.
The parent should bridge the gap by trying to understand the things their daughter spends time on. Instead they lambast them from a distance! It's such a shame to me that the article ends with a note about how the parent will try to convince themselves that creating tiktok videos is creative. What?!? Creating videos isn't creative?? Of course it is! You should be encouraging and reveling in this sort of behavior!
I guess it particularly rankles because my parents did the exact same thing when I was young - they constantly tried to get me to stop using the computer. They never took the time to understand that I was using it creatively - I was coding games, writing books and poetry, learning python, modding warcraft 3. But of course they never saw the creativity in modding warcraft. "Oh, he's playing video games again..."
P.S. and as I suggested, I do agree with the premise - phones definitely can destroy creativity, they definitely are addictive, they definitely shouldn't be given to kids... These are critical problems, well worth addressing and being worried about. But if I had to choose a single thing that was even more important, it would be fostering understanding relationships between parent and child.
Buried lede: > My daughter doesn’t return home from school until 6:30 pm and still has to eat, bathe, and get ready for bed. Perhaps it is not just the iPhone, but school taking up 100% of her time, energy, and attention that is preventing her from pursuing creative interests? As a homeschooling parent whose kids have been in school at times, I see this first hand. School is exhausting . Between rising unnaturally ea…
Just keying in on the school portion draining you of energy, I think of just my high school English classed alone. Read a Novel a month and have weekly tests. Between that write a 5 page paper about the literary elements of each chapter. Fall behind a bit and good luck catching up with all the other work thrown at you. Try to bring this up to a teacher and you get told "What another teacher assigns isn't my responsib…
> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
People are arguing about everything from extended school hours, excessive homework to climate change in this thread.
Could it be that the daughter was raised in a highly sheltered environment and once she hit puberty, she had other interests besides collages, jewelry and sewing?
I wrote this in another comment...
"It's a tale as old as time. Every child is a genius, angel, perfect until they hit puberty. Then we find "rock 'n roll", "rap music", "radio", "MTV", "television" or other culprits for corrupting our youth. Today it is social media. Tomorrow it will be VR. God knows what comes after that."
The entire article is about an overprotective and controlling mother complaining that her daughter is now a teenager. Instead of blaming rap music, she's blaming the iPhone.
My dad smashed my computer around the laundry (where the computer lived) with my cricket bat because I was "playing games" instead of studying. "playing games" was using assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game. With my kids I've felt the rise of anger when they want to be autonomous and pursue their own interests. I mean, I was taught that parenthood is subjugation. But just like my dad coul…
>"playing games" was using assembly language and pascal with s3m libraries to program a game. None of which is possible on iPhones and iPads these kids are growing up with. Even if they did escape the attention algorithm long enough to get bored and explore there is nothing to discover it's a locked black box.
Buried lede: > My daughter doesn’t return home from school until 6:30 pm and still has to eat, bathe, and get ready for bed. Perhaps it is not just the iPhone, but school taking up 100% of her time, energy, and attention that is preventing her from pursuing creative interests? As a homeschooling parent whose kids have been in school at times, I see this first hand. School is exhausting . Between rising unnaturally ea…
> School is exhausting. Between rising unnaturally early (which leaves kids tired), rushing and bustling kids on their daily commute, most of the daylight hours blocked for school then homework when you get home I will point out though that, if one is inclined to argue that school should prepare children for adult life, it sounds like this system is a pretty good mimic of the working life any given child is likely to…
The second job is closer to homework, so long as you are doing it most nights and it takes some mental effort. And gee, it seems that having two jobs will pretty much kill creativity also and cause folks to burn out. At least with a second job, you are probably older. Teens and pre-teens simply aren't there mentally.
> I realize with horror that she’s spent nine hours on the phone that day. She was only awake at 11. > My daughter doesn’t make collages or jewelry or sew anymore. A child who used to read in the bath won’t pick up a book unless threatened with the loss of her phone. > Getting her to make a card for a family member — something she once did for fun — is like getting her to clean her room > Yet still, each day is a bat…
So I'd say that no, it's not that phones are like crack. There seems to be a disconnect on the parent's expectations when children discover the possibilities of a technology that's unfamiliar to them. In the article they're talking about the ease of controlling TV time but that doesn't even compare in possibilities of communication, entertainment and education.
Heck... I'm sure if you could go back in time you'd discover the first generation to grow up with books, and their desperate parents noticing how the kids aren't ... working the fields and feeding the cattle, I guess.