Reminds me (on a different scale of course) of the “Teach your kids bridge/poker/chess” series of articles that went around on HN a few weeks ago.
Help your kids be kids and learn what they want to learn.
I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
271–280 of 367 posts
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
It probably doesn't help either that her biggest role was a Dan Schneider show of all people.
I'm not familiar, so I searched him up. Is this what you're referring to? > Then, in March 2018, Schneider's time at Nickelodeon suddenly ended amid allegations of verbal abuse and questionable treatment of the young stars who appeared on his shows Source: https://www.looper.com/618303/the-dan-schneider-controversy-...
The stories surrounding Dan Schneider are mostly just rumors and allegations from children / parents of children who auditioned for his shows, so there's nothing definitive to be said.
However, something that's very clear to everybody is that Dan Schneider is an obvious foot fetishist (which is normal) and on multiple occasion has tried to fulfill that fetish through children. Pretty much all of his shows (iCarly in particular has many instances of this) have scenes that include children doing "wacky" and "random" things with their feet on camera. This could probably be shrugged off if it wasn't for the time when he literally asked for fans of the show (children) on Twitter to post pictures of their feet as some kind of challenge or something. Just very creepy behavior overall.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#273Tough read. Part of getting older seems like letting go of these bothersome memories and loving someone in spite of it. I hurt for this family that may never reconcile. The mom wants to believe she did right and won't apologize. Wil wants her to admit what really happened, which she may never do. She'll die someday and this may still be unresolved, which is the real tragedy. Being the bigger person isn't always easy,…
I'm sorry, but no. "[Learning] to love" your abuser isn't in any way noble or something to aspire to, particularly when the abuser can never admit their abuse.
Frankly, I struggle not to be offended by the idea that the victim, here, is in some way a lesser person by not reconciling with their unapologetic abuser.
Sometimes an abuser is just a terrible person and the noble and laudable thing is to find the strength to simply cut ties and move on. The fact that it's a biological parent, in this circumstance, changes that not one bit.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#274My parents pushed me hard, but sent me to a liberal arts school, and I’m hardwired for engineering. Hilarity ensued. The grinding of gears was a memory I would pay to erase. Deeply resent spending hours every day learning languages for countries I had no interest in visiting and how glaciers formed. What a waste of my finite precious time. If only I could go back I’d run out the gate and get on a train never to be se…
Airing it in public isn't going to work for him. I had similar kinds of problems. Nothing I said or did worked so I just stopped talking about it. My mom would call me and I would politely talk to her about the weather and things like that, but nothing else. Now she's gone. We never could work out our issues. Most normal people accept that there are limits to what we can accomplish in our lives. Rich powerful people…
>Airing it in public isn't going to work for him.
I think it depends on what his goal is. To me, it seems like he just wants his truth to be known.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#275I really wouldn't be surprised if 30/40/50 years from now "child stars" will seem as absurd and barbaric as child labor in general does today. It just seems so terrible and exploitative in so many cases.
This is where I think that people are not seeing the bigger picture with generative AIs. There will be a time where a director will be able to specify an angle or two and say: "Darkwing Duck shoots a grappling hook up the Eiffel Tower and gets pulled up to the observation deck" and then the entire sequence will be generated in near realtime. Then they'll start doing it with actors. Movie studios will create composite…
That fictional future is probably not going to happen, simply because what you describe so succinctly is actually gargantuanly complex, and getting that complexity organized enough for the replacement of an entire media production crew is socially impossible. AI has immense capabilities, but in combination with highly collaborative human arts, it will be viewed (incorrectly) as a competitor and grudgingly regulated a tiny role in the overall larger production process - perhaps writing the lunch menu descriptions for the crew.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#276Now think how many children suffered the same fate, but we’ll never hear about it because they did not become famous. Reminds me of “dance moms” or “cheer moms”, “football dads”, etc. If you’re a parent, remember not to live your unfulfilled dreams through your children.
When I was 8; I worked with a crew installing mobile homes. I was especially valued for the double wides; I was light enough to work the roofline without denting the roof.
At 11 I was operating construction machinery, I had to hide from the inspectors on some jobs but on others I could talk to them. State vs. Federal I think: the State guys could be bribed.
At 16 software I had written (bid estimation) was selling for $2k a seat to earthwork contractors all over North America.
Anything I got paid went right to the parents to pay off "debts" they considered I owed them. They kept this up until I stopped letting them. At 35, I wanted to marry my wife and start a family, when I told my parents about this they were so happy they'd be getting another slave they started planning all the uses they could put her to in front of me. I realized that this proposed behavior was just as unacceptable applied to me, as it would be to her.
My Dad died a few years later, I had to help wind up his businesses, which was eye opening: I was President of one company and Treasurer of another (I'd never agreed to do either job, hadn't been aware of the one company at all). There were emails about how they could hide hundreds of thousands of dollars from me, contemporaneous with times when I had sold belongings and stretched my credit to keep "our" business running.
I'm (obviously) still dealing with all that. My child gets told to pursue self determination and never do business with blood relations.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#277Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties. It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during coloniza…
I've never heard of a Chinese/Asian parent forcing the erhu or pipa on their kids though: it's always Western instruments, particularly the violin and piano.
I learned music as a kid, and my kids did as well. I know from talking to parents, that the status thing is real, and there's also a belief that music teaches self discipline. (Likewise math). but it's not the only consideration. Piano and violin can be played by small hands. There are lots of teachers. And Western music itself has colonized the world. A lot of people have probably never heard the indigenous music of their own home countries, or have only heard it in formal settings.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#278Now think how many children suffered the same fate, but we’ll never hear about it because they did not become famous. Reminds me of “dance moms” or “cheer moms”, “football dads”, etc. If you’re a parent, remember not to live your unfulfilled dreams through your children.
You mean like trying to get your kid into programming, which is a bit more common around here?
Teaching your kid to write computer programs is not the same thing as forcing them into a career as a developer. Whenever I hear people equate the two, I like to remind them that it wasn't that long ago that if you wanted to write a letter, you had to go to someone who knew how to write and dictate.
Lots of non-technical jobs require you to sit at a computer all day. Why do you think they teach typing in school now? The ability to automate your tasks is a superpower that I would love my children to have regardless of what they do. I personally have had jobs that could probably be automated by a python script, although what I was doing them at the time I didn't know how python.
Besides professional reasons, basic programming skills can be the gateway to any number of hobbies. I build things for myself all the time and because it's a creative thing, and programs can be written to aid in creating artwork music, or even to generate these things completely from the software.
Most schools have art and music programs. They may even be a mandatory part of the curriculum. Because we recognize that there are benefits to learning these skills even though the majority of students will not go on to do these things professionally. Programming is the exact same thing.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think the answer is to let them try different things. There's going to be something that they like better than the others. If they keep begging you to stop making them do a thing, that's a clue that it's not the right one.
I think I'd like to say to my son when he gets older, "You have to have at least one skill you're actively developing that takes several years to master. It can be piano or chess or language or baseball or StarCraft or juggling, but it has to be something that takes time to master, and you have to spend at least a few hours every week in deliberate practice." I also plan on modeling that behavior by having skills I c…
Teaching by example and giving creative freedom sounds like really good idea.
Re: I was forced to be a child star. It was never my dream or my idea
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Asian culture simply adopted American and English culture in this regard Since the OP mentioned China specifically, I think it’s good to note that the Chinese elite have venerated art for millennia. Poetry writing, singing, and playing musical instruments were a staple of every young nobles education during the times of the Imperial dynasties. It’s not at all something simply copied from the British during coloniza…
I've never heard of a Chinese/Asian parent forcing the erhu or pipa on their kids though: it's always Western instruments, particularly the violin and piano.
When I posted the comment, I was actually thinking about the guqin and other zither instruments. Violin was fairly popular 10ish years ago due to multiculturalist/globalist attitudes, but now there's been a push (manufactured or not) to use 'classical Chinese' instruments and play classical Chinese music instead of say Beethoven.