[HN Gopher] Why kids are afraid to ask for help
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Why kids are afraid to ask for help
Author : LinuxBender
Score : 84 points
Date : 2022-09-19 15:25 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
| t_leon wrote:
| One wonders how this differs by culture and over time (if it's
| highly correlated with more individualistic societies and
| cultural moments).
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children
| did not start to care about their reputation and peers'
| perceptions until around age nine."
|
| I mean, these psychologist did grow up and spend time as a child,
| right?
| hinkley wrote:
| Only relatively recently did someone pay money to prove that
| yes, in fact, circumcision hurts. Before that the 'common
| wisdom' was that babies don't process pain. Said no parent,
| ever.
|
| There's a lot of patronizing that goes on in organized
| medicine/psychology, and juvenile medicine seems to get a
| double helping of it.
| mynameishere wrote:
| I believe they used to perform major surgery on babies using
| the same non-evidence-based reasoning. I think the real
| reason is the combination of 1) tortured babies can't file
| lawsuits but 2) Parents whose babies die from anesthesia
| _can_ file lawsuits. So, follow the money as with everything
| in medicine.
| Jensson wrote:
| A parent could sue doctors for the babies pain though. I
| suspect doctors then said "babies can't feel pain!" in
| order to not get sued, that way surgeries gets cheaper.
| wudangmonk wrote:
| I guess this speaks volumes of the sort of "science" you can
| expect from psychologists.
| antod wrote:
| That they won't rely on their own anecdotes/assumptions and
| actually research something? Sounds like what science is
| supposed to be right?
| concinds wrote:
| Yet another example of trying to solve psychological/emotional
| issues through cultural changes. The root problem is low self-
| esteem; it's internal, not external; it takes deep inner work,
| not a change in social norms and teacher behavior. It affects
| some kids deeply, and some not at all. It's not "caused" by the
| culture or the environment, but by parenting.
|
| Psychology is stuck in a weird place. Most cultural knowledge of
| "self-esteem" comes from self-help crap, when it should be coming
| from psychologists. What if we lived in a world where everyone
| knows how to recognize low self-esteem, how to interact with
| insecure people effectively, and how to help them build their
| self-esteem durably, as opposed to these proto-team-building-
| exercises they're proposing here? The traditional thinking is
| that you fix emotional issues through therapy sessions; but if we
| changed the culture to become more emotions-aware, people would
| know how to help each other and themselves far better. The fact
| that so many pop-psychology books sell so much, is proof that
| there's a deep need for this.
|
| Some studies say 70-80% of people have some degree of low self-
| esteem. Depending on the study, 50-70% of the whole population
| have an attachment disorder, and literally lack the ability to
| form healthy emotional bonds. You don't fix that through culture.
| "Instructors could create activities in which each student
| becomes an 'expert' on a different topic"? Come on man. They have
| to let go of the old DSM-5 model of "10-15 of the population is
| crazy, everyone else is perfectly fine". Psychologists have a far
| bigger role to play in society than they currently do.
|
| Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural
| change just doesn't solve anything. Fix the root cause. You would
| literally fix both the low self-esteem that inhibits people from
| asking questions, and the bullying that results from being seen
| as "dumb".
| bergenty wrote:
| Self esteem can be fixed by simple things like being more
| attractive, more intelligent and/or more popular. We should
| just use genetic engineering to achieve these things as soon as
| possible.
| robocat wrote:
| Self-esteem is also influenced by height, colour, gender,
| ethnic background, religious background, etcetera.
|
| OP seems to think not only that good parenting can beat
| external social influences, but that perfect parenting is
| simply a matter of deciding to be perfect. OP probably blames
| parents for all negative psychological outcomes for children:
| "It's not 'caused' by the culture or the environment, but by
| parenting".
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| What you're talking about is confidence that others will
| like you, not a sense that you matter. The latter is self
| esteem, the former is compensating (or perhaps ingroup).
|
| If you have a deep sense that you matter and that your
| value to society comes from who you are, then people being
| shitty to you because you're short and the wrong shade
| won't prevent you from showing up and taking up space.
|
| It's called _self_ esteem.
| Bubble_Pop_22 wrote:
| It's called delusion. Your survival and quality of life
| depends on others liking you so we were selected to
| optimize for being liked by others.
|
| Case in point the Queen Elizabeth died at 96 but given
| her quality of life in terms of novelty and free luxury
| stuff of the highest kind (and in all realms ranging from
| mansions to yachts to castles to planes to jewelery) she
| lived like 2000 years of a regular person life. All that
| because she was liked by millions of people (or the
| institution of monarchy is)
|
| Being liked by others is the only thing that matters for
| quality of life purposes, if you aren't then feeling
| shitty is a safety mechanism which promopts you to action
| and to pursue likeability to get some quality of life and
| not waste the precious little time that you have been
| given.
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| I assume (hope?) that this is tongue in cheek, but it's worth
| pointing out that there are tons of insecure people who are
| also beautiful, intelligent, and popular with their peers.
|
| One important thing to realize is that none of those things
| actually exist; beautiful and intelligent are entirely
| relative. They can also be sources of friction; people get
| bullied for being smart, there's a strong stereotype that
| beautiful people are actually stupid but that people tell
| them they're smart because they're hot, etc. There's also the
| Ivy League problem; when your self esteem is based on being
| smarter than everyone else and then you get surrounded by
| other smart people it can tank your self confidence.
|
| Self esteem is about realizing that your value is not derived
| from other's opinion of you. That's why it's called self
| esteem.
| hosh wrote:
| This is deeper than self-esteem issues. It very much has to do
| with cultural norms.
|
| I wrote more in another comment, but just a few examples:
|
| - Dr. Carol Dewek has studied the difference between kids with
| "growth mindset" and "achievement mindset". The kids with
| "growth mindset" do not have the same kind of relationship with
| failure than the ones with "achievement mindset". Framed this
| way, it might be more accurate to say that kids with
| achievemement mindset are afraid to ask for help as early as 5
| years old.
|
| - Indigenous families, and other cultures like Japan, cultivate
| independence in their toddlers. The indigenous families
| incorporate a toddler's natural inclination to help into
| building skills for chores, with real stakes. Knowing tha their
| contribution actually matters, they develop both intrinsic
| motivation as well as a self-esteem that is internalized rather
| than requiring validation from something outside of them.
|
| - Montessori emphasizes developing a child's capacity to be
| independent
|
| These are all different than the mainstream modern culture in
| the US. For example, a modern parent in the US might feel time-
| pressure and so it is easier to do the household chores instead
| of taking the time to incorporate the toddler.
|
| My toddler is not yet 2, and is already helping me feed the
| dogs and cats. He not only wants to do this, he gets upset when
| he can't. What's surprising for me is that, doing those chores
| with him turns those chores from something mechanical to
| something that's enjoyable for me. It's very much possible to
| do for a modern family.
|
| So yes, I think this very much is something in the culture,
| with the poor self-esteem being a symptom of the culture.
| concinds wrote:
| Some cultures are more aware of emotional health than others,
| and some cultural practices favor good emotional health while
| others favor emotional neglect. No question.
|
| But all the examples you give, I'd put in the "psychological
| change" category, not the "cultural change" category. Those
| are the things I support; and there's not enough focus on
| them. I'll admit my wording causes confusion; see my other
| reply.
|
| I think what you're highlighting is extremely different from
| what I refer to as cultural change, like let's say the "body
| positivity movement", where people have pre-existing low
| self-esteem, which leads to self-neglect and emotional
| eating, which leads to weight gain, and they're focused on
| the superficial problem (feeling embarrassed by being fat)
| rather than the core issue (being fat because of low
| emotional health). "Every fat cell is an unshed tear." That
| perfectly highlights the ineffectiveness of superficial
| cultural change, over deep psychology-based change like the
| examples you give.
|
| And to address your last point: low self-esteem is caused
| mostly by poor parental emotional health; you can put kids in
| Montessori schools, but if they don't develop healthy
| attachment to their parents, it'll only help on the margin.
| The change needs to be even deeper than that.
|
| The article we're commenting on doesn't mention kids' self-
| esteem as being a factor at all; or the obvious observation
| that some kids are afraid of being judged, while some aren't.
| It treats it as a cultural problem that's easily solved by
| culture, rather than a deeper psychological/emotional problem
| that can be addressed long-term by deeper cultural change;
| really, it ignores the psychological dimension completely.
| Clearly, most academic psychologists are missing the mark
| here.
| hosh wrote:
| The reason parents in the US tend to have children with
| "achievement mindset" is because the culture itself rewards
| and favors achievements instead of growth.
|
| The reason parents in the US don't invest time with their
| toddlers is because they feel they don't have time. They
| don't have time because it is typically about career
| success (achievement), wealth, status, and so forth. Or in
| other social classes, it's just overwhelming to just be
| able to barely survive. Culturally, American has one of the
| highest overworked population (it is cultural because that
| is the generally accepted norm), scores among the highest
| for individualism (instead of collectivism). Those all play
| into how people parent.
|
| And don't get me started on the idea of free range
| parenting. In this day and age, in America, letting the
| kids out to play in the streets can get you, as the parent,
| arrested for neglect and censured by the neighbors. Those
| are all part of the cultural _norms_. To do what you
| suggest at the psychological level requires pushing back
| against those cultural norms, some with legal consequences.
|
| You are welcomed to define all of this as psychology, but I
| think if you talked with sociologists and other people,
| they would tell you these are cultural rather than
| psychological factors.
|
| It's not stopping my wife and I from parenting my kid in
| the way we think is best for them. But I'm not blind to the
| fact that I _am_ going against the grain of cultural norms
| and generally accepted behavior, beliefs, and practices of
| the mainstream US culture.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Maybe the difference in what you two are is that
| psychological is often internal to one person whereas
| cultural can be internal to many people.
|
| For example, me working on the fear that I have to open
| up publicly because my house was robbed when I lived
| overseas and was a semi-celebrity can be my personal
| psychological journey. The collective "don't share too
| much about your private life online" could a collective
| cultural belief stemming from many different experiences
| that impacted individuals to have such beliefs and fears.
|
| I've been thinking a lot about whether to change culture
| (group) or change psychology (individual) and my latest
| belief on this is that I want to get better at loving
| myself and loving others and then train the handful of
| people who also want to do that, with the idea being that
| if a few of us start, it may spread to others, this going
| from the individual to group, maybe psychological to
| cultural.
|
| I don't necessarily like the psych/cultural distinction,
| as I think both often influence how I'm feeling. Scared
| to post because I might get robbed again, also scared to
| post because people may resond with "you shouldn't post
| things like that online."
|
| So I think maybe it's both. However I still like the idea
| of starting with me and maybe a few others who really
| really want to get better at it and maybe influence by
| osmosis.
| bminor13 wrote:
| > but if we changed the culture to become more emotions-aware,
| people would know how to help each other and themselves far
| better.
|
| > Fixing psychological and emotional problems through cultural
| change just doesn't solve anything.
|
| By my reading, the two quotes are in direct opposition to one
| other. It sounds like you are advocating for cultural change -
| just a different type/approach than is currently used?
| concinds wrote:
| It's more profound than that, I'll restate:
|
| Cultural change that addresses behaviors or focuses on other
| external factors can't work; that's outside-in cultural
| change.
|
| But if you want to fix issues on a systemic, national, or
| worldwide level (which is the goal here), you do need some
| kind of cultural change.
|
| Cultural change that focuses on inside-out psychology (not
| the movie) is what I call "psychological change"; the
| cultural element is just the "trojan horse" through which any
| systemic change must happen.
|
| Example:
|
| - banning magazines that show excessively thin models,
| because girls "become insecure when they look at them", is
| the thinking I denounce. If they had high self-esteem they
| couldn't be affected by a magazine cover. If they have low
| self-esteem, they will be. But the magazine is blamed, and
| legislation and activist momentum focuses on that. The self-
| esteem problem doesn't get solved, just displaced. Exactly
| the same with the "Instagram harms teen girls' mental health"
| viewpoints. That's only a problem because 80% of the
| population has low self-esteem and is unaware of it.
| Shouldn't that be fixed?
|
| Implement a culture where people, for example:
|
| - know the signs of low self-esteem
|
| - know exactly how to address it in themselves, without pop-
| psych quakery or needing to pay for therapy sessions
|
| - know how to address it in others
|
| - know what assertiveness looks like, and how to do it
|
| - know how to problem-solve personal or relationship problems
|
| - know how to effectively interact to defensiveness,
| depression, argumentativeness, egotism, insincerity, power
| struggles, irresponsibility, prejudice, whatever; without
| getting upset at the other person; how to assert boundaries
| when faced with people like that, and how to help them
|
| - how to evaluate others' emotional health, so people can
| make more informed choices in mates and spouses
|
| - know how to evaluate if their relationships are healthy,
| and what to do about it if they're not
|
| - how to grieve effectively
|
| - could go on, and on.
|
| So many of society's problems come from psychological
| illiteracy. Again, people's obsession with pop-psychology
| proves that people see a big need in learning more. Sadly,
| the pop-psychology craze mostly focuses on superficial things
| like self-talk, or on trying to, for example, "spot" signs of
| Narcissism or psychopathy in other people, to try to "protect
| oneself" from these people; it's not deep enough and doesn't
| get people to actually understand themselves and each other
| better; just to project various medical labels onto others
| and themselves (self-diagnose). What I'm proposing is outside
| that framework of "mentally ill vs normal" and focuses on
| empathically learning more about oneself and others and
| ultimately being able to help each other.
|
| The cultural change is just meant to address that; it's a
| change in awareness and knowledge, not in behavior.
| yalogin wrote:
| Anything related to psychological or emotional are never that
| black and white. Every thing mentioned in the article could on
| a spectrum. Teachers and classmates could range from supportive
| to downright mean and it could change across every
| school/class/individual basis. The atmosphere at home matters a
| lot too. So establishing a base cultural norm is not a bad
| thing. Issues like this are already difficult to solve at a
| group level so as a society these norms will help us establish
| a base expectations in terms of norms and that would make it a
| little better to theorize.
| noselasd wrote:
| Can we be confident that 70-80% of people having low self
| esteem is not a cultural problem, and can't be fixed by
| cultural changes as you suggest ?
| majormajor wrote:
| > It's not "caused" by the culture or the environment, but by
| parenting.
|
| I don't think you can treat people's parenting behavior as
| being a non-environment-influenced thing.
| rmah wrote:
| Um, if 70% to 80% of people have "low self-esteem", isn't that
| just "normal" self-esteem?
|
| Please don't take my comment as snark, I'm asking this in all
| seriousness. When most people possess some psychological trait,
| perhaps we should ask ourselves if this is just the way people
| are? And perhaps the cure is worse than the disease?
|
| Is it possible that encouraging typical people to have "higher
| self esteem" will result in increased narcissism, entitlement
| or overconfidence? And maybe that overconfidence, when it hits
| the reality that they are not, in fact, better (along some
| arbitrary axis) at something vs most other people, their ego
| shatters? I don't know, but...
|
| To be clear, I'm not trying to assert a position here. I'm open
| to being very wrong about the thesis behind the above
| questions.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I suspect that percentage varies significantly between
| geographic and cultural regions.
|
| Further, "normal" typically means that not only is a status
| common, but that it does not interfere with daily life. Even
| if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and not
| "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with common
| social interactions and daily tasks.
| gruez wrote:
| >Even if 100% of kids have low self esteem, it is "low" and
| not "normal" because, by definition, it interfers with
| common social interactions and daily tasks.
|
| What does "interfers with common social interactions and
| daily tasks" mean? It's hard to talk about self-esteem in a
| superlative way (you can be too cocky), so let's talk about
| another trait: attention. I'm sure that everyone could do
| better in life if they have superhuman levels of attention,
| but most people only have normal levels of attention. If
| with superhuman levels of attention you could study and get
| 95% on a test, but with average levels of attention you
| could only study enough to get 80% on a test, does that
| mean count as "interfering" with your academic ability? Is
| it just some arbitrary grade cut-off? What if you're so
| attention deficient that you can't focus on a task for more
| than 10 minutes, but it's fine because you also happen to
| be a genius that only needs 10 minutes of studying to get
| 80%?
| watwut wrote:
| > Until relatively recently, psychologists assumed that children
| did not start to care about their reputation and peers'
| perceptions until around age nine.
|
| Did they really? Cause anyone in contact with kids must have seen
| status seeking/preserving behaviors much sooner. The teachers
| compensate for it by checking on kids instead of expecting then
| to ask everything by themselves.
|
| The other thing is, there is right amount of asking questions.
| Some of it is too much and more independence is needed. Some of
| it is too little - and kids need to learn to guess the right
| amounts.
| User23 wrote:
| And that's doing the children a disservice. We are a status
| oriented species and trying to pretend that the game doesn't
| exist is just raising them to be ill-equipped for the reality
| they will inevitably face.
|
| The challenge you mention continues for one's entire life.
| There is a real tension between maintaining enough humility to
| learn and otherwise benefit from others while presenting as
| high enough status to get others to conform to your desires.
| noindiecred wrote:
| Or maybe seeking status isn't the way to go?
| User23 wrote:
| Gaining status without seeking it is a very high status
| behavior.
| inetknght wrote:
| As an adult: it's not that I'm afraid of appearing incompetent in
| front of peers. I don't care about that. I just know that my
| peers are also having their own troubles and I don't want to add
| my trouble to theirs.
|
| When I am truly stuck on something and can't _guess_ what the
| problem is, then yes I will ask for help. I 've found that
| probably 60% of the time (guesstimate), my peers would guess the
| same things that I already tried, tested, and failed. In doing
| so, they've duplicated the time spent trying to solve the
| problem. Maybe 20% of the time, while doing so, they might spot
| something that I missed. Maybe another 10% of the time, they'll
| think of something I hadn't. And the last 10%? Well, that just
| means it's time to refactor the problem set to avoid what can't
| be solved.
|
| That of course changes if I enter a new problem domain. At that
| point, I most certainly ask peers for documentation and examples.
| If I hit a snag then I ask what I did wrong. Most often the cause
| ends up being inaccurate documentation.
| Shugarl wrote:
| As an adult: it's 80% because I'm afraid of looking incompetent
| in front of my peers.
|
| It can be pretty painful to see people systematically dismiss
| anything you say, or always seek out a second opinion, for no
| other reason that they have a hard time believing anything
| reliable can come out of your mouth.
|
| I won't let that happen again.
| giantg2 wrote:
| What's all this talk about peers? I just don't want to seem
| incompetent to my manager and get fired.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| Not saying this is you but this reminded me of two types of
| people I've witnessed over the years. One of them I would
| look at as you say `incompetent`, while the other I'd say is
| `smart`.
|
| You're new to something? Ask for pointers if you can't find
| something relatively quickly yourself. That's `smart`. You're
| new, the documentation might be inaccurate, out of date or
| not in the place you'd expect it unless you've already been
| at the company and learned their structure etc.
|
| You're stuck on something and can't figure it out? Ask for
| some help to double check your own logic. Run them through
| all of the things you've already tried. This shows that
| you're not incompetent but have in fact already tried all
| those obvious things they'd ask you about. Also do actually
| run them through those steps, don't just talk about you
| having done them already. Sometimes you've overlooked
| something the first 2 times and showing it to someone else
| makes you notice (also see
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging if you'd
| like to first use a non-human just in case). You wouldn't
| believe the amount of times where I've been the helper and
| all I had to do to help was to ask them to run me through
| what they had already tried and the above happened. They
| showed me something as "and see I tried this and then it
| doesn't ... oooh" ;)
|
| Do _not_ ask for help on the exact same thing 5 times in a
| row. That definitely makes me think you 're `incompetent`.
| Happens way too often too unfortunately.
| watwut wrote:
| Meh, what you call smart can be easily used against you.
| Many people fix their opinions of you quickly and won't
| change them later. Will instead seek to patronize you going
| forward no matter what you learned.
|
| Learned that the hard way. I am not going to ask beginner
| questions in new social group. Way better is to Google them
| in the evening. People will treat you better as a result I
| swear.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| I might not have been accurate enough. I don't mean to
| ask about things that are easily Googled. I really meant
| things that are company specific. If you ask me a
| question that I will then Google myself to answer you, I
| will also very probably form a not so great opinion of
| you, agreed. I also expect you not to wait until the
| evening to Google it if it gets you stuck right now.
|
| Also I agree that not all companies reward this. Not all
| people do either and it's unfortunately necessary to
| 'hide your smarts' so to speak. That doesn't change my
| overall opinion though. At a good company / in a good
| team, you're going to be able to do that smart thing. And
| yes I see this all the time when onboarding new people.
| They're not used to it and 'hide' things. Ultimately it
| takes most of them way longer than it should to onboard
| and I might form a less than great opinion of them. On
| the contrary there was a team lead recently that asked
| lots and lots of "dumb questions" early on and asked them
| quickly as they came up. Instead of taking 2 weeks and
| still not being properly set up for everything, he was up
| and running without any issues within a day and could
| start working on stuff.
| watwut wrote:
| How does the new person distinguish between googlable
| question and company specific? They don't, especially if
| the tech is also new.
|
| You yourself said you will judge new one badly of they
| make bad guess. There is no to little price for not
| asking. There is serious price for asking.
| tharkun__ wrote:
| By actually Googling things?!
|
| Your specific experience might be different from mine as
| well. In most places I have been there were lots of
| 'standard' things in use that were easily Google-able.
| You may also mainly work in languages that make it hard
| to find things you don't already have a mental model of
| (scripting languages, untyped languages etc.) vs. where I
| like working: typed languages where I can let the IDE
| guide me through. Frameworks that make things easily
| string searchable etc.
|
| There's a price for not asking: To take the example I
| gave before. If you take 2 weeks to get up to "I can
| deploy code for development and debug it" that's a bad
| sign. If you're up an running in a day or two, you're
| usually golden.
| blooalien wrote:
| In my case, it's not even fear of _appearing_ incompetent. It
| 's fear of being _accused of_ or _treated as if_ I 'm
| incompetent when I'm clearly _not_. This past couple few
| decades the average population have become more and more
| downright vicious, cruel, and absolutely sure of themselves,
| even when they 're utterly _wrong_ about something they say
| or do, and as that problem grows, I become less able /
| willing to open myself up to that sort of potential abuse.
| I've got things rough enough already _without_ that
| additional stress.
|
| In addition, there's what a previous commenter said about
| knowing that others also have their own things they're
| dealing with, and I kinda don't wanna be the guy who adds to
| that any if I can avoid it (just in case they're _not_ that
| _other_ type of person I mention here).
| failedengineer wrote:
| hey hey, this is exactly what happened to my engineering
| career right here.
|
| "This code will never be used."
|
| "Oh, ok." _proceeds to write garbage to test out various
| features and different ways of doing the same thing_
|
| "Hey, this code is garbage and lacks consistency. Lets show
| it to everyone to warn them about this guy. We won't
| mention it until letting him struggle a couple years, but
| make sure he doesn't get any interesting work."
| murphyslab wrote:
| > we asked 576 children, ages four to nine, to predict the
| behavior of two kids in a story. One of the characters genuinely
| wanted to be smart, and the other merely wanted to seem smart to
| others. [...]
|
| > When children themselves are the ones struggling, it seems
| quite possible they, too, might avoid seeking out help when
| others are present, given our findings. Their reluctance could
| seriously impede academic progress.
|
| There's another side to the issue of "reputational" expectations
| which I've seen too many times in academic situations: People who
| only ask questions in order to look smart rather than to learn
| something. They know the answer, or at least think they do, and
| ask an inexperienced grad student a question about their area of
| expertise, even if it is at best tangential to the topic.
|
| That opposite process also can impede progress, since it tends to
| drown out genuine questions and less is learned in the process.
| Rarely do such questions enrich the conversation the way that a
| good "naive" question does.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| In my country, the (college) school year is ending and new one is
| starting (on oct 1st), and of course, some students didn't pass
| enough exams, some failed a year, but want to do exams for the
| next year, some want to know if they can get another chance at an
| exam, if they can blame covid for not finishing something, etc.
|
| Every college here as a students office, with an email address
| and a phone number (available few hours per workday), and they
| still rather ask an incomplete question on reddit (without
| specifying which college, what year, how many exams missing etc),
| than call the student office and just ask the only people who can
| actually answer the question correctly.
|
| So yeah... it's not just the "young" kids, but "older kids" too,
| old enough that making a phonecall shouldn't be an issue anymore.
| robocat wrote:
| In your country is it normal to get help when you ask officials
| for help? For example: if you have a tax problem can you ask
| your tax department and get a valid response, or is it a
| glacial bureaucratic quagmire, with downside risks, backfiring
| where your questioning costs you?
|
| Are school administrators overworked, nasty, or just don't give
| relevant advice?
|
| Are there hacks around the system that you can only find out
| through back-channels? Is it a cultural norm to seek
| workarounds or cheats?
| wildrhythms wrote:
| I have a sneaking suspicion that university administration
| offices are run by a generation of people who don't know that
| young people do not use the telephone [1] (you did this too).
|
| Give students an all-purpose email address to contact, or a
| number to text, and I think you will find they are much more
| willing to get the right help. The medium does matter.
|
| [1]
| https://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/05/09/31...
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| They have an email.. and a phone number.. and office hours.
| daedalus2027 wrote:
| adults tend to pass judgement over understanding too quickly
| throwaway0asd wrote:
| My observation is that children afraid to ask for help grow into
| adults afraid to ask for help that have learned to mask their
| cowardice. Primary masking behaviors include: avoidance, blame
| shifting, excuses, stonewalling, logical fallacies, and so forth.
| I would say cowardice is a common bed fellow to deception.
| hosh wrote:
| I wonder how much of that is culture?
|
| For example, Dr. Carol Dewek studied kids with "growth mindset".
| Kids with such a mindset see failure as a path to more growth,
| whereas kids with "achievement mindset" do not.
|
| I also think about things like:
|
| - https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...
| ... Note here that the kids at the ages of 5, 7, etc. discussed
| in the article, will brag to each other about how helpful they
| are. However, their parents have been building their skills when
| they are toddlers and try to be helpful.
|
| - There is an in-depth article about implementing the "old enough
| to run errands" in America. Again, the author did not just throw
| their kid out on the street. They invested a lot of time skill-
| building.
|
| - The Montessori method, which emphasizes developing the capacity
| to be independent. Failure happens often
|
| - A study on toddlers and babies, and the effects of seeing how
| long adults struggle on how much they will continue to try
| something before giving up
|
| - Fred Rogers, commenting on leaving in footage where adults
| struggle and fail, and things don't go according to plan.
|
| My son is 20 months old, and my wife and I have been
| incorporating ideas from above. I might show him that it is
| possible to do something, and let him try (and at times, fail,
| and learn from the failure). We also prompt him by asking him if
| he wants help.
|
| Or put it another way: curate the environment, like you would
| when designing a video game levels to teach how to play, and
| smoothly increase the difficulty.
| Arrath wrote:
| > - There is an in-depth article about implementing the "old
| enough to run errands" in America. Again, the author did not
| just throw their kid out on the street. They invested a lot of
| time skill-building.
|
| I often think about the chores and trips I took with my dad
| growing up, and how he slowly and cleverly worked me up to
| doing things.
|
| For instance when we would stop at a gas station, unless I had
| to go to the bathroom I had to stay in the car as it was
| dangerous, I might get hit by a car etc. But I could help by
| gathering any trash and handing it to him. Then as I got older,
| I could help by getting out and washing the side mirrors, then
| the door windows and finally the windshield once I could reach.
| The genesis really was that it was boring to sit in the car and
| I wanted to do something, and he capitalized on that.
|
| Same thing when we would take the recycling to the drop off
| point. First I had to stay in the car (you'll note a consistent
| theme here: I couldn't just stay at home at my leisure while
| chores were going on) and watch, then I could help with the
| light things like the cans, then the newspapers, then the
| glass.
|
| ....I'm still salty that I had to mow all 2 acres with a push
| mower for years and years, and he only bought a tractor with a
| giant mower deck after us kids moved out, though. The cheeky
| old bastard.
| proc0 wrote:
| I'm somewhat of a slow learner, and one of the main reasons I
| would rarely ask for help was because people are not as helpful
| as they think they are. Most of the time it's a lazy attempt to
| answer questions at the surface level only, and attempting to
| follow up with further question ends in frustration quickly.
| People think they're helpful but in fact have small amounts of
| patience generally speaking. This was obvious when I was student
| of really good teachers who made sure to answer literally any
| question without judgement.
|
| Unless you're asking someone who has great confidence in their
| knowledge, asking a question can lead to an unpleasant situation.
| I've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no
| problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't the
| case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a
| meeting).
|
| IMHO, getting others to ask more questions starts by allowing
| others to ask you anything without thinking it has multiple
| layers of meaning and/or intention.
| tolmasky wrote:
| _> I 've always scratched my head at this, since to me it's no
| problem to admit ignorance, but I've come to learn this isn't
| the case for most people, especially in front of others (i.e. a
| meeting)._
|
| Leaving ego aside, there's plenty of societal conditioning that
| explains this too. The negative feelings you may feel by not
| knowing something (i.e. in a meeting, or in a class...) can
| certainly plausibly be connected to being reprimanded for not
| knowing something. It's definitely the bizarre case that not
| having an immediate answer for something can result in "losing"
| an argument. Obviously this isn't the way it _should be_ , but
| it certainly is the way it is many time, whether that be n low
| stakes argument about a TV show in a bar or a high stakes
| discussion about what technology you should use. But it goes
| back even further than that I think. In many ways, our entire
| school structure is designed around the idea that your success
| is tied to your ability to answer questions on the spot.
| Political debates are the same way, right? The reality is that
| the answer to every question in a debate should be some version
| of "well, I'd go and ask my cabinet and consult experts in this
| area..." So I don't think it should be that surprising that it
| makes people uncomfortable to not know something.
| bluedino wrote:
| Don't teacher still tell kids someone along the lines of, "don't
| be afraid to ask questions, at least one other person probably
| has the same question"?
| panny wrote:
| This is largely the opposite of what I see during Q&As at tech
| conferences. Typically the asker puts forward a question to show
| off how much they know about the subject and challege the
| presenter. Perhaps this is due to the 'leetcode grinding' culture
| surrounding tech where everyone needs to display their ego.
| m463 wrote:
| Many times I don't ask for help because explaining my problem is
| so involved that it makes more sense to just plow ahead.
|
| https://dilbert.com/strip/2003-08-07
| contingencies wrote:
| In our house we actually have an informal "best question of the
| day" award which encourages us to share inquiries. It is intended
| to reinforce and reward curiosity and healthy attitudes to
| learning in children and seems to work.
|
| Other learning hacks: Complement questions. Admit when you don't
| know stuff, but then immediately look for answers, sharing your
| method and findings. Play scrabble with kids and allow arbitrary
| lookups to a permissive and multilingual dictionary such as
| wiktionary: a great way to learn amazing words, etymology and
| geography. Keep a globe around to reinforce geography while
| viewing documentaries or explaining things (eg. etymologies and
| language families). Keeping an HDMI output budget microscope
| connected to the TV for shared exploration of things (broken
| toys/circuitboards, botany, etc.). Gifting tools to children and
| encouraging their use to solve problems.
| http://earth.nullschool.net when the weather changes. Bringing
| kids to work.
| steve_john wrote:
| You can make people feel vulnerable. The moment you ask for
| directions, you reveal that you are lost. Seeking assistance can
| feel like you are broadcasting your incompetence. New research
| suggests young children don't seek help in school, even when they
| need it, for the same reason.
| nomel wrote:
| From what I've seen, this is no different for adults. Getting
| adults to ask for help is really difficult, and I've given up
| trying to pursued it, in the workplace. On the other hand,
| getting adults to give "XY Problem" [1] fueled demands is very
| very easy.
|
| 1. https://xyproblem.info
| Godel_unicode wrote:
| Developing the habit of repeatedly asking people for help and
| then taking it when they give it will fix this very quickly.
| You just have to be willing to go first. People feel much
| better about asking someone for help if they have given that
| person help in the past.
| idlehand wrote:
| I have received this comment a few times in my career, "why don't
| you ask for help more"?
|
| Usually there is a simple reason: I am not having the same
| problem for very long, but whenever things are going smoothly
| they get done very quickly. The other, very common reason is that
| in the process of gathering the information I need to ask the
| correct question, the answer usually presents itself.
|
| The final reason is force of habit. I went through a school
| system where the teachers spend all of class, apart from
| presenting the material, helping the weak students keep up.
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