[HN Gopher] Don't teach kids to fear the world
___________________________________________________________________
Don't teach kids to fear the world
Author : pseudolus
Score : 220 points
Date : 2022-09-01 15:53 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theatlantic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theatlantic.com)
| earthboundkid wrote:
| WTF is that Dao De Jing quote? Laozi did not care about love at
| all, whether romantic or Christian. I reskimmed
| https://ctext.org/dao-de-jing to see if maybe I just forgot some
| passage, but nothing popped up. Anyone have any idea where Brooks
| is getting this quote from?
| 13192216873 wrote:
| It looks like a loose translation of chapter 67 in the Wang Bi
| version that you linked. The character interpreted as love is
| Ci , with the quote mentioned in the article corresponding to
| Ci Gu Neng Yong in the original passage.
| lapcat wrote:
| I suspect that hit TV shows like "America's Most Wanted" did a
| great deal of damage to the American psyche. The 1990s seemed to
| be when parental attitudes started to take a turn. When I grew up
| before then, kids were generally allowed to roam wherever they
| wanted unsupervised, as long as they were home in time for
| dinner.
|
| There are probably other factors too. I wonder if there was a
| kind of overcompensation from "latchkey kids" when they became
| parents.
| acuozzo wrote:
| > When I grew up before then, kids were generally allowed to
| roam wherever they wanted unsupervised, as long as they were
| home in time for dinner.
|
| Me too.
|
| With that being said, as a parent now, the #1 fear I have with
| my children playing outside unsupervised isn't kidnapping or
| violence or anything that would appear on Unsolved Mysteries or
| America's Most Wanted.
|
| It's cars. My fear is cars.
|
| My boys are 7 & 5 years old and they are both very inattentive.
| No matter how hard I try to put the fear of the road into them,
| they both have a tendency to mindlessly wander into it without
| looking. My older one is autistic, so I'm sure that has
| something to do with it, but my younger one is not and he is
| even worse.
|
| I live in a suburb in Maryland named Columbia. Its residential
| areas were thoughtfully planned-out with very few "busy roads"
| running through them, but I regularly see people (teenagers?)
| flooring 50+mph down sleepy tree-lined 25mph streets.
|
| I have no doubt in my mind that, if left unattended, both of my
| boys would be run over by one of these insane drivers within a
| week.
|
| Edit: Yes, we and others have complained to the city. Yes,
| there are speed cameras and the like, but this behavior has
| only gotten worse post-COVID.
|
| Edit 2: Looks like I'm not alone in thinking this way...
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32679858
| x3iv130f wrote:
| If you can physically drive 50+ mph down a street signed for
| 25 mph then whoever built the road may have been thoughtful
| but they certainly weren't thinking about safety.
|
| Signs and warnings rank very low in the hierachy of
| engineering controls.
|
| The safest option would be to physically prevent vehicles
| able to travel at greater than 15mph from being in areas with
| children.
|
| The next safest would be to redesign the street to prevent
| high-powered vehicles from being able to travel at greater
| than 15mph.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| but sadly most subdivision builders like to make nice
| straight roads, which means that one of the more effective
| tools to control speed (having the road turn, or snake)
| won't work. That leaves having frequent intersections with
| either stops or roundabouts.
|
| Stop sign planning usually says to avoid 4 way stops and to
| give give preference to one of the streets (usually the
| busier), meaning that if those are used one street at any
| interspection will probably be one with few stops, allowing
| cars to build up speed.
|
| Roundabouts (preferably with a physical center median) are
| the right choice for residential streets, but in most of
| the US they are still considered "weird", so subdivision
| developers don't make much use of them.
| bombcar wrote:
| One trick that works is get your neighbor a few houses
| down to buy an absolutely huge RV they leave parked on
| the street.
|
| And the neighbor across something similar, that narrow
| gap between them slows people down naturally.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Ironically, I live in the notoriously high-crime city to your
| north, with kids basically the same age. The older one has
| free reign of our neighborhood at this point. We live in a
| walkable neighborhood with streets narrow enough that cars
| can't pick up any significant speed. Everyone agrees that
| Columbia is "safer," but I'm way less worried about my kids
| up here.
| MrMetlHed wrote:
| I recently moved from Brooklyn to Phoenix. I'd have an easier
| time of letting my 4-year-old walk on the sidewalks of
| Brooklyn than anywhere in Phoenix. The driving is so much
| worse and so much faster here. Cars are also my biggest fear
| going into her more independent years. People flying out of
| our condo complex, a 7-lane road adjacent to it, everyone
| rageful and in a hurry constantly. I'm far more worried about
| inattentive drivers than playground falls or kidnappers.
| munk-a wrote:
| It's an interesting point and actually feeds back into the
| America's Most Wanted issues. As America has gotten more
| focused on cars for the majority of transportation the
| neighborhood has broken down, people who never walk in their
| community never meet their neighbors and it's much easier to
| cultivate fear about neighbors you've never met along with
| being harder to trust those mystery neighbors to intervene if
| they see something wrong.
|
| There was a saying "It takes a village to raise a child" but
| in modern America each family is closer to being an island to
| themselves trying to raise their children - there almost
| certainly are a dozen or so other parents you've met at parks
| and other things that you trust but those parents might live
| quite far away from you.
|
| Living in a car oriented culture comes with serious societal
| issues.
| tsunamifury wrote:
| Im not disagreeing about cars but i want to point out you
| can say the same thing about the invention of AC and the
| washing machine. Almost any at home technology that
| replaced communal work has had this affect.
| miguelazo wrote:
| Not really seeing how they're comparable-- vastly
| different levels of influence in terms of promoting
| isolation. While true that lower levels of
| tech/development promote more communal labor, there's
| much more to social relations than that-- and modes of
| transportation, along with subsidizing the
| suburbanization of the country have a much greater
| impact.
| boilerupnc wrote:
| Interestingly, the pandemic altered this briefly in my
| neighborhood. Seemingly out of nowhere, for a few months in
| 2020 - our streets were filled regularly with walkers, dogs
| and children. There were new face-to-face conversations
| with people who had lived in the same neighborhood for over
| 7-10 years. There were driveway get togethers, cul-de-sac
| firepits and a renewed sense of community that went deeper
| than asking for a contractor recommendation or a cup of
| sugar. While the pandemic was horrible in numerous ways,
| this was one side-effect that was truly positive for my
| small piece of the world and has resulted in stronger, new
| friendships that I hope to continue.
|
| In retrospect, could we have done this through social
| events or aggressive reach-outs - sure. But the apathy and
| distraction provided by using a car to go somewhere was a
| constant saboteur.
| trgn wrote:
| That's really the only thing.
|
| The saddest thing to me that the window is so small to fix
| it. If my city dawdles another 5-10 years to make our streets
| safer, my kids will be old enough for it not to matter
| anymore.
|
| It's a really hard choice. How long are we waiting around
| until we just pack up and move to somewhere that is safe, to
| a place where our kids can have independent mobility.
|
| America is so way behind, not only the major centers, even
| worse in all the 2nd and 3rd tier cities where people still
| get an aneurysm when somebody dares to suggest to install a
| bikelane.
| bombcar wrote:
| It's sad, because America is _so large_ even in each city,
| it wouldn 't be hard to have _one suburb or neighborhood_
| dedicated to "family friendly slow streets" and another
| elsewhere to "walking retirement community", etc.
|
| Instead we get nearly identical developments repeated over
| and over and over again.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Can you petition the city to install speed bumps in your
| neighborhood?
| Thlom wrote:
| Speedbumps help a bit, but many drivers break down just
| before the bump and then speed to the next one. Better
| solution is to design the street for slower traffic. Narrow
| it down, expand the sidewalks and/or add a bike path, Make
| speeding uncomfortable and the average speeds will go down.
| Bloating wrote:
| Our state DOT is requiring developers build wider streets
| (because parked cars), and avoid sidewalks (because
| maintenance)
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Speed bumps do not do much against enormous SUVs and pickup
| trucks.
|
| Nor do they help against drivers looking down at their
| phones.
| isleyaardvark wrote:
| I'm not an expert on brain development but I'm pretty sure
| kids just simply do not have a lot of spatial awareness. I
| know I tend to watch out for them even just walking around
| them because they don't pay attention to where they are
| going.
| trgn wrote:
| We visited family in Europe earlier this summer. So much
| has changed there compared to only 10-15 years ago. We were
| never once worried for our kids wandering around alone,
| because streets were designed so drivers had to drive slow.
| Also no monster trucks and monster SUVs everywhere. Also
| lot's of segregated bikelanes. Lots of walkable
| neighborhoods. A lot fewer casual sociopaths, you know, the
| sort of people you see here driving on bald tires with
| their bumper ripped off, jagged pieces of metal sticking
| out from the front of their car.
|
| Yes, kids brains are underdeveloped, but streets
| accommodate that there, it's not a death sentence.
|
| It's absolutely unreal how far America seems to have fallen
| behind, compared to just 10-15 years ago, and how far ahead
| new traffic calming measures have gotten there in that same
| timeframe. That's the main thing that strikes us on our
| return. The absolute complete solipsism on this issue, how
| trashy and violent the public realm is here.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| You obviously don't have kids. Even as 3/4 year olds they
| have great spatial skills when running, climbing, jumping.
| Better than most adults. They have less boundaries, that's
| for sure.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| Nah. It's very kid dependent. Some kids that age have
| great physical skills, others not so much and don't
| develop until later.
| bombcar wrote:
| It goes in spurts - right after a "growth spurt" the kid
| will be quite uncoordinated until their mind gets the
| hang of the suddenly larger body.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Pretty much all of cable news...
|
| After cutting the cord when our first daughter was born, we
| were often surprised to come down from a hotel room to get
| breakfast in the lobby to find that some horrific things were
| happening, cities were burning, people being murdered, a world
| spinning out of control.
|
| Oh yeah, I had to remind myself, cable news was like that. So
| we grabbed coffee to go and headed out to the National Park to
| hike with the kids.
| pradn wrote:
| Similarly, it's terrible that the default thing on TV at
| airports and gyms is cable news. It's especially absurd at
| the gym - going to be healthy and feel some nice endorphins,
| and then you're subjected to the worst things happening in
| the world. Comical, really.
| bombcar wrote:
| At least at the airports I've been to recently, it seems
| CNN lost that contract. The TVs are off or showing some
| nature scene.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Cable news being the choice entertainment of airports is
| especially funny when all the TVs are showing the plane
| with stuck landing gear trying to come down just outside
| the window. A plane with stuck gear is a minor issue that
| happens periodically and has very little chance of causing
| problems, but from the news coverage you'd think it was an
| unthinkable disaster.
| chrisallenlane wrote:
| This is the main reason I cancelled my gym membership. I
| got tired of going to the gym to clear my head, only to
| leave angrier than when I got there.
|
| I don't know why more gyms don't show sports on the TVs. It
| seems like a much more natural fit.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would rather gyms simply not have TVs. Anyone who wants
| to watch something is always carrying a device that can
| let them.
| Bloating wrote:
| Yep
| conductr wrote:
| > There are probably other factors too.
|
| I always think the gangs and crack epidemic were major
| contributors too. This was also the era of drive by shootings
| and gangster rap/culture infiltrating the middle class and WASP
| folks homes via their children and popular media of all kinds.
| I also remember teenage pregnancy seemed like a bigger issue
| then and a reason parents controlled their daughters more
| closely. The nightly news was reporting on this stuff and many
| inner city areas were severely depressed. I think in a lot of
| those areas that have since been gentrified we probably forget
| just how bad it was for a time.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Not just TV shows in the 90s, but netflix documentaries and
| fictional shows about serial killers today. These seem to be
| insanely popular.
|
| Serial killers are extremely rare, exceptionally few people
| will ever know somebody who knows somebody who knew a victim of
| one. Everybody today knows that serial killers exist, but most
| people only know it because they heard about it from mass
| media, not because they have some sort of personal experience
| with it. I think this surely leads people to overestimate the
| risk.
| e40 wrote:
| Agreed.
|
| Where I grew up a .22 was considered a kid rifle. Yes, FL, but
| I think it was common in other places.
| Ancapistani wrote:
| My daughters both have their own .22s - they're 8 and 14.
|
| They have .20ga shotguns, too, but don't get nearly as much
| use out of those.
|
| We currently live in a neighborhood, and my biggest fear in
| letting them run around is other people calling the police on
| them for just being unattended. I've already had that happen
| once, while they were in my own front yard.
|
| We're in the process of looking for a bigger property,
| further away from other people, where our kids can actually
| be kids. We'll be able to keep some livestock, and they can
| ride four-wheelers, gokarts, and dirt bikes. Today they can
| only do those things when we take them somewhere there's room
| to do it.
| nonsapreiche wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyZ-vDDtwsg
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Rifles in truck window gunracks was completely normal in High
| School lots when I grew up.
| tonymet wrote:
| Kids learn through example. The best way to teach kids not to
| fear the world is to not fear the world yourself.
|
| The trouble is fear is increasing each year. We have more and
| more restrictions, security checks, protocols, warning signs &
| labels, negative news than ever.
|
| You're going to have to take some risks and go against the status
| quo. You may even be wrong. but it's worth the risk to raise a
| capable generation.
| fleddr wrote:
| I was 6 y/o (in the 80s) when I got my first bicycle, after which
| I got to explore my part of the world as I see fit, unsupervised.
| Just be back in time for diner.
|
| My parents had no idea where I was, whom I was with and what I
| was doing. I learned how to use my body and its limits. I learned
| to make friends as well as enemies. We played creatively with
| whatever environment we encountered in ways positive and negative
| (setting small things on fire and such). Play. Experiment. Screw
| up. Learn.
|
| All of this in an environment far less safe than today, in a
| pretty dysfunctional neighborhood.
|
| One day I came home crying, as a much larger kid hit me in the
| face. I found little emotional support as my dad said to just hit
| him back. As I explained that the kid was much older and
| larger..."well, get a piece of wood then".
|
| Crude. Today's parents may even find it neglectful or abusive.
| But it wasn't. It's one of several experiences that have shaped
| me for the better.
|
| As I did get that piece of wood and walked towards my attacker,
| he could see me coming. I was scared as hell, this wood would do
| very little in the hands of a significantly weaker kid. Yet he
| made a run for it, and as word got around, nobody ever messed
| with me again. Because I was strong? No. Because I came back.
|
| I solved a seemingly impossible problem all by myself. It's made
| me a problem solver for life. I learned that negative experiences
| are inevitably part of life, and thus ordinary. This affords me
| to take a hit (physically, financially, otherwise) without
| getting into a state of existential panic. Nor would I waste much
| time complaining about it. I just calmly accept it and solve it.
|
| Another example were the few years where we were really poor. The
| family was under regular threat of repossession. Sometimes my dad
| told me to hide my toys. Half of those toys were fake. My dad's
| attempts to mimic A-brand toys by replicating them with cardboard
| and tape.
|
| Traumatic? No. I simply learned to detach myself from objects. As
| they're just that: objects. I still got fed, had clothes, and
| with an outdoor play lifestyle, I needed little else to be happy.
| I carry this with me to this day: I appreciate luxuries, but
| don't depend on them emotionally.
|
| The point of all this is that this unshielded, unmanaged
| childhood is life itself. By experiencing its highs and lows, you
| develop skills and character, useful for your entire life. Plus
| it's just a whole lot more fun compared to a golden prison.
|
| "A ship is most safe in the harbor, but that's not what ships are
| for".
|
| Oh, also...stop grinding kids by overloading them with tasks and
| rules. Fuck "responsibility". They're kids. They can grind for 50
| years once they're adults, now is the time for irresponsibility
| :)
| randcraw wrote:
| The problem of mishandling fear affects not only kids. Most
| adults seem to be very bad at understanding risk vs reward and
| responding appropriately. (To wit, how should we compare
| different kinds of risk/reward, like a very severe risk that's
| very rare (violent home invasion) as compared to a very minor
| risk that's an everyday booboo (misplacing your car keys). If we
| can't recognize where true risk lies and its true cost, and
| choose a sensible plan of reaction, we will misperceive and
| overreact to all threats.)
|
| There's no better illustration of this than the widespread
| confusion about vaccines, not just among "the hesitant".
| Responding to lopsided risk vs reward ratios, like safe vaccines
| for dire diseases, should be a slam dunk (polio, smallpox,
| typhoid). And if you're in a vulnerable subclass (old, immuno-
| compromised, etc) the same clarity should hold for more modest
| diseases because they can be mortal for you. SUCH TRADEOFFS
| SHOULD BE OBVIOUS. It's only the low-reward moderate-risk choices
| that deserve closer scrutiny (like flu vaccination for kids).
|
| Somehow we all need to learn the two essentials: 1) the basics of
| probability and how to properly balance risk vs reward, and 2)
| what are the necessary/sufficient facts -- what do we really
| know, and how confident should we be in using that knowledge?
| This really should be taught in every pubic school math class.
| For 90% of the population, it's much more valuable a skill than
| typical math courses like geometry, trig, and calculus.
|
| Properly understanding risk is also central to basic reasoning
| skills. Unlike what's taught in academia, the truths of the world
| are rarely binary/propositional. When thinking rationally, one
| needs to be clear in choosing the relevant value proposition (the
| measure of success/failure) and whether the proposed course of
| action will achieve it (likelihood of a plan's success/failure).
| That's a continuous probability, not a binary choice, and we need
| to develop intuition for how to weigh outcomes against our plans
| for achieving them.
|
| Minimizing risk should be an engineered response, where we can
| explain why we believe as we do. The sooner we can all be clear
| headed about what we know, what we want, and the real risk of
| success/failure, the better we will be at dealing with all
| probable worlds.
| luqtas wrote:
| there this is song, from Unknown Mortal Orchestra, called
| Hunnybee; which the composer wrote for his daughter...
|
| btw, i wished my parents were a bit harsh when i was at my early
| 20s working as a bicycle courier to get money for a bicycle
| touring trip around South America... maybe if they told me i
| could got involved in an accident and get f#$%&! or dead i would
| have this insight 3 years sooner than by my own
| spoonjim wrote:
| Easy to say but harder to do. A death of one's child is
| essentially an infinitely negative utility event, so any
| probability of it has an expected value of negative infinity.
| logicalmonster wrote:
| I think a lot of healthy life choices stem from proper risk
| management and cost-benefit analysis, which humans can do on
| their own fairly well for normal life tasks.
|
| For instance, there's a non-zero chance you could lose your life
| every time you get into a car. However, almost everybody still
| hops into cars because the chance of a life-altering accident (if
| the driver not drinking and/or driving like a maniac) is
| relatively low and the benefits to cars in your life are high.
|
| Where I think this ability for normal people to make sensible
| choices gets warped is when the media's business model of driving
| emotional and catchy stories interferes with peoples' actual
| perceptions of risk. For example, there are healthy young people
| still utterly scared to death of Covid because their preferred
| media tells them to be afraid. You can apply this to almost any
| hot button issue that the media has adopted and find people who
| have had their sense of the actual risk warped.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I think it's a stretch to say that humans can do fairly well at
| risk management and cost-benefit analyses; humans are deeply
| irrational creatures who can do some math but whose
| subconscious prefers to conserve calories and work with simple,
| easy to understand absolutes.
|
| Almost no one is punching in the numbers on their risk profile,
| checking, hm, 2.5 million injuries per year, 35,000 fatalities
| per year, 15,000 miles driven, advantages of independent
| mobility, how much will this trip to hang out with Jim affect
| my overall quality of life... No, they're assuming "I'm a good
| driver, I actually have quick reflexes and a safe car,
| nothing's going to happen". Or they're assuming that the roads
| are a jungle and you're almost certain to get into a crash
| eventually, holding negative primals about the safety of car-
| oriented culture.
|
| Likewise, I suspect that some of the negative outcomes
| described in the article:
|
| > _As much as we hope the dangerous-world belief will help our
| kids, the evidence indicates that it does exactly the opposite.
| In the same paper, Clifton and Meindl show that people holding
| negative primals are less healthy than their peers, more often
| sad, more likely to be depressed, and less satisfied with their
| lives. They also tend to dislike their jobs and perform worse
| than their more positive counterparts._
|
| are more appropriate given the reality of the situation. What
| if your job - statistically, you're probably pushing data from
| one silo to another to help add another decimal place to some
| executive's net worth - is not actually likeable? Would you
| rather plaster an ignorant smile to your face and be proud of
| your attention to detail on those TPS reports, and happy that
| IT brought you a new, slightly larger monitor? Perhaps you'd
| call yourself depressed or sad when you consider the probable
| state of the global climate at your eventual retirement date
| (if you ever get a retirement date, that assumes social
| security still exists, your company doesn't discharge your
| pension through bankruptcy, and your investments outperform
| rabid inflation rates).
| cyberbanjo wrote:
| Getting into a car isn't the dangerous part where I live, it's
| being near the road. It's safer to be in a car, near the road,
| than on foot or on bicycle.
| munk-a wrote:
| Both actions are dangerous - and it's the presence of cars
| that makes it dangerous. In the US 42,915 lives were lost in
| automobile crashes[1] in 2021.
|
| 1. https://www.nhtsa.gov/press-releases/early-
| estimate-2021-tra...
| chasd00 wrote:
| like others have said, my biggest fear as a parent is traffic.
| There's a fairly busy street at both ends of my neighborhood. We
| walk and cross those streets enough that i'm confident in their
| abilities but i have zero confidence in drivers. There's street
| racers and drunks constantly, a guy mowing his own yard was
| killed by street racers crashing into each other and then
| spilling over into his yard and crushing him. I routinely see
| people running the red lights at rush hour and the whole
| intersection reeks of weed between 4 and 6 PM. The list goes on.
| It's the traffic that scares me as a parent.
|
| /my kids are 12 and 10
| mikotodomo wrote:
| We absolutely should fear the world. I know a friend who got
| COVID just because he took his mask off and someone came down the
| side walk and passed him. Pedos are stalking their prey with apps
| now. Kids are being abused by apps which they all have easy
| access to! There is no more important time than ever than now for
| parents to properly teach their kids how to be safe.
| perardi wrote:
| I was an 80's kid.
|
| Lots of childhood warnings about drugs or razor blades in
| Halloween candy.
|
| There were never any drugs in our Halloween candy.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoned_candy_myths
| npteljes wrote:
| Good old moral panic. Wikipedia has a really nice article about
| them. Specifically talking about another one that's mentioned
| in this thread, the (perceived) increase in crime.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic
| jmartrican wrote:
| I think America's Most Wanted might have lead to parent's not
| being comfortable letting their kids to roam freely.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This article seems to cherry-pick statistics in favor of its
| thesis. For example, here's a counter-statisic:
|
| > "In 2020, there were 618,399 victims of child abuse in the
| United States. This is a decrease from the previous year, when
| there were 656,251 victims of child abuse, and is the lowest
| number of victims since 2012." (Statista)
|
| Now there are an estimated 70,000,000 children (age 0-17) in the
| USA, but it's likely that child abuse is significantly
| underreported.
|
| So, do you tell kids that child abuse is insignificant, that
| there aren't dangerous people (actual child abusers) and that
| they don't need to even think about it? What should they do then,
| if they learn that one of their friends is a victim of child
| abuse?
|
| The whole article seems a bit Pollyanish. Kids can handle
| learning about things like wars, resource exhaustion, economic
| instability, etc. They can also learn that cars are dangerous and
| that they shouldn't run into the street without looking, all
| without going into a state of debilitating fearfulness.
|
| It's just a matter of balance - for example, it's a good idea to
| tell kids that media outlets tend to cover the worst stories, not
| the best, so blind faith in media - i.e. the belief that reading
| the newspaper or watching a news show means you have a broad
| picture of the world - is unwise.
| is_true wrote:
| Are you sure that the 2020 number is not related with kids
| spending more time isolated?
| lapcat wrote:
| Well, aren't the child abusers most likely to be a parent or
| relative rather than a stranger?
|
| You can't really give parents advice on what to teach kids if
| the parents themselves are the problem.
| samstave wrote:
| If you'd like to understand how the Capitalist economy is setup
| around fear, this is a REALLY REALLY good watch on Lex Fridman.
|
| https://youtu.be/eF-E40pxxbI?t=4445
|
| -
|
| Meditations on Moloch is a great write up.
|
| And if you know what the elites do at Bohemian Grove (worship an
| effigy of Molech) it will help you see the truth behind the
| bullshit system of evil we actual live under.
|
| And if youre new to this ancient concept - then please dont give
| me "conspiracy theory" bullshit, it will only show that you need
| to read up on this.
|
| Seriously, this is a fantastic summary of Molech and how it
| represents capitalism.
| esja wrote:
| Meanwhile in Switzerland, 4 year olds walk to Kindergarten and
| back home again, twice a day, on their own.
|
| They meet friends along the way, play games, take detours, catch
| lizards, but also learn how to manage their time. It's very good
| for them.
| yboris wrote:
| A great companion article from _Vox_ :
|
| _How to raise kids who give back to the world_
|
| Optimism, not despair, is the way to inspire kids to help the
| future.
|
| https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/8/25/23318194/childr...
| lvl102 wrote:
| I generally agree with this but I have a counter argument. I grew
| up in the 80/90s generally unsupervised. I played outside from
| sunrise to sunset. Complete freedom. As a parent now, I reflect
| back on those days and think about the times I came really close
| getting badly hurt or doing something completely stupid. My
| conclusion is that in parenting, it's either you supervise or you
| don't. You can choose to loosen certain boundaries WHILE you're
| supervising but don't ever think allowing your kids to go
| completely unsupervised is good for them in any shape or form.
| duxup wrote:
| We're teaching adults to fear the world.
|
| They're going to do the same for the kids...
|
| I think we need to start with everyone.
| teddyh wrote:
| "Look for the helpers."
|
| -- Fred Rogers
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I chuckled for several different reasons, but it is clearly an
| opinion piece so some some artistic license is allowed.
|
| <<Teaching your kids that the world is dangerous can also make
| them less tolerant of others.
|
| Should kids be taught that the world is not dangerous to make
| kids less likely to be tolerant ( I attempted to retain the
| qualifiers )?
|
| Edit: I decided to remove the rest of the comment. The argument I
| presented for dangerous/safe world seemed off after I re-read it.
| Lacerda69 wrote:
| >Should kids be taught that the world is not dangerous to make
| kids less likely to be tolerant?
|
| If my kids fear that anyone who is not in their group is out to
| harm them,then they will become less tolerant of anyone not in
| their group. Dunno why you put it on the head like that?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Because the question is a really simple one. Is intolerance
| automatically a bad thing? There is a reason stereotypes
| exist ( statistically, they tend to pan out ). They do not
| operate in a vacuum. They are effectively a useful heuristic
| that just happens to sometimes misfire. The issues tend to
| start when that heuristic is institutionalized, but as a day
| to day operator it tends to work.
|
| Second part is more personal, would I be willing to sacrifice
| my kids safety in the name of tolerance? I know how I answer
| that question. I am all but certain most people answer it the
| same way.
|
| To put it simply, as values come: kids > tolerance.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > Is intolerance automatically a bad thing?
|
| Teaching intolerance to children? Yeah, that's a bad thing.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Intolerance.. _of what?_ Intolerance of their brother
| playing with matches under his bed? Intolerance of being
| bullied?
|
| Intolerance itself is amoral. Intolerance of bad things
| is good. Intolerance of good things is bad. Part of
| raising a kid is teaching them which things should be
| tolerated and which things not to tolerate. Absolute
| tolerance isn't virtuous, it makes you a wet noodle with
| no spine.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Intolerance of people different than them. I thought that
| was what was being discussed.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| Every racist has used this same logic to explain why they
| won't let their kids play with the black neighbors.
|
| The problem you're running into is mistaking statistics for
| personal actions.
|
| you can get tetanus from a rusty nail, the solution is more
| care around rusty nails, not to refuse to work around them.
| Or disallow your children from working around them. In
| fact, disallowing that harms them in the long run as they
| never learn how to work around them with more care.
|
| At the end of day being alive implies risk, teaching your
| children how to manage that risk is a part of your job as a
| parent.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| << Every racist has used this same logic to explain why
| they won't let their kids play with the black neighbors.
|
| I do want to point out that the moment you call
| everything racist, nothing is racist. Same applies to
| most labels used to attempt to shut down discussions
| based on merits/data/statistics rather than emotions and
| rallying flag keywords. In the old country, my parents
| did not let me play with other white kids for reasons
| other than race. Were their intolerance so different,
| because it did touch the color of the skin? It is not a
| bait. It is a real question.
|
| << At the end of day being alive implies risk, teaching
| your children how to manage that risk is a part of your
| job as a parent.
|
| We are in agreement.
|
| << Or disallow your children from working around them. In
| fact, disallowing that harms them in the long run as they
| never learn how to work around them with more care.
|
| Depends on the kid temperament really. I was somewhat
| obedient. My sister was not.
|
| You did not really answer the question about intolerance.
| Is racism tolerable? Should you not "not to refuse to
| work around them" based on your own argument?
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| > I do want to point out that the moment you call
| everything racist, nothing is racist.
|
| What was actually said is that if your criteria applies
| to racist actions there's a problem with your criteria,
| in the same way that if your behavior results in someones
| death, there's a problem with your behavior.
|
| statistically speaking, most murders are perpetrated by
| black men. So statistically speaking, your garden variety
| racist is right to distrust their black neighbor.
|
| ^ that the above is true speaks clearly to the flaw in
| your thinking.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| <<"What was actually said is that if your criteria
| applies to racist actions there's a problem with your
| criteria"
|
| Could you elaborate a little bit? I do not want to put
| words in your mouth.
|
| What is the problem with my criteria? Are the criteria
| applied inherently racist? Am I racist the moment if I
| apply them even if they are not inherently racist?
|
| <<statistically speaking, most murders are perpetrated by
| black men. So statistically speaking, your garden variety
| racist is right to distrust their black neighbor.
|
| Well, duh. You don't have to convince me. As any city-
| dweller will tell you, as you approach a stranger on a
| sidewalk at night, you run an internal calculus of
| expected danger. You typically develop sharp senses
| rather fast as a result^ that the above is true speaks
| clearly to the flaw in your thinking. . I am thinking
| Chicago/New York ( but I would assume it applies to any
| bigger city really ).
|
| We can talk about whether it is fair or not, but that is
| the reality of our current existence. You want to change
| it, change the proportions and start putting more whities
| in jail ( I am all for increasing accountability; maybe
| things will improve in general if the laws are applied
| across the board ). Alternatively, we can try seeing what
| can be done to ensure less crimes are committed in urban
| areas so that whites don't flee to suburbs.
|
| <<^ that the above is true speaks clearly to the flaw in
| your thinking.
|
| What is that flaw?
| mithr wrote:
| > [stereotypes] are effectively a useful heuristic that
| just happens to sometimes misfire
|
| They don't _happen_ to _sometimes_ misfire. They are a very
| poor predictor of the behavior of individuals within the
| group you 're stereotyping. And in your day-to-day life,
| you're pretty much always dealing with individuals rather
| than an entire class of people.
|
| This is significantly complicated when considering that
| stereotypes weren't created in a vacuum, either.
| _Sometimes_ they are the result of some statistical
| phenomenon (which still doesn 't mean they are good
| predictors of individual behavior), but often they are the
| result of historical prejudice. One easy example is that
| there are lots of stereotypes about Jewish people, many of
| which involve money or some sort of secret societal
| control. Those are categorically false, and have been tied
| to age-old antisemitic sentiments and humans' natural fear
| of groups of "others".
|
| Some are also self-fulfilling. If 50 years ago a bunch of
| the population believed that a certain class of people were
| more likely to commit crimes, and as a result more of those
| people tended to be arrested, then looking at those
| statistics today in isolation seems to "prove" the point
| that this segment is more dangerous. Whereas in reality the
| _reason_ the statistics are this way is largely _because_
| of the prejudiced belief.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| naive means being surprised by something negative that happened
| to you. To prepare your children for the world means making
| sure they're aware of possibilities.
|
| OTOH, being prepared is not the same as being fearful.
|
| I've seen posts by women describing how they were _fearful_ of
| men until they were 18-20 and realized most men aren't a razors
| edge away from raping them. And their relationship with men
| completely changed.
|
| That doesn't mean women should be ignorant of the possibility,
| but it does mean they shouldn't be _fearful_. Rather they
| should learn to recognize situations where the possibility is
| higher and avoid them.
|
| Years ago I read a story about 3 young women who were paid to
| entertain some men in a boat that sat in international waters.
| At some point they were asked for sex, refused, got raped, then
| dropped off at the airport without the money they were
| promised.
|
| In a perfect world things like this would never happen. But our
| world isn't perfect and there's a certain level of naivete in
| the actions of those young women, they could have avoided all
| of that by recognizing the danger and refusing.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| We've found to be great help in this regard with our kids: no TV
| news, or even cable TV at all, in the house.
| Bloating wrote:
| absolutely reduces anxiety
| encryptluks2 wrote:
| Better title... "teach your kids to be gullible consumers so that
| we can stay rich."
|
| Essentially, this is a new playbook by the wealthy of owning
| nothing, slaving away and being happy doing it.
| Bloating wrote:
| Bloating wrote:
| easy... stop watching the news
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.ph/7kN9L
| viburnum wrote:
| America has way more deaths from guns, drugs, and cars than other
| rich countries. Probably should do something about that rather
| than lecturing parents.
| [deleted]
| jpitz wrote:
| Don't teach fear.
|
| How about that?
| rafaelero wrote:
| Considering how many times I was robbed walking alone in my early
| adulthood I must agree that my parents were correct in inciting a
| sense of danger in me.
| swayvil wrote:
| I wandered the wilds of South Dakota regularly when I was 8-11.
| It was pure magic. Still have all my fingers.
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| I never understood this "you don't have to be afraid" attitude.
| Children DO get kidnapped. Like, in really life. It's not just on
| TV. You can argue "but the probably is so small". Yeah sure, but
| I want to make sure it doesn't happen to MY children.
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| I'm sorry to put this so bluntly, but if you are trying to get
| this down to "truly 0 risk of kidnapping", there is a very high
| chance that you are depriving your kid of developmental
| opportunities in the pursuit of unrealistic risk analysis.
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| My kids are amazing at risk analysis. They know exactly all
| the probablities, better than you with 90% probability.
| Bloating wrote:
| 'cause they're not allowed to do anything but math
| t6jvcereio wrote:
| Why are you so obsessed with telling my kids what they
| should do you creep? Land of the free. You live your
| life, I live mine.
| scotty79 wrote:
| And people really do win the lottery, but you kinda don't base
| your life decision process on that undisputable fact.
|
| And they die in car accidents on their way to get a lottery
| ticket. And people are horrible about comparing such small
| probabilities.
|
| On the other hand you'll inevitably 100% die and very likely
| leave your child to live in the world (s)he is scared of.
| nkingsy wrote:
| Why do people insist on endlessly proving that "healthy, happy
| people do things healthy, happy people do" and the inverse?
|
| I agree with the idea in general I guess, but there's nothing
| here to convince a parent.
|
| Just my data point, my kids are freaking crazy and are slowly
| becoming less suicidal as they hit elementary school.
|
| We try to educate them about things that are legitimately unsafe,
| but they would need to fear consequences to actually do what
| they're told, and we don't really want them acting out of fear.
|
| Who knows what the real numbers are, but I wouldn't try to claim
| my kids are safer.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _"...children should be at least 10 years old to play
| unsupervised in their own front yard, 12 years old to stay home
| alone for an hour, and 14 to be unsupervised at a public park. "_
|
| By the time I was 10 I was allowed to be unsupervised and to get
| on a bus to a railway station, purchase a ticket for an intercity
| train that took me the better part of 100 miles away to another
| city then alight there at a major railway junction with many
| platforms and from there catch a suburban train to my final
| destination where my grandmother lived. However, before I could
| get to see her I had to walk several miles to her home and this
| involved crossing a very busy four-lane arterial highway.
|
| I was no exception, as this was the norm for kids of my age.
| Moreover, such things were never a big deal for us kids, it was
| just the way things were back then. We gave such concerns little
| thought if any at all.
|
| This - unlike millions of today's kids - is why my generation
| were and still are a much more resilient lot and not afraid of
| the world than is the present younger generation.
|
| In my estimation, overprotecting kids rates on a much higher
| scale of child abuse than some[1] matters which are normally
| associated with it.
|
| If you are a modern-day parent and overprotecting your children
| then you need to think twice about the damage and harm that you
| are causing them. It is very difficult to acquire resilience if
| it's not acquired very early on in one's life, and those who
| don't are often forever handicapped.
|
| _
|
| _[1] Of course, that excludes any form of sexual abuse, it 's
| inexcusable and unacceptable under any circumstance._
| [deleted]
| bombcar wrote:
| And today's kids can easily have a device that communicates
| with satellites every few seconds to determine their position
| on the globe, and can update servers with that position
| instantly, along with communication with nearly anyone on
| earth.
|
| When I was a teenager, if my parents wanted to find me on
| weekends, they'd have to resort to calling other parents until
| they tracked me down.
| notch656a wrote:
| The issue is the busybodies also have that device and the
| opportunity cost for them to make false claims about your
| child's safety that result in weeks to months of harassment
| by authorities is practically nill for them. And thanks to
| the way the CPS reporting laws are written, literally illegal
| to find out who the busybody was or face your accuser.
| cecilpl2 wrote:
| To add another datapoint: I'm not even that old (born in the
| mid-80s).
|
| When I was 9 I walked a mile to school with my 6-year old
| sister, unsupervised (and stayed at home alone for an hour
| after school until my parents got home).
|
| At 12 I commuted to school on a city bus for an hour (with a
| transfer downtown).
|
| At 14.. jeez, I'm pretty sure at 14 my parents left me alone in
| the house for a long weekend.
| F2XDBeK92twqqAD wrote:
| Yep, born in 1993, I didn't get to stay home alone or walk to
| school regularly (til high school), but I certainly spent
| hours and hours outside unsupervised (especially during
| summer vacation), pretty much from the time I started school.
| And so did most of my classmates...
| dionidium wrote:
| It should be noted that rate of accidental deaths in childhood
| has fallen drastically since then:
|
| > _Between 1960 and 1990 the death rate for children aged five
| to 14 fell 48 percent ... a growing share of the accelerating
| reduction in child mortality arises from a sharp drop in deaths
| from unintentional injury or accident._
|
| Source: https://www.nber.org/digest/dec99/reducing-accidents-
| key-low...
|
| The freedoms you describe did not come without significant
| cost. Some families paid the ultimate price.
| moret1979 wrote:
| Related to this, deeply focused on the American experience:
|
| The Coddling of the American Mind
|
| > (...) ideas that have become increasingly woven into American
| childhood and education: What doesn't kill you makes you
| weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle
| between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths
| contradict basic psychological principles about well-being and
| ancient wisdom from many cultures. Embracing these untruths--
| and the resulting culture of safetyism--interferes with young
| people's social, emotional, and intellectual development. It
| makes it harder for them to become autonomous adults who are
| able to navigate the bumpy road of life.
|
| > Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that
| have intersected to promote the spread of these untruths. They
| explore changes in childhood such as the rise of fearful
| parenting, the decline of unsupervised, child-directed play,
| and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers
| in the last decade. (...)
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Coddling-American-Mind-Intentions-Gen...
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Back in my day we blamed Dr. Benjamin Spock.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| Thanks for that info, I'll check it out.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Blaming that last one on education seems like a stretch to
| me. It's hard for kids these days not to default to "good vs
| evil" when there's a major political party dedicated to
| actively rolling back what they've grown up with as rights.
| whateveracct wrote:
| There was the same major political party doing the same
| thing in the '90s and the '00s. In fact, some of those
| rights weren't even rights yet (e.g. gay marriage). The
| only difference today is the dramatic reaction to it
| justifying black-and-white thinking.
|
| Even with more polarized political parties today, the world
| is a lot more complicated than "Republicans Evil." If the
| teens of today can't grasp that, it's at least a failure of
| society to develop their emotional resilience (or cynically
| - it's the fault of an economy that is breeding & preying
| on their lack of resilience and nuance).
| goatlover wrote:
| People have different value systems, and different beliefs
| about the role of government. I might not agree with some
| of those values or beliefs, but it doesn't make one side
| evil. It's a philosophical difference over how society
| should work. Humans and societies are much more complex
| than good and evil. Good and evil, or heroes and villains
| are for fiction and religious narratives. And the reductive
| belief in people being good or bad tends to lead to holy
| wars and radicalization.
| rr888 wrote:
| Daily Mail did this a few years back. "How children lost the
| right to roam in four generations"
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...
| matwood wrote:
| I was latchkey kid, born in the late 70s. I don't remember the
| exact ages, but I was always alone or with friends from a very
| young age. My neighborhood had a 4 lane highway on one side and
| rivers on the other 2. The only rule was don't cross the
| highway. We spent most days in the rivers fishing, water skiing
| and generally being idiots, and I'll readily admit that I look
| back at those times and wonder how no one drowned.
|
| My dad also worked a bunch of jobs, one of which was selling
| firewood. At a young age I wasn't strong enough to move the
| logs around, but I could run the hydraulic splitter while he
| did the heavy lifting. I hated it at the time, but looking back
| at it fondly now because it was time with my dad teaching me
| about hard work by example. I ended up helping him with many of
| his jobs often late into the evening.
|
| Are kids too protected today? IDK. Times are different. For
| example, using guns other than for hunting wasn't much of a
| thing. If you had a problem with another kid, you threw a few
| punches in the soccer field and then were friends again the
| next day. Zero social media meant when I was teased a school
| and went home, it didn't follow me. So while maybe kids are too
| protected now, the dangers have changed.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Times are different. For example, using guns other than for
| hunting wasn't much of a thing. If you had a problem with
| another kid, you threw a few punches in the soccer field and
| then were friends again the next day.
|
| This is an incredibly romanticized view of the past. Gun
| violence from 1992-2019 was _significantly_ lower than the
| previous 30 years.
| willis936 wrote:
| And yet the rate of mass shootings has doubled since the
| 90s.
| dnissley wrote:
| In absolute terms, is it still a small amount? Doubling
| doesn't mean much if the number was infinitesimal to
| begin with.
| int_19h wrote:
| The vast majority of deaths from firearms are not from
| mass shootings. This is still true if you look
| specifically at those under 18 - it's down to about ~2K
| homicides, most of which are the result of street
| violence. Mass shootings actually kill less children
| every year than unlocked guns that they get access to and
| accidentally shoot themselves or another kid.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| Mass shootings aren't even 1% of the gun murders.
| Furthermore, they are mostly a product of our obsession
| with them. Mass shootings are for the most part elaborate
| suicides that include making the person famous. If we
| didn't make a big issue out of them there would be little
| incentive to do them.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I'm guessing from the rivers thing you probably didn't live
| anywhere near a major city. Kids getting shot isn't even
| remotely a new thing. In fact, it's quite a bit less common
| now than in the 80s and early 90s. I wasn't exactly inner
| city, just LA suburbs, but my middle school still experienced
| three drive-bys while I was there. I knew four kids who were
| murdered before we graduated and another who shot himself
| when we were 12. We were banned from wearing red, blue, or
| Raiders jerseys because the school district was so paranoid
| we'd get shot. Guns being used for something other than
| hunting has been around a long time. The 70s were really when
| it first started to take off, largely because that was when
| street gangs started taking over domestic drug trade and they
| suddenly became much better funded and better armed.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| This. Inter-city trains weren't even an option where I grew up
| but I went to my grandmother's on my own (city bus, crossing
| major streets) at I'm sure 8 and perhaps 7. We attempted to use
| public transit to get me to private school at IIRC 8, it didn't
| work only because too often the bus didn't stop for me. At 10 I
| was taking one class off campus--and getting there by public
| transit.
|
| There's also a secondary issue with overprotecting kids--they
| don't learn to be wary of the things they do need to be wary
| of. I'm thinking of a case here many years back, 13 year old
| only looks one (the wrong) way before walking through the
| school zone--2 minutes before the lights came on. She stepped
| out right in front of a truck. And I routinely see it in the
| wilderness--20's, 30's out there with no thought of what might
| go wrong. Just Sunday I saved a guy from a very unpleasant
| night--his phone was dead, he took the wrong fork and didn't
| realize it. I had talked to him earlier, encountered him again
| and realized he was on the right trail but going the wrong way.
| (He was parked at a different trailhead than I was.) No phone =
| no call for help and almost certainly no light--note that this
| was the day after a new moon--and even if he realized which
| branch to take at the next junction it still would have put him
| back in civilization several miles from his car. And if he took
| the wrong one--the trail name says "loop" but that will take
| you over an almost 12k summit, a total of nearly 20 miles.
| AtNightWeCode wrote:
| Depends on where you come from, I guess. I remember that we
| teased the kid who still got picked up by his parents from
| school when he was 9. I walked to and from preschool alone when
| I was 6. Usually took the shortcut through the woods. During
| the winter it was almost pitch black. It was scary.
| joshellington wrote:
| Also at 10, my parents put me on a cross-country flight by
| myself from PDX to Atlanta (to visit family). Note, this was in
| 1999, not some bygone era. I imagine there would be an Amber
| Alert nowadays if someone noticed me sitting by myself on an
| airplane.
| bitlax wrote:
| This is very common.
| bombcar wrote:
| https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-info/special-
| assistance/unacc...
|
| It still exists, and there are policies around it.
|
| Amtrak does the same but starts at 12:
| https://www.amtrak.com/unaccompanied-minors-policy
| F2XDBeK92twqqAD wrote:
| Airlines literally have a special thing that costs a ton
| extra and results in the kid being monitored constantly by an
| airline employee. (I got to see the jet bridge being "driven"
| up to the airplane because the guy who was watching me never
| had his relief show up!) https://www.aa.com/i18n/travel-
| info/special-assistance/unacc...
| jack_h wrote:
| My parents divorced when I was very young and my dad ended up
| getting a job in a different state. So by age 4-5 I was
| flying alone between parents semi-regularly. This was in the
| late 80s to early 90s.
| DavidPeiffer wrote:
| A coworker in grad school was from China and talked about at
| age 3 needing to go to the market to buy some basic groceries,
| fix his own food, and he was alone in the apartment while his
| parents worked. It was an eye opening conversation to have just
| a handful of years ago.
|
| Starting around age 6 or 7 I was going into the woods playing
| with a friend and by 11 or so my parents had no problem with me
| riding my bike whwrever I wanted to around town, well before I
| had a cell phone.
| the_af wrote:
| Wow. At age 3 some children cannot fully verbalize what they
| want or need, and some still are not potty trained. I'm ready
| to accept _some_ 3 year olds can do this, but I think it 's
| unreasonable to expect _most_ children at age 3 to be able to
| go to the supermarket to buy groceries and fix their own
| food...
| bombcar wrote:
| Depending on what you define "fix your own food" as, most 3
| year olds will be able to do something akin to it; if
| permitted.
|
| Our one year old could walk to the kitchen and extract
| things from the fridge, though she would have difficulty
| opening some of them.
| carabiner wrote:
| Out of curiosity, do you have experience raising kids, or do
| you plan to?
| watwut wrote:
| What he said is true in large part of world, bith in western
| countries and non-western ones. In particular, 9 years old
| being unable to play alone in own back yard is deeeply
| ridiculous.
| jessaustin wrote:
| The concerns of parents are somewhat irrelevant to the
| discussion. TFA is about what is good for kids.
| pdonis wrote:
| I'm with you on overprotecting kids being a bad thing, but it's
| pretty rich for The Atlantic to be telling parents not to teach
| their kids to fear the world, when their stock in trade, like
| that of practically all media outlets, is to constantly teach
| _parents_ to fear the world.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| I really don't get this reaction, and it seems very common. I
| don't really read the Atlantic much any more, haven't for a
| long time, but that's because I don't read much of any news
| periodicals. Nonetheless, for a periodical, they have always
| presented a pretty broad range of views, and the range tends
| to always be somewhat middle of the road. So no extreme takes
| on any particular subject, but within the range of what they
| publish, it's very common for one writer to disagree with
| another.
|
| This seems to be getting painted by a lot of you as a bad
| thing. The views presented here don't represent the views
| _of_ the Atlantic. They represent the views of the writer.
| And other writers also published by the Atlantic disagree.
| Some of them think you should be afraid. Some of them think
| you should not be afraid. That isn 't hypocrisy or "rich."
| It's a publication showing you a range of views from people
| who disagree on subjects that are far from settled. How is
| this supposed to be a bad thing? Do you want the editorial
| board to instead only publish takes that all agree and
| present only one side of any subject?
| plutonorm wrote:
| It's entirely on brand. They are playing into parent's fear
| of being too afraid. It's fear inception. Fuck off, I'm
| keeping my kids in the house until at least 10yo and that
| white van that has been seen prowling around is a serious
| threat and they should know about it. Strangers are
| potentially dangerous, high things are dangerous. The world
| will mess you up in a moment if you don't use your whole
| being, your gut and your head, to move intelligently within
| it. Being carefree and ignorant is not an optimal strategy,
| nor is it the path to a life lived in truth. And ultimately a
| life lived beautifully. Vacuous joy is not the goal here.
| tasuki wrote:
| > that white van that has been seen prowling around is a
| serious threat and they should know about it
|
| Care to explain?
| rhino369 wrote:
| Might overcharge for their plumbing services.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| That's one fucked up way to see the world, and... to fuck
| up your kids for good. I hope they are stronger than you
| and overcome whatever you instill(ed) in them, many do.
| Some would even call social services in such a case (I
| wouldn't but that's mostly due to general shit quality of
| those).
|
| Overall, the whole article is so surreal - is this actual
| reality in US? Where I live, and lived, which means some
| parts of Europe, kids are much more self-sufficient, its
| expected from them and they are happy to deliver. I recall
| the joy and pride I felt when I begged my parents into
| letting me go alone for the first time on public transport
| from aunt home, and they let me and it was at the end
| simple ride with bunch of stops. The idea anybody can
| protect their kids 100% is completely ridiculous, just let
| it go. Teach them to be smart when interacting with
| strangers, not fearful. Are you also afraid by default when
| stranger approaches you ie with a question? (that would
| explain a lot).
|
| Whatever inner problem you have, it can be worked on by
| specialists, just don't close yourself since you drag your
| closest family down that hole and young ones have no good
| defenses for messed up parents.
| lolinder wrote:
| > Overall, the whole article is so surreal - is this
| actual reality in US?
|
| As with almost everything, it depends on where you are in
| the US, but there has been a general trend towards
| overprotection of kids. The GP is an extreme example, but
| I've definitely met parents with that same attitude.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| You teach kids not to go with strangers, you don't teach
| them to fear the world.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >By the time I was 10 I was allowed to be unsupervised and to
| get on a bus to a railway station, purchase a ticket for an
| intercity train that took me the better part of 100 miles away
| to another city then alight there at a major railway junction
| with many platforms and from there catch a suburban train to my
| final destination where my grandmother lived.
|
| Pfff, when I was 7 or 8 I took the local bus to the intercity
| bus station and then took that 200km to get to my grandparents.
| I had to figure out what bus to get on to and when to get off.
| I remember nobody even asked me for ticket money, just asked me
| where I was going. I was super happy because I got to pocket
| the money - but then I lost somewhere on my way there :(
|
| But I was one of 4 children in a poor family (at the time,
| eventually we got up to 6). I can't see myself risking my son
| on something as stupid, the amount of near death experiences
| I've had as a child, it freaks me out when I think about my son
| doing something like that, and I can't really say I'm better
| off for it either - I was just bored, poor and didn't have
| anything better to do.
| jrumbut wrote:
| > This - unlike millions of today's kids - is why my generation
| were and still are a much more resilient lot and not afraid of
| the world than is the present younger generation.
|
| I marvel at this logic. Who raised the present younger
| generation?
|
| Children didn't make the rules that they can't buy train
| tickets. They weren't born afraid. Their resiliency hasn't been
| molded yet.
|
| The question isn't "why are kids this way?" The question is
| "why are _we_ raising children this way when we weren 't raised
| this way ourselves?"
| interroboink wrote:
| This quote comes to mind: Hard times create
| strong people Strong people create good times
| Good times create weak people Weak people create hard
| times
| brazzy wrote:
| ...which is a recent internet meme typically associated
| with counterfactual pseudo-history.
| interroboink wrote:
| Oh? I had never heard of that association. I just liked
| the quote (:
|
| Could you share a link or something on that topic? I'm
| curious.
|
| Certainly, the concept long-predates the internet. A bit
| like the yin/yang symbol, where there's a little "dot" of
| one color inside the other, symbolizing a similar
| cyclical concept of one arising from the other.
| danbolt wrote:
| I can't share any links, but I'd posit that "things
| getting better, then getting worse, then getting better"
| can seem subjective and self-fulfilling.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >The question is "why are we raising children this way when
| we weren't raised this way ourselves?"
|
| I feel like the investment into individual children is much
| much higher than it used to be (time/resources/emotions).
| When you have 5 kids it's not that you don't care, but you
| literally can't be as protective about them as you can when
| you're only raising one or two. And then as people have less
| children the norms gradually change.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _" I feel like the investment into individual children is
| much much higher than it used to be
| (time/resources/emotions)."_
|
| Why, and is this important and or a problem? BTW, I don't
| claim to have an answer.
| bitlax wrote:
| Certainly not time since many more families are dual income
| or have only one involved parent. Also the quality of the
| time matters. Weekend time and after-work time is not
| equivalent to morning and midday productive time.
| moonchrome wrote:
| >Certainly not time since many more families are dual
| income or have only one involved parent
|
| Your time investment is even greater value (to you) since
| you have less out-of-work time overall.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Also media hysterics.
|
| The same number of kids were probably abused in a variety
| of ways 50 years ago. Maybe more than today, even. But what
| most people knew about the news was what was in the local
| paper and maybe they watched 30 minutes of national news on
| TV.
|
| They didn't have a device in their pocket alerting them in
| real-time about a kidnapping story in another state.
|
| People are not good at assessing probability of risk. If
| they hear about something, they think it's likely. So they
| get more and more afraid.
| nradov wrote:
| The real change started with the kidnapping and murder of
| Eton Patz in 1979. The case was nationally publicized,
| and was one of the factors leading to putting pictures of
| missing children on milk cartons. That really scared a
| lot of parents (I do understand that the fear was mostly
| irrational).
|
| https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-
| library/kidnappings/etan-p...
| notch656a wrote:
| I don't worry at all about kidnappings.
|
| What I worry about is CPS and police officers claiming
| child endangerment. In my state you can be charged with
| child endangerment just for leaving the kid strapped into
| the seat on a moderate day while you walk in to pay the
| gas station attendant. You could potentially be arrested
| and charged for letting a 7 year old play alone at the
| park for a bit.
|
| The kidnappers are real. But they're the CPS and police,
| and they can't wait to put your kids into a brutal kids-
| for-cash foster care system. They draw their salary under
| the guise of "safety" while victimizing children and
| sapping their independence. And busybodies everywhere
| have a device at the ready in their pocket, that allows
| them to invite months of scrutiny into your life based on
| 30 seconds of effort on their own part, after which the
| law prevents you from finding their identity or facing
| your accuser.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Irrational reactions to statistically anomalous "stranger
| danger" and similiar are why CPS has that power in the
| first place.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| You've got it wrong--the actual rate of abuse has gone
| down considerably, not merely the same as it used to be.
| You are right that it's being magnified by the news
| competing for eyeballs.
|
| And the greatest risk isn't the stranger, it's people you
| know and trust. The vast, vast majority of people aren't
| going to harm a kid--you teach kids that if they need
| help they should go up to an adult and ask. That reduces
| the risk much further.
| F2XDBeK92twqqAD wrote:
| Because literally every form of media today constantly tells
| people that they need to be afraid of going outside, and most
| people buy it, even though our society (at least here in the
| US) is almost certainly safer than when they were growing up.
|
| How many times have you seen someone saying they were afraid
| walking down the sidewalk because... someone else was also
| walking down the sidewalk?
| azekai wrote:
| You are right, but I don't think it is _just_ the fault of
| the media, this is how the human brain works. No one is
| losing their minds with fear at dull but distressingly
| common causes of death like heart disease and car
| accidents. It is the rare, dramatic, unexpected kinds of
| death and violence that govern our thoughts.
|
| People fear flying for psychological reasons of
| control/helplessness, not for logical statistical reasons.
| Fear of 'scary' death is like the negative version of the
| inaccurate and over-optimistic math that causes people to
| buy lottery tickets.
| jrumbut wrote:
| This is exactly my point. Part of being an adult in the
| modern world is being discerning in your media consumption
| and just a pinch of courage (obviously, specific
| circumstances might require a lot more).
|
| It's OK to feel nervous if you run into someone unexpected
| outside, everyone gets that way sometimes. It's how you
| handle that feeling.
| [deleted]
| notch656a wrote:
| >"why are we raising children this way when we weren't raised
| this way ourselves?"
|
| Because CPS will come and you'll be charged with child
| endangerment if you let your kid have "too much"
| independence. And naturally the kids will ask questions about
| why they can't do this or that, and many people will know
| "because CPS would take you away" is a bad answer (or one the
| kid will ignore) so they lie about the dangers. It's a shit
| sandwich situation to be in.
| lolinder wrote:
| Free range parenting laws are the answer. Three states have
| passed legislation that clarifies that "neglect" does not
| include allowing children to engage in independent
| activities. In said states, parents can be much more
| confident that nosy neighbors can't ruin their lives.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free-
| range_parenting#Legal_pro...
| Hackbraten wrote:
| > Because CPS will come and you'll be charged with child
| endangerment if you let your kid have "too much"
| independence.
|
| How often does that actually happen?
| notch656a wrote:
| How often would it have to happen for you to risk your
| right to vote, defend your family, get any reasonably
| well paying job, and retain custody of your children?
|
| If you search for something as simple as "charged for
| leaving child at park" there's no shortage of anecdata,
| and many if not most aren't something crazy like
| abandonment.
|
| The laws in my state are vague enough that parents can
| and have been criminally charged for merely letting a
| confident 7 y/o play at the park while they briefly ran
| an errand. Unfortunately the state doesn't keep
| statistics like "how often did we frivolously charge
| parents."
| mk89 wrote:
| I believe that there was much less violence in the past than
| there is now. Or at least that's the perception, hence, we
| want to avoid that our kids get into real trouble. Not that
| it wasn't the case 30 years ago, however, things have changed
| and I think in most places didn't change for the better. But
| it clearly depends on where you live.
| [deleted]
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I'm struggling with this a lot right now.
|
| When we became parents my wife and I agreed that we wanted to let
| our kids explore the world with a similar level of freedom we had
| as a kids.
|
| When my 3yo was about 2, he pushed through a defective locked
| gate and fell down a flight of stairs, losing a tooth. Then about
| three weeks ago he got distracted in the bathroom and fell off a
| stool with a toothbrush in his mouth. I'll spare you the details.
|
| These accidents weren't directly caused by our goal of giving our
| kids more independence, but they had the effect of making that
| goal all but impossible, at least for now. I catch myself telling
| him he can't do things he could before, or saying "<childname>
| slow down!" about 100 times per day. Seeing him on a playground
| gives me terrible anxiety.
|
| He's fine. He's not afraid of anything. He's so bloody resilient
| despite all his trauma. But I'm failing him because the risks
| feel so real and paralyzing. To love what death can touch...
|
| One difference, I think, is that I am lucky enough to not be
| affected by the historical taboo of mental health. I'm seeking
| therapy for this, which I'm also not afraid to admit out loud.
| And I'm hopeful that it will help me face this.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Don't drag your kid into pit hole of your own mental issues.
| Does he have some permanent damage, or just few teeth that
| would anyway fell out and maybe some light scars? That's 0
| price to pay to have true freedom at most important time of
| life.
|
| Why do folks have so much issues with letting life just
| unravel, and desperately trying to control every aspect of it,
| yet consistently being reminded how they are failing? I don't
| have any mental issues so its very hard for me to imagine what
| it causes. What I describe is natural to me, and seems almost
| impossible to force upon yourself for you.
|
| Good luck with help, your kids need it.
| logifail wrote:
| > Then about three weeks ago he got distracted in the bathroom
| and fell off a stool with a toothbrush in his mouth. I'll spare
| you the details. These accidents weren't directly caused by our
| goal of giving our kids more independence, but they had the
| effect of making that goal all but impossible, at least for
| now.
|
| Earlier this summer we had our family holiday in Italy. In week
| one I had a bike accident which necessitated a visit to the
| local emergency room and I was wearing a dressing on my arm for
| the entire holiday. In week two my daughter had an unlucky fall
| and cut her forehead which necessitated a(nother) visit to the
| local emergency room, she needed stitches. In week three our
| eldest was stung by a jellyfish while swimming in the sea. Huge
| weals all down his body but (fortunately) no trip to ... the
| emergency room.
|
| We have three kids and you would not believe the number of
| times I've had to drop everything to take one or other of them
| to the doctor and/or the hospital.
|
| > the risks feel so real and paralyzing
|
| Seriously: please _don 't give up_ on your wish to let your
| kids explore the world!
| Spinnaker_ wrote:
| I was lucky enough to have parents like you. I look back
| fondly on the adventures and all the accompanying accidents
| and injuries.
|
| What parents can perceive as trauma is a really cool story
| for a kid.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > We have three kids and you would not believe the number of
| times I've had to drop everything to take one or other of
| them to the doctor and/or the hospital.
|
| This would cost most families (without gold plated healthcare
| subsidies from being a government employee or other generous
| employer in the US) $10k to ~$17.5k per year, and those
| ranges go up every year.
|
| A single doctor visit is usually $200 to $300, and emergency
| room visit might as well be your annual out of pocket maximum
| ($10k to $17k).
|
| I grew up before out of pocket maximums were a thing, and I
| remember my dad distinctly telling me to be careful not to
| injure myself because it could derail the whole family's
| future. This was because my parents were immigrants who were
| building a small business, so they had equity to lose, but
| not enough cash flow to purchase healthcare. I also thought
| about impacts to my sister's future, who is 6 years younger.
|
| I never did participate in sports and never needed to go to
| the doctor or dentist.
|
| Today, I earn enough to not have to worry about healthcare
| expenses, but I would not have had kids if I did not have the
| ability to pay for two calendar years' worth of out of pocket
| expenses (~$34k, in case injury occurs on Dec 31).
| shahar2k wrote:
| I had similar level of accident prone-ness as a kid and still a
| lot of freedom,
|
| sped down a giant incline right into a wall of concrete+rebar
| and had neighborhood kids literally carry me back home, stapled
| myself burnt myself on soldering irons cuts bruises so on...
| that kind of stuff I dont think even affects me physically,
| what sticks with me was the freedom to experiment with anything
| (I was also a bit of a rule breaker, breaking into unoccupied
| apartments in our building as a kid)
| strangattractor wrote:
| Sounds like you are self aware and can realize when you might
| be going overboard. Just sent my son to college. I made tons of
| mistakes. He overcame them. People are resilient - so is your
| child.
| MisterTea wrote:
| The thing is why are we more scared these days? Did our parents
| care less for our health and safety? Or, perhaps they were more
| ignorant of the world as a whole and blissfully raised a
| family? Cuts, bruises and maybe broken bones are part of
| growing up and learning.
|
| These days "media", meaning news and social media, seem to act
| as more as an anxiety pipeline than an information service. I
| also feel it forms a violence feedback loop by fueling peoples
| fears until the mentally unstable among us feel so cornered
| they lash out violently like a trapped animal. Of course this
| is on purpose because information is boring and they needs
| advertising revenue. Anxiety makes more money. Seems
| coincidentally the perfect time to decriminalize weed.
| b800h wrote:
| I don't buy the media blame thing on its own. It feels like
| there should be epidemiological research into it. For
| example, how is this generation's coffee intake different to
| the last one? Use of psychotropic medications? Different air
| pollution, less lead?
| hilbert42 wrote:
| I'm pretty certain you're correct. It seems to me that we
| won't get to the bottom of this until the study of
| intergenerational and cultural change becomes a much more
| established science. And for that to happen we need much
| more research into the matter. Moreover, the objectives of
| any such research should be clearly defined and then
| rigorously carried out.
|
| This subject is a political football and the individual
| views and biases of researchers often taint the data. We
| won't make significant progress until we find ways of
| minimizing this problem.
| Ancalagon wrote:
| At least it was a baby tooth :)
|
| 3 is a little young to have much independence anyways, I would
| think closer to 1st grade is when kids can start having bit
| more
| nico wrote:
| > 3 is a little young to have much independence
|
| This is very much a cultural and setting thing.
|
| In Japan there's a tradition of having kids, at around 3
| years old, go out by themselves to run errands. There's a
| whole tv show about it.
|
| If you are curious about other cultures as well, there's a
| pretty good documentary on Apple tv about the first 5 years
| of life of kids from all around the world, including kids in
| rural areas, big cities and even small remote tribes.
|
| Regarding the setting, there are some places (like some
| resorts or big estates), where young kids can be very safe
| and that allows them to be on their own a lot and build their
| independence.
| spywaregorilla wrote:
| The children on this TV show go along preplanned routes
| that are vetted by the show and are of course secretly
| supervised by the tv crews. 3 year olds are not routinely
| running errands in japan.
|
| Young children do do things at a much younger age
| independently in japan than america, but it's not like the
| show.
|
| edit: not to imply the show is fake or anything. It's just
| a special situation the show is filming.
| autoexec wrote:
| As carefully supervised as those kids are, it has made me
| realize how much more capable children that age are than
| I gave them credit for. I'm still not sure I'd have done
| as well when I was that little. I was walking myself
| to/from primary school at least.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| My 2 year old would beg to differ... everything right now is
| "I do it!"
|
| Of course I don't always _let_ the kid do it, but I try to
| keep an open mind for what they 're capable of.
| vel0city wrote:
| My <2 year old gets frustrated if we try to help too much
| brushing teeth or putting his pants on! He also hates it
| when you try and feed him, he'll fight it until you just
| set the spoon down and let him feed himself.
| bombcar wrote:
| The key is finding things that they CAN do that you're
| pretty certain won't hurt them too much if they somehow
| fail.
|
| Because otherwise they're going to silently sit and watch
| and wait, and then one night grab the car keys and put the
| car in neutral and roll down the driveway into the
| neighbor's yard.
|
| At least so I've heard.
| ravedave5 wrote:
| This isn't exactly what I read but this helped me. It's good to
| encourage your children to think.
|
| Remember that... sticks are sharp, your sister is standing
| right next to you, rocks are heavy.
|
| Notice how... these rocks are slippery, the glass is filled up
| to the top, that branch is strong.
|
| What's your plan... with that big stick, if you climb up that
| tree?
|
| Do you feel... stable on that rock, balanced on that step, the
| heat from the fire?
|
| How will you... get down, go up, get across?
|
| Can you see... the toys on the floor, the end of the path, that
| big rock over there?
|
| Can you hear... the rushing water, the wind, the other kids
| playing?
|
| Try using your... hands, feet, arms, legs.
|
| https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/stop-telling-kids-careful-in...
| macinjosh wrote:
| Thank you. I really needed just this sort of framing to help
| me with my toddler.
| ryukafalz wrote:
| I broadly agree with this, but it's going to be hard if by the
| time I have kids pedestrian fatalities are still on the rise. The
| article mentions some statistics that are dropping, but the ones
| I worry about more are the ones that actually are still
| increasing, like the chance of my kid getting hit by a car while
| they're walking around the neighborhood.
| Mordisquitos wrote:
| What about the increasing statistics of mental health issues
| among children and the increase in childhood inactivity and
| obesity? Don't those encourage you to let your kid to freely
| walk around the neighbourhood?
|
| Snark aside, the key point is that the statistics that you are
| worried are still increasing are still nonetheless _Black Swan_
| events on an individual scale. Their increase should absolutely
| be a concern at the political, urban planning, and public
| health levels, but it should never be a reason to discourage or
| forbid activities that in all regards are healthier and more
| formative as a person than their avoidance.
| Thlom wrote:
| Might they be black swan events because most people are very
| weary about letting their kids walk around unsupervised?
| acuozzo wrote:
| > but the ones I worry about more are the ones that actually
| are still increasing, like the chance of my kid getting hit by
| a car while they're walking around the neighborhood
|
| Yes! This is my issue as well. Drivers on residential streets
| have gotten so much worse since I was a kid in the '80/90s.
| narush wrote:
| Streets themselves have also gotten much worse! The vast
| difference in car deaths in the US and other countries is
| more a question of our infrastructure and what it encourages
| than anything else.
|
| I read a really great book about this recently -- no vested
| interest beyond just really liking it. Check it here [1]
|
| [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/book
| daltont wrote:
| For those of us who are now parents, think about how easily
| you could travel to your school, nearest park, grocery
| store, etc. at the house you grew up in and compare that to
| where you are living now.
|
| For me:
|
| 1> My kindergarten was adjacent to my subdivision. My
| Catholic elementary school was less that one mile away and
| very walkable. The public Jr. High and High Schools I went
| to were a bit over a mile. None of these required crossing
| busy four lane roads ("Stroads" in Strong Towns parlance).
| The one exception was my Pre-K that was more like 3 or 4
| miles and would involve crossing a busy four lane road.
|
| My kids went to private schools that all required getting
| on an interstate to get to. Even if they went to public
| school, the nearest build is 2.8 miles and involve walking
| along parts without sidewalks.
|
| 2> Growing up, I had a big public park adjacent to my
| subdivision (on the opposite side as the kindergarten) I
| had most of my soccer and baseball practices there and I
| walked to them.
|
| Similar parks would be 3-5 miles drive across very busy
| four lane highways where I live now.
|
| 3> Nearest grocery store was 1.2 miles from my childhood
| home.
|
| Now, it is 4 miles up and across a very busy four lane
| highway.
|
| Of course a lot of this is just where I happen to be buy my
| house as an adult and I was fortunate to grow up in a
| flatter part of town, but it would not be surprising that
| sprawl has increased the distances on average of these and
| other basic amenities.
| bombcar wrote:
| The old locations still exist, but many are priced out of
| reach, and the lack of kids leads to the school closing.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Once a road becomes 4+ lanes wide (32ft+), and has a speed
| limit of 40mph (which means people drive at 50mph), it is
| basically a boundary that children cannot cross.
|
| And in suburbs across the US, it is very normal to have
| numerous arterial roads (40mph speed limit) cut through
| suburbs that are 4, 6, 7, and even 8 lanes wide.
|
| How even a healthy, mobile adult is expected to cross these
| 60ft+ wide intersections without being scared, I do not
| know.
|
| There will be 3 lanes going straight through, and a right
| turn lane and a left turn lane. And half the people will be
| in SUV/pickup trucks sitting so high they will not see you
| in front of them, and their giant A pillar will prevent
| them from seeing you on the side of them.
| cdot2 wrote:
| I wonder if this is because of phones
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Large vehicles with reduced visibility, huge engines with
| lots of power and acceleration, and head height grills plus
| phones.
| Bloating wrote:
| and a boom in the number of younger drivers
| hoosieree wrote:
| Part of the problem is cars have gotten better/safer/faster
| and more boring.
|
| I like the idea of not allowing highway vehicles near people.
| Park your interstate cruiser on the edge of town and then
| drive a golf cart to your house.
|
| Bonus: driving a golf cart is _fun_ and feels fast at low
| speeds.
| _whiteCaps_ wrote:
| Cars may be safer but SUVs and trucks have not, which
| unfortunately make up a large part of new vehicle sales
| around here.
| Bloating wrote:
| ... must be nice living in a resort town
| philips wrote:
| 100% as a parent the issue is cars interacting with children.
|
| A suboptimal but creative solution I saw recently was neighbors
| working together to remove their backyard fences to create a
| large and safe play area for children in the suburbs.
|
| I don't know what the solution is but it is frightening how
| society at large just accepts the deaths and injuries. And in
| my neighborhood how people drive fast around blind corners
| knowing there is an elementary school 5 blocks away and kids
| everywhere on all manner of bike/board/walk.
| AlanSE wrote:
| > suboptimal but creative solution I saw recently was
| neighbors working together to remove their backyard fences to
| create a large and safe play area for children in the
| suburbs.
|
| This is something I would love to do, but still feels so
| impossible. I see some homes compromise and put gates in the
| fence. Where I am, I see probably 70%+ of homes with
| backyards using them as bathrooms for their dogs, and I
| imagine that many people would have a problem just with the
| basic social contract of who cleans dog poop.
|
| Particularly due to COVID, I've begun to appreciate just how
| severely the suburban structure negatively impacts all
| aspects of our lives. You have HOAs that invest in common
| playgrounds, cities that have invested in parks, and
| virtually everyone reports extremely high satisfaction with
| these things. Yet my own feelings of isolation tells me that
| we need much much more. I'm at the point that I would
| seriously seek out and move to a place with a walk-able kid-
| friendly setup. But it just doesn't exist.
| philips wrote:
| We found a place that was somewhat friendly to being
| walkable in that school and parks are close. But shopping,
| library and activities are all a few miles away. But then
| we added an electric cargo bike (Tern GSD) and it really
| expanded our sense of connectivity and joy. After almost
| 400 miles in 5 months it has been great for us.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| I like Arthur Brooks. He seems to be a voice of reason in this
| crazy world.
|
| Having just read his recent book and both the books he mentions
| in the article, I actually started to understand what is being
| said here.
|
| On the first page of the Tao Te Ching (Stephen Mitchell
| translation), it talks about the true source of understanding is
| darkness.
|
| > Free from desire, you realize the mystery.
|
| > Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.
|
| > Yet mystery and manifestations
|
| > arise from the same source.
|
| > This source is called darkness.
|
| > Darkness within darkness.
|
| > The gateway to all understanding.
|
| We can't teach kids nor ourselves to fear the world. We have to
| step into the darkness to gain clarity of who we are and what we
| are here to do. That's the only way to learn. This somewhat adds
| onto Scott Barry Kaufman's new ideas of self-actualization.
|
| Kaufman uses a sailboat as a metaphor in which the hull is
| security and the sail is growth.
|
| https://scottbarrykaufman.com/sailboat-metaphor/
|
| Which reminds me of the famous quote:
|
| > A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built
| for.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67896.Tao_Te_Ching
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/49625550-transcend
| hotpotamus wrote:
| Arthur Brooks strikes me as a genuinely nice and interesting
| person. But I wonder, how much did he get paid to run a
| billionaire funded thinktank (and that tank of thoughts seemed
| mostly full of "give tax cuts to billionaires")?
|
| I assume it paid pretty well. I also assume it's pretty easy to
| be nice and easygoing and thoughtful when you don't have to
| worry about where your kids next meal or health insurance
| payment is coming from.
| amatecha wrote:
| I think knowing the darkness helps you know the "light" too.
| when I was a teenager I sought out the unfiltered truth of what
| humans were capable of, so I could properly understand what
| humanity "is". I found a lot of disturbing stuff (because I
| sought it out) and it helped me grow as a person and know how
| to interface with the world and get a better sense of what the
| full spectrum is. It didn't cause me to be fearful or anything,
| just aware. Anyway, maybe not 100% on-topic but what you said
| reminded me of that.
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Exactly. That's what they mean by "embodying the light". Also
| in the tao te ching in the introduction.
| rcpt wrote:
| Ctrl+f "cars", no hits.
|
| Not reading all that.
| hexator wrote:
| As long as most of America remains car dependent and pedestrian-
| hostile, parents will be afraid of letting their kids out of the
| house. Unfortunately, that's rarely acknowledged as the problem
| (even in this article)
| Claude_Shannon wrote:
| My parents never let me outside. All my youth was spend sitting
| in the front of the screen as I couldn't even go for a walk
| because they were afraid.
|
| I feel it messed me up a lot.
| slothtrop wrote:
| Operating in the world means accepting a threshold of risk, sure.
| You can account for some as best you can without necessarily
| being overly restrictive, it's just hard to have an intuition of
| the odds when all you can address are black-and-white scenarios
| like "could someone be kidnapped right now, and how easily?". The
| mere cognizance is enough to make people fearful, so it requires
| some perspective to stay even.
|
| I'd have more fear for kids in teenage and young adult years, as
| either foolishness or being too trusting can lead to
| ostracization or even jail time.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| This kind if title is rich coming from the fear mongering media.
| Particularly as the story right above this in the most popular
| stories section is "America's Fall Booster Plan Has a Fatal
| Paradox"
| johndhi wrote:
| alexashka wrote:
| Par for the course. Sell sugar water, sell bottled water, sell
| cigarettes, sell quit cigarettes products.
|
| The cycle is meant to continue forever, increasing in velocity,
| until all the paperclips are belong to us :)
| oifjsidjf wrote:
| This.
|
| The best thing to teach your kid is to clearly show them how
| the media and politicians lie and manipulate by showing their
| contradtory talking vs behaviour vs what they actually do side-
| by-side meme style.
| beebeepka wrote:
| Agreed. However, I don't have children and I wouldn't know
| where to begin with my niece. Thanks for reminding me I
| should spend more time with her.
|
| In my experience this also works for impressionable adults
| but you have to keep them close
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Find your local librarian or english teacher, they were the
| ones responsible with teaching me how to judge an article
| or paper or book's credibility.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I hear this all the time. The joke is that both sides of the
| political divide think it's the other side that credulously
| believes everything the media peddles to them. It smells a
| lot like the usual 'both sides are bad' trope.
| Bloating wrote:
| Both sides... good vs bad makes it easy
| teddyh wrote:
| The joke, of course, is that both sides _do_ believe what
| (their own) media tells them.
| Bloating wrote:
| Thats what they tell you
| whoooooo123 wrote:
| This doesn't preclude the possibility that one side's
| media tells the truth more accurately than the other's.
| teddyh wrote:
| Of course, but that's completely orthogonal. Nobody
| believes their own side's media because it's less easy to
| debunk; people instead believe that media because it's
| the media from _their own side_ , and as such tells
| people on that side what they _want_ to hear and believe.
| jmugan wrote:
| Well, we can at least say that one side in more
| sophisticated in how they present their truth, but I'm
| not sure that makes it any more truthful.
| asdff wrote:
| Well, both sides are neoliberal.
| infamouscow wrote:
| Instead of dismissing the point as unoriginal, why don't
| you address the substance of the argument and provide
| evidence refuting the claim both sides are bad?
| Bloating wrote:
| both sides, because theres only two sides to any issue
| majormajor wrote:
| What substance?
|
| > This kind if title is rich coming from the fear
| mongering media. Particularly as the story right above
| this in the most popular stories section is "America's
| Fall Booster Plan Has a Fatal Paradox"
|
| and
|
| > The best thing to teach your kid is to clearly show
| them how the media and politicians lie and manipulate by
| showing their contradtory talking vs behaviour vs what
| they actually do side-by-side meme style.
|
| Don't have much substance at all. One has an anecdote of
| the form "the same website has another article with a
| hyperbolic title!" (This is a classic sort of
| "disagreement implies deceit" argument as is always
| brought up when scientists disagree on things, or
| consensus changes.) The other has a claim of "what [the
| media] says and does is different" in a way that suggests
| this is distinctive/meaningfully different in that way
| than in terms of any other human's behavior without _any_
| supporting substance, you 're just supposed to accept it
| on faith that "the media" are intentionally manipulative
| hypocrites. _Even if this is correct, it 's not actually
| a substantial argument as presented, it will only
| possibly work on the already-converted._
| hulitu wrote:
| The joke is that both sides of the political divide make no
| difference in their actions. The only difference is that
| some things are slowed down, but in the end they are
| implemented.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Any data to support this? Because I can name quite a few,
| especially one very recent popular legal action based on
| political divide that have very different consequences
| for the populace.
| jmugan wrote:
| Isn't that kind of meta? Calling it the "both-sides-are-bad
| trope" is a trope used by one side to say they really are
| superior to the other. Having both sides believe this is
| kind of our whole problem right now in the US.
| [deleted]
| jjulius wrote:
| I would also suggest that we teach our children to read
| articles and understand the nuances within them, rather than
| assuming a worldview based on headlines alone.
| autoexec wrote:
| Critical thinking is something that needs to be taught at
| home because schools have obviously been failing us for a
| long time now. Not that it's entirely the fault of schools
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQR2aMGhjuw) but either
| way it falls on parents to fill in the gaps.
| Bloating wrote:
| Would help if the articles had substance worth reading.
| Lack of substance is by design
| jjulius wrote:
| Ah, but you can't know if there's no substance unless you
| actually read it. ;)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I agree overall, but I can't pretend that every article
| even has nuance to look out for.
|
| Where was the nuance when almost the entire media was
| towing the line to cover up the Hunter Biden laptop leak
| articles as "Russian Disinformation"? It was a complete
| lie. That's not just one article, it was dozens with no
| nuance to be found.
| wpietri wrote:
| FYI, lines get toed, not towed.
|
| Calling it a coverup is quite an accusation; do you have
| any evidence for that?
|
| I also remember it differently, with that being one
| theory expressed at the time, and it is certainly in line
| with what Russia has gotten up to in the past. I wondered
| how it turned out. From Wikipedia, on what independent
| analysts hired by the Washington Post found:
|
| "One of the analysts characterized the data as a
| 'disaster' from a forensics standpoint. The analysts
| found that people other than Biden had repeatedly
| accessed and copied data for nearly three years; they
| also found evidence others had written files to the drive
| both before and after the October 2020 New York Post
| reports. In September 2020, someone created six new
| folders on the drive, including with the names 'Biden
| Burisma,' 'Salacious Pics Package' and Hunter. Burisma
| Documents.'"
| Cupertino95014 wrote:
| > Calling it a coverup is quite an accusation; do you
| have any evidence for that?
|
| The fact that 50 "retired intelligence officers" said it
| had "all the hallmarks of Russian disinformation" when
| none of them had examined it -- do you want a citation
| for that?
|
| How about that Zuckerberg said, and the FBI admitted,
| that they warned him about a "Russian document dump"?
|
| How if _you_ give us citations? Show us all the NYT and
| WaPo stories about the laptop before the election, and
| what page they ran on. Especially highlight the ones that
| talked about its content, or showed the pictures of
| Hunter?
| wpietri wrote:
| I'm not the one making the claim of a coverup. You are,
| and so the burden of proof is on you.
|
| As to the first point, assuming for the moment that
| whatever you're quoting is a good source, the easy
| explanation is that what was disclosed at the time did
| indeed have the hallmarks of Russian disinformation. That
| being something that is well studied by intelligence
| officers, and something that Russia produces quite a lot
| of.
| fallingknife wrote:
| It was known from the very beginning that the laptop was
| legit because the Bidens never denied it. There are
| reasons to deny something that is real, but no reason not
| to deny something that is fake.
| wpietri wrote:
| That's definitely too black and white. Does it contain
| real data from him? Yes. Might it have been hardware he
| once owned? Also possible, but not proven. Was the data
| all his? As the text I quoted said, definitely not. Do a
| lot of people have an interest in making the Bidens look
| bad without regard to the truth? Definitely.
|
| But none of that addresses my actual question, which is
| asking for evidence that it's a coverup.
| fallingknife wrote:
| I don't claim that it's 100% guaranteed legit just
| because they didn't deny it, but it certainly puts the
| burden of proof on the people who would claim that it is
| fake.
|
| As for evidence that it was a coverup, Mark Zuckerberg
| stated publicly that FB algorithmically suppressed the
| story because the FBI came to them warning that it was
| Russian disinformation (of course they used the phrase
| "has all the hallmarks of" so they can deny that they
| lied about it later). Of course he could be lying, but I
| don't think he is, and you just asked for evidence, not
| outright proof.
| wpietri wrote:
| That's not proof of a coverup. People can be legitimately
| wrong. And you claiming that they phrased it carefully as
| part of a coverup is another thing that requires
| evidence.
|
| Given that you and the other poster seem to be indulging
| in low-fact speculation, I think I'm done here.
| newaccount2021 wrote:
| jjulius wrote:
| Did you read either piece to gain additional context and
| confirm whether or not your assumptions about them are correct,
| or are you commenting strictly on titles alone?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| I did read this article, but my post specifically calls out
| the titles.
| jjulius wrote:
| Titles, inherently by their nature, are supposed to grab
| your attention and entice you to read. They're not there to
| have an answer or tell you what you need to know - their
| only job is to go, "Look!". I think we should all be less
| reactionary towards a headline and more insistent upon
| discussing the actual body of content.
| sophacles wrote:
| I get that you want to come across a wise and cynical. So why
| are you pretending "the media" is a single unified hive mind -
| that doesn't make any sense, and comes across as hyperbolic
| populism instead.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| Using generalizations when characterizing a group or entity
| can be helpful, even if the generalization is just that (true
| in most cases, but not every case). In this case, I think we
| do all agree that "the media" very often overhypes fear --
| because they have a financial incentive to do so.
| Bloating wrote:
| Greedy corporations bad, except the news media ;)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| _The Atlantic_ has a yearly revenue of $75m.
| asdff wrote:
| It's not a single unified hive mind, just the incentives are
| aligned to make the most of fear mongering and make the least
| of educating the populace on the real meat of the issues at
| hand.
| chousuke wrote:
| You're engaging in the same sort of "fearmongering" though,
| by lumping everything together as if they all have the same
| incentives and goals.
|
| Depending on which part of "the media" you look at, you'll
| get _very_ different takes on various issues, some with
| significantly more substance behind them than others.
| Retric wrote:
| The actual article about COVID vaccination is nuanced and
| without scaremongering.
|
| The complaint isn't about the vaccine, but the "deadly paradox"
| where vaccines become more effective the more people who take
| them. Further suggesting the policy to only hand it out to the
| fully vaccinated is a mistake.
| dqpb wrote:
| > coming from the fear mongering media
|
| I checked, and it looks like it's coming from "Arthur C.
| Brooks", a 58 year old Harvard professor from Spokane,
| Washington, who has a spouse and three kids. He's a real
| person, with a real life.
| hulitu wrote:
| That alone does not give him any credibility.
| gipp wrote:
| I think you missed his point. "The media" didn't write this
| article, a person did.
|
| Other people with the same job, who he doesn't know or
| control, wrote different opinions, so he's not allowed to
| have/express his without being called a hypocrite?
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Check his article history. He's been pumping out one
| saccharine article a week about how to be happy, how to
| cope with not being happy, which pet will make you happy,
| etc. I don't see any fear mongering though.
|
| I don't know about credibility, but he's not a fear monger.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| The author very likely did not come up with the title, that's
| often the job of an editor.
| zwieback wrote:
| Wouldn't lump The Atlantic in with general "fear mongering
| media", which is certainly a problem
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| You sure? Or does The Atlantic just fit your biases?
| sushisource wrote:
| I find this richly ironic. One of the points of the article is
| that not everything is black and white, and we need to take a
| big picture view of things.
|
| This sentiment is... exactly the opposite. It is completely
| possible for there to be problems in the media, and for there
| also to be content it produces that is good and makes sense.
|
| Could the media be better? Sure. Does your almost comically
| negative comment really serve to help anyone? No.
| blondin wrote:
| and i want to add that the fear mongering article GP is
| talking about is the last thing i see on that page. i have to
| scroll all the way to the bottom of the page. didn't see it
| the first time, and had to go back.
|
| GP's comment was impulsive.
| rhacker wrote:
| Well it helped me quite a bit, I didn't have to type it
| myself!
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| z3c0 wrote:
| It may be a radical notion to some, but it's actually
| possible for an online publication to have multiple writers
| of differing qualities and opinions.
| [deleted]
| amalcon wrote:
| The point has _more_ teeth since it is the same website.
| The point is that no individual or organization is
| perfectly good or perfectly bad, and we need to be able to
| recognize the good without it being treated as an
| endorsement of the bad.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| jjulius wrote:
| Except that it does. Life is nuanced. OP is trying to make
| a point based on a couple of headlines, but the actual
| content of the articles explain things a bit more clearly
| and nuanced, and are a lot less "THE SKY IS FALLING!", than
| OP seems to be insinuating they are based on their titles
| alone.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| This is nihilism at its finest.
|
| There are things that are knowable in this world, a
| website that claims A but does the opposite is one of
| those things.
|
| Trust means said website putting their money where their
| mouth is. The only defense here is that it's an opinion
| piece and doesn't represent the website as a whole, but
| the solution is to possibly trust the author but not the
| website.
|
| Since we're talking about nuance here, a counterexample
| doesn't invalidate the point being made, especially about
| media in general.
| msteffen wrote:
| I mean the website isn't a monolith; some parts are good,
| some parts aren't. Different writers have different
| perspectives.
|
| I think TFA is trying to argue that it's possible to see
| the world as a basically safe place, despite the presence
| of this kind of inconsistency. The website's not perfect,
| but it seems like it has some things going for it, and
| anyway you're smart and can get by just fine in a world
| with imperfect media :-)
| majormajor wrote:
| You're performing a trick here in here of hiding the
| individual differences between two separate authors by
| referring to "a website" as a monolith. (And then you
| semi-walk-it-back, but treat that as somehow... a strange
| thing to do?)
|
| That's the sort of rhetorical subterfuge that helps
| promote a black-and-white us-and-them narrative.
|
| I generally don't even agree with Brooks on a lot of
| things, so I'd go even further and suggest that in many
| cases one should evaluate separate texts independently
| (this can lead to some problems at the extreme ends, but
| again, it's not a black and white rule). It's hard to see
| anything helpful coming from your sort of blanket
| dismissal response.
| P5fRxh5kUvp2th wrote:
| This isn't reddit or HN where the content is purely user
| driven, this is a website that publishes what they
| themselves choose to publish, and we're free to judge
| them for that holistically.
|
| One suspects that if an author submitted an article
| denying the holocaust, the website in question would
| refuse to publish it.
|
| They can be judged by what they publish, and they
| acknowledge this by not publishing everything that's
| proffered to them.
| halffaday wrote:
| Comically negative? It's hardly negative enough.
|
| I'd change the link title to "Miserable, childless
| misanthrope and establishment propagandist chides you for
| concerns over your childrens' safety and affirms that to be
| fashionable you must pretend not to notice the ruling strata
| has deliberately undermined public safety and social cohesion
| for decades for cynical personal financial gain and service
| to the progressive pseudo-religion"
|
| Now it's comically negative in a "it's funny because it's
| true" kind of way.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| Ironically enough, I think the author might actually agree
| with boomboomsubban.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2020/10/reading-t.
| ..
|
| _" Reading Too Much Political News Is Bad for Your Well-
| Being"_
|
| > _For example, Dutch researchers in 2017 conducted a study
| on how hard news that tends to provide a political
| perspective affects well-being. They found that on average,
| well-being falls 6.1 percent for every additional television
| hard news program watched a week. They explained this by
| noting the dominance of negative stories on such programs,
| and the powerlessness viewers might feel in the face of all
| that bad news. It's difficult to imagine that stories about
| political news in America would have any less of a negative
| impact--especially given how fraught and contentious United
| States politics is now._
|
| Prescribed remedy is to avoid such media:
|
| > _2. Ration your consumption of politics and limit the time
| you spend discussing it._
|
| > _3. Turn off ultra-partisan news sources, especially on
| your own side._
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Fear mongering about the fear mongering media boogeyman.
|
| Some people become truly obsessed with flamebait political
| news but there is more constructive criticism to be made
| about our free press that, though not perfect, is better
| than the alternatives. It should be respectfully criticized
| but cherished.
|
| The shallow drive-by bomb throwing is getting a bit much
| around here as of late.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| > _Fear mongering about the fear mongering media
| boogeyman._
|
| This gave me a good chuckle. I can't rebut it.
|
| Anyway, I don't think this is best considered as a free
| vs nonfree press issue. The press in America are
| motivated by profit. If people are taught and encouraged
| to reduce their consumption of fear mongering media, the
| free press will adjust to suit the new demand.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Basically everything is motivated by profit but it is not
| zero-sum. You give me factual, well-written, relevant
| reporting and I give you money because I value that. We
| both win. If _The Atlantic_ turns into a fear-mongering,
| low-quality, rag then they lose my money.
|
| I definitely agree that people need to reduce consumption
| of fear mongering media but I'm not holding my breath! Is
| this just established news media trying and failing to
| compete with social media where the sky is on fire and
| falling 24/7?
| dustractor wrote:
| Some people, it seems like their first instinct when faced with
| 'Nature', is to spray it with poison.
| pkulak wrote:
| Part of the evidence this article uses is that child deaths have
| dropped... since we started bubble wrapping our kids.
| Unfortunately, I do believe that if we all kicked our kids out of
| the house and had them roam the neighborhoods, they'd get
| slaughtered. I remember playing all over my childhood
| neighborhood, all day, every day. I walked to elementary school.
| However, I also just don't remember that many cars around. I
| remember playing hockey in the street, and when a car showed up,
| it did so at a crawl, then patiently waited for us to move the
| goals over. Now I go back to that same neighborhood and cars are
| driving 40+ mph on the same road I played on. My kids bike to
| school today, but only on a carefully curated route in the most
| bike-friendly city in the country, and it still scares me a bit,
| honestly. If I move to Houston, they are getting loaded into the
| back of an SUV twice daily.
| conductr wrote:
| I actually grew up in Houston in the 80s/90s. Playing in the
| street was exactly like your experience and we roamed on our
| bikes very far. We also felt pretty safe as kids and had enough
| street smarts to avoid any issues that we did encounter. But
| that was mostly due to safety in numbers and why I'd be
| difficult to go back to those times; your kids would be the
| only ones outside and the cars might not slow down, they might
| be target by a pedo, etc.
|
| There's also tribal knowledge within a group of kids. When
| you're old enough to join the group, you learn from others how
| to safely cross a busy intersection, how to run when you
| encounter a deranged homeless person, how to help a friend that
| fell off their bike 5 miles from home without a phone in your
| pocket, etc. There's no support group to join so your kids
| would be figuring all that stuff out on their own.
| LorenPechtel wrote:
| My parents simply taught me to be careful of cars. You look
| before you enter any place a car could go.
| tlear wrote:
| This is hilarious. While we lived in Japan my 7 year old was
| walking to school alone meeting up with friends on the way.
| 25mins one way.
|
| In Canada same 7 year old is not allowed to walk home 8 mins
| away. With friends, over 1 intersection that has a crossing
| guard. Wtf
|
| Half the people in the class would get in trouble with the family
| services(fucking joke) because we allow kids to play in park
| unsupervised.
|
| It is not just people's perception it is also idiotic bureaucrats
| and politicians creating more regulations to grow the beast
| clintonb wrote:
| 99% Invisible just did an episode about this.
|
| https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/first-errand/
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| I'm from foreign yugoslavia, then slovenia, and we did just the
| same as you guys did... if you had to take the bus, your
| parents would go with you the first few days, so you'd remember
| where to get off the bus, and after that, you'd be on your own.
| Also, it was not unusual for kids to get home at 12, and
| parents at 17h (5pm for americans), and we just either watched
| tv at home, or went out with other kids.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Curious: what actually disallows the Canadian 7 year old? Is it
| the parents, or the school, or a government restriction, or
| something else?
| tlear wrote:
| School that has to obey idiotic laws. After couple grades
| depending on school and teacher will look the other way but
| grade 1-2 no.
|
| I like teachers in our school I think most know how stupid
| this is, but do they want to lose their job and career over
| it..?
|
| Of course there are also idiotic parents but they are
| minority.
|
| Like the ones that don't allow their kids to use matches when
| they are 9.. or use sharp knife at same age poor kid had his
| eye pop out when he saw my younger daughter(6) cut a steak
| with a knife. Blows my mind.
| zwieback wrote:
| Definitely a problem. We were outliers letting our kids roam the
| neighborhood at age 8 or so.
|
| I wonder if some of it is because we haven't had wars, famines,
| etc. in the US recently so not a good reference point for what's
| truly life threatening.
| whiskeytuesday wrote:
| jwally wrote:
| BTW, another book I can't recommend enough in the same vein:
| https://www.amazon.com/How-Raise-Adult-Overparenting-Prepare...
|
| I forget if it was this book or somewhere else I heard it, but
| they had a pretty pithy comment that's stuck with me since -
| something along the lines of "The objective of parenting isn't to
| raise good kids, your job as a parent is to raise good adults".
| [deleted]
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