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The best $4 ever spent

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Re: The best $4 ever spent

#81

Post by culebron21 »

stevekemp wrote: post #14

I went to the transport office and got a map of all the local tram routes - we hung it on the wall, and my child and I rode every tram from one end to the other. Took a few weeks to ride all the trams in Helsinki, and it got a bit boring towards the end as several tram routes terminated in the same location. But every tram we'd get on in the middle, ride to one end of the line and go out for a walk, then ride to the…

Great that you posted this. I told my story of riding metro with my son, but only after this one un-stuck my brain to think of other locations in my city we could ride to, for almost nothing.

Funnily, when I was in Helsinki, I did ride couple of trams to the terminus. But in my brain, this was stored in another department, "urban research going to the fringe". Not "going out with the kid".

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#82

Post by herbertl »

Tangential anecdote: When I went to a buffet as a child, I loaded up on mashed potatoes, fries, onion rings, etc. I would be told by family and friends that I was effectively wrong for choosing those foods because seafood, meat, etc., was more expensive and therefore more valuable and worth choosing.

I don't think that was a bad outcome necessarily, because I picked foods that were super unhealthy and cater to thin dopamine hits. But I do think the reasoning (value vs. health) was off as it started instilling a sense of letting perceived/imagined value reign over personal instincts and inclinations.

Reading this felt like a call to be more present, pay more attention to the small things, do things for their own sake, etc.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#83

Post by alt187 »

Qworg wrote: post #54
abeppu wrote: post #23

Certainly it's true that kids can get a lot of joy out of something that to an adult seems really small or boring. But the flip side is kids can get totally emotionally distraught or enraged over tiny things. Are these two sides of the same coin, and come from having just a smaller world, where small things can feel very big to a developing brain? Or as an adult with a fully-formed brain and access to the larger worl…

I think many adults also get distraught or enraged by tiny things - it is an emotional regulation problem, not an age problem (but adults can and should be better than children).

Curiously enough, not a lot of those adults still find joy in the tiny things.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#84

Post by pbreit »

We are in progress of putting a basketball hoop at the end of our dead-end street and are unfortunately concerned that there are a handful of residents who probably don't want it. I swing back and forth on who I think "the bad guys" are. But I know the kids will love it and it will keep them off their phones.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#85

Post by mschuster91 »

> "No, no don't play with the wrapping paper! Look at the truck vroom vroom!" to no avail. She preferred the wrapping paper.

Your daughter a cat, by any chance? It's just the same with cats. They don't give a shit about anything you buy them, sometimes not even food - if there's packing peanuts, packing paper or Amazon cardboard boxes, that is more important.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#86

Post by imp0cat »

throw0101d wrote: post #73
criddell wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know... I've been to restaurants where two adults and two kids are sitting at a table. The adults looking at their phones and the kids watching something on tablets makes for poor chances of an interesting little moment to happen.

When I take the subway into work, I am in the physical presence of other people, but am I really with them?

Depends. Do you smell them?

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#88

Post by bitbuilder »

SoftTalker wrote: post #79

Kind if a larger lesson in this story is that kids will be interested in what they are interested in. Many of us here are like me and have made a career out of programming computers or related jobs. I've had three kids and not one of them is interested in programming, despite my attempts at encouragement. You can teach your kids a lot of things but they will also make their own path in life.

For whatever it's worth, my dad was a programmer and spent my childhood doing his best to get me interested in it as well. But I just couldn't have cared less. I think most of us in our adolescent and teenage years just instinctivley feel like whatever our parents do must be lame and boring.

During my softmore year at UIUC in '94, I finally relented to his endless prodding to check out this www thing he was rambling about, and went to a presentation by the Mosaic team at a building down the street from me. Needless to say, that changed everything, and I've been coding ever since.

But I'm pretty sure it was in my DNA and it was only a matter of time before I admitted to myself that programming is actually fun as hell.

I'm sure you're proud of the paths your kids have taken, but hey, you never know. Maybe one day they'll also admit to themselves that dad's hobby was actually pretty damn cool and give it a go too.

Re: The best $4 ever spent

#90

Post by imp0cat »

culebron21 wrote: post #77

We live in a walkable part of city. In a park 1 block from our apartment, there are "baby trains" (small electric trains, on rubber wheels). They cost ~$2 for 5 minutes, plus 10 minutes of your kid screaming "want more". Subway in Almaty is $0.2 (for adult), unlimited time. So when my son was almost 2 y.o. and walked well, I decided to take him to the real subway instead of enduring that vulgarity (granted the statio…

I have a tip for you, if you ever visit Vienna, get a 24(48,72)hr unlimited ticket and spend some time on the subway (U-Bahn) with your kids, riding the various lines. The entire subway system has different trains (some more like street cars, some more like urban rail) and tracks run in underground tunnels, shallow trenches and over open ground.
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