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 always wonder how many of the sayings I inherited from my father he inherited from my grandfather that died before I was born. It's like a kind of genetic memory.
My mom has this very interesting theory: A parent needs to be by a child's side for the first 6-7 years of their life and devote all their time to it. Which is what she did with me. My dad stepped up for the challenge and provided for both of us. My mom had one goal: to make sure that I'd stay curious. She taught me how to read at the age of 4, signed me up for piano lessons(I haven't played piano at all nearly 3 decades later but I can still read notes), she made sure I'd be interested in different cultures, which subsequently pushed me to learn a few languages(which is the biggest contributor to the fact that I am doing very well for myself by a huge margin, forget software engineering, speaking English was the one thing that truly opened up the gates for me). Which on a slightly lower level did exactly what the article says. For contrast, I was old enough to witness and evaluate the extreme opposite - my mom's brother and his wife, who had children when a dog would have sufficed their needs. Their children were pushed aside, no one ever spent any time with them, whenever they started crying, someone jumped over to the toy store, get a bag of toys and shove them in their face so they would shut up. To such an extent that their rooms were filled with unopened toys and I'm not talking about 1 or 2 in a box, I'm talking dozens if not hundreds of toys still in their boxes. Last time I saw these children, they were >10 years old and they had no clue how to use a fork and a knife.
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…
The good news is that most kids very good at modeling themselves after the adults they see, without specific prompting to do so.
The bad news is that they can be too good: It's hard to change yourself if you don't want them to learn something. ("Do what I say, not what I do.")
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 predictable for the kids, but maybe I'm biased and just have "easy" kids.
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…
I would never think of giving my toddlers a mobile device in the first place...
Funny you're being downvoted. Meta shareholders? :-)
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 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. Is it really for no real reason, though? > Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood? You might not be aware, but different cultural backgrounds do result in different life experiences. You might have even noticed that that's the whole point o…
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 course, if you teach your child by that example.)
I have a math brain. I've been teaching her math since she could speak, mainly because she seemed to want to impress me and it's how she would get my attention. Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
I know this comment invites disaster but.....what is heaven other than the ultimate delayed gratification? i.e. don't worry about your miserable life as a serf toiling for the lord of the manor 6 days a week because if you're good now you'll be happy after you die. You can imagine the aristocracy laughing to themselves about that idea.
Nowadays we get told to save money...but I'm from Zimbabwe where saving money was a total disaster. Instead it was important, when I was still there, to spend it at the earliest possible time on anything physical. The prize for discipline was to be robbed.
... and yet of course if nobody saved money we'd all live an inflationary hell and if some people didn't believe in heaven there might be nothing else to retard their atrocious behaviour.
The main challenge that parents face today is on-line culture. Creating trust may mitigate that.
In the same way that teachers cannot educated children instead of their parents, even that they help. Social networks should not educate children but they are doing that. Being the problem that social network incentives are misaligned with education. Ad driven feature development and content promotion plus total deregulation make the on-line world a minefield for children.
If children at least trust their parents it is possible to mitigate the worst parts of on-line culture.
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…
The good news is that most kids very good at modeling themselves after the adults they see, without specific prompting to do so. The bad news is that they can be too good: It's hard to change yourself if you don't want them to learn something. ("Do what I say, not what I do.")
Spot on. A child will take every annoying habit you don't even know that you have, and put it on full display. It's quite humbling.
> 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. Is it really for no real reason, though? > Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood? You might not be aware, but different cultural backgrounds do result in different life experiences. You might have even noticed that that's the whole point o…
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…
It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator.
You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant.
It takes a village to raise a child.
[rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]