[HN Gopher] Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental...
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Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis
Author : trevin
Score : 346 points
Date : 2023-07-28 17:28 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jonathanhaidt.substack.com)
| deanmoriarty wrote:
| Wow, this is so sad. I grew up in Europe in the 90s with parents
| who pretty much let me do whatever I wanted as long as I was a
| well-behaved child/teenager and getting reasonable school grades.
|
| At 6 years old I was literally biking by the river or wandering
| in the woods with my friends after school for hours on end. Every
| day was an exciting adventure without any adult supervision, just
| random groups of 2-10 kids who would gather in the afternoon to
| play together. The rule was "home by dinner or there won't be any
| dinner for you". I never did any extracurricular activity, ever.
|
| This did not prevent me from going to a great university in my
| country, get my master in Computer Engineering, graduating in the
| top 5% of my class, have a curriculum good enough to legally
| immigrate to the US, and working at several tech companies
| including FAANG, making high 6 figures now.
|
| I would never give away those wonderful memories and early life
| experiences for some random extracurricular activity just to
| "stand out" later on, I do believe such freedom helped form my
| character to a much greater extent than any scripted activity
| would have.
| hiAndrewQuinn wrote:
| You're going to have to be somewhat careful or forward thinking
| to keep those same benefits for your kids going forward, I'm
| afraid. I made the opposite move and I see kids playing outside
| far more often here in Finland than I ever did in the States,
| and I grew up in a quite cozy little suburb.
|
| In my darker moments I fear this may be one of those things
| where the tradeoffs between a high performance society and a
| take-it-easy culture just can't be squared. But then I remember
| that it's more likely downstream of other, more transient
| issues in American culture - the ever present fear of getting
| cancelled, the heavily bike-hostile ecosystem, etc. It's worth
| fighting to get back.
| OfSanguineFire wrote:
| Younger children in Finland do play outside more than younger
| children in the USA do these days. However, the linked
| article is about teen mental health, and Finland has a pretty
| bad track record for that, too. Loads of Finnish teenagers
| are walled off indoors, with social media their main outlet.
| twiddling wrote:
| https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-462091/How-children...
|
| I love this article with the comparison across generations.
|
| I grew up in Europe in the '80s, and was riding streetcars and
| taking subways when I was 10.
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| I'll shout it from the rooftops: _Down with helicopter
| parenting!_
|
| Independence, life skills, and fun stem from the freedom to
| explore on one's own. If anything parents, should be constantly
| nudging and encouraging kids to be more independent than is
| typically expected by:
|
| 1. Letting them have some unstructured, unsupervised time,
| especially out in the neighborhood.
|
| 2. Not automatically doing or thinking for them, especially by
| answering advice questions with questions that encourage
| reflection and independent decision-making.
|
| 3. Expect them to help with chores and needs self-service,
| pushing back against the expectation that parents are the
| forever barbers, waiters, and maids while the kids are on
| permanent vacation.
| carabiner wrote:
| Helicopter parenting is bad until it gets your kid into
| Cornell. Therapy can wait until that corporate job health
| plan kicks in.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > This did not prevent me from going to a great university in
| my country, get my master in Computer Engineering, have a
| curriculum good enough to immigrate to the US, and working at
| several tech companies including FAANG, making high 6 figures
| now.
|
| The key question is more, could you do that today and would you
| sacrifice that to give your kids that childhood? Would your
| grades and lack of extracurriculars have earned you admission
| in this year's cohort? Is that path still really available?
|
| I am 9 years out from the university admissions game, so still
| pretty young, but some time has passed. I would not be a
| competitive applicant today for many of the same programs I was
| admitted to back then.
|
| High school was by far the most stressful time of my life and
| the fun part is, it would have had to have had more pressure to
| be where I am today.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > I would not be a competitive applicant today for many of
| the same programs I was admitted to back then.
|
| Disclaimer: I live in the US but didn't grow up here. I also
| grew up in the 90s.
|
| In my experience, in higher education the prestige of the
| school has a smaller impact on learning than most people seem
| to think. Mostly, it seems to function as networking and a
| badge on your resume which can open _the next door_.
|
| But once you have a bit of experience, more doors will open.
| In a few years, people care more about what you worked with
| than what school you went to, even if it's an Ivy for
| instance.
|
| Plus, working at smaller companies is a much faster way to
| learn than faang, imo. Sure, you get good at politics, perf
| reviews, and learn some best practices, but in terms of
| domain knowledge and practicing decision making, faang is
| terribly inefficient for "growth". I wish I had worked more
| at smaller companies/freelancing, because frankly most of big
| corp was a waste of time (although money is good).
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| > (although money is good).
|
| what is the point of growth if not to make more money?
|
| you could quit your faang job and work as a janitor while
| hacking projects on the side if so inclined. except one has
| a pathway to 500k+ and the other does not.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| This is a really good point that people miss. Sure, the
| (insert birth year here) childhood seems really nice in
| retrospect, but many of the realities of life have changed,
| and someone growing up with that kind of childhood today will
| not necessarily have the same outcomes as back then.
| anon291 wrote:
| We've normalized institutionalizing children in institutions that
| will never let them take any risks due to insurance concerns. So
| many colleagues and friends put their children in day care a few
| weeks after birth and then straight to school. These institutions
| are naturally conservative and don't let children engage in the
| kind of rough and tumble play that they need. Moreover, in order
| to appeal to parents, they focus on doing 'activities' with the
| child.
|
| My children are at home with my wife (not school age yet). This
| is apparently abnormal now. So many people have expressed concern
| that our daughter is not in preschool or daycare. My own mother
| is concerned she hasn't started academic work like my niece and
| nephew (they're all around four and five). A neighbor has
| commented that we're pursuing an 'alternative' lifestyle just by
| having our kids at home. It's crazy.
|
| Now back to play deprivation. Hot take: the play at preschool,
| etc is not the same as play with parents, family, and friends. At
| the end of the day, daycares, schools, etc are businesses (yes,
| even public schools) that need to protect themselves from
| liability, which means they are naturally going to promulgate the
| safety culture that we now know leads to all sorts of mental
| health issues for teenagers. To get around the issue of lack of
| play, they announce new activities for the kids. One preschool we
| were looking at bragged that they did a 'research project' with
| the children! Now, I'm sure research projects while sitting
| inside carry less liability concerns, but I'm not sure a
| preschooler needs that. But, this is the best business decision
| as they get the benefits (low insurance premiums and ability to
| get more revenue by enrolling more kids) while they outsource the
| problems (a teen's mental health issues are the parents problem).
|
| We are lucky to have an active community and my wife and other
| stay at home moms take the kids on play dates basically every
| day. On the days they're not with friends, they're at one of the
| grandparent's houses. Over the summer, they've done things like
| gone hiking, gone fruit picking, zoos, museums, playgrounds,
| pools, etc with other kids. The best part is that, since it's not
| a professional environment, the kids get to do things like jump
| off rocks, fight with each other, fall of playground equipment,
| run down hills, climb tall trees, etc. Now of course, not all
| parents are like this, and some probably think my wife is
| negligent (I've seen many of these parents at the playground and
| they seem dreadfully boring). However, some parents allow their
| kids to play. On the other hand, I've never met a teacher or
| daycare worker that would allow these things. My carers growing
| up certainly wouldn't. I don't even blame the teacher; they're
| often watching 10+ kids at a time, and it's simply impossible to
| pay attention to a kid doing anything fun at that scale.
|
| But, when you have a group of adult friends supervising children,
| what ends up happening is that the adults sit around having fun,
| while the children play, which is awesome. So many times I've
| seen one of the kids come up to the adults with a complaint about
| play, and the unvarying response from all the adults is "if
| you're not having fun playing, why don't you sit down and engage
| with the adults?" Sure enough, after you put it that way, every
| kid goes back to playing regardless of whatever slight initially
| sent them away.
|
| We need to normalize being a child again, and we need to have an
| honest conversation about how to make that possible.
| carabiner wrote:
| Kids should be inside coding and studying math. That's what 90%
| of successful YC founders did I bet.
| outlace wrote:
| I haven't looked into the data carefully but this strikes me as
| implausible at first impression for a few reasons.
|
| One is that cultures with highly structured time for kids like
| China do not have the same dramatic rises in mental illness, that
| I'm aware of. Two is that this seems to only apply to middle
| class or rich western kids (unsurprising for academic studies).
| You really think poor kids are spending too much time at piano
| lessons and not playing? No they have the opposite problem of too
| much lack of structure.
|
| Overall this seems quite narrow minded to me. The only part of
| this that rings true is the cultural phenomenon of wanting to
| make feel everyone safe all the time, even from mere ideas and
| speech.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > China do not have the same dramatic rises in mental illness
|
| Or does their culture just tend to view higher levels of
| distress as normal given how competitive it is there?
|
| https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/china-gen-z-mental-health-cri...
|
| That being said, they are open that there are issues there as
| well.
| outlace wrote:
| Yeah but there's big a difference between mental health
| issues in China being driven by intense academic competition
| and pressure and, as the Haidt article claims, lack of enough
| unstructured playtime.
| tinycombinator wrote:
| Intense academic competition and lack of unstructured
| playtime would seem to go hand-in-hand, no?
| ddq wrote:
| The epidemic of youth suicide in Japan and South Korea related
| to the stress of their rigid, demanding education systems is
| fairly common knowledge.
| dunkmaster wrote:
| I wonder if adults can also benefit from unstructured play
| Animats wrote:
| Go watch Sesame Street, S01EO1.[1]
|
| Early Sesame Street is all about unsupervised kids in a big city.
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9NUiHCr9Cs
| twiddling wrote:
| Another thing that's jarring is how slow paced the early
| episodes were.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Does anyone know of somewhere in America where it is common for
| children to play semi-unsupervised with lots of other children of
| different ages? I grew up in a super-block like setting and you
| could look out and see your kids play but most of the time you
| didn't and they'd form groups with kids of ages above and below
| theirs and work out some relatively fair way to play a game and
| have fun.
|
| Usually sports, but sometimes something else. I actually really
| enjoyed this sort of setting. Kids would get hurt accidentally,
| there were some harmless fights, and that sort of thing.
|
| I'm just concerned that, independent of my own viewpoint on the
| subject, I will be unable to find sufficient other parents with
| this approach, or, should I find them they'll be clustered with
| other beliefs that I think are suboptimal for success.
|
| Ultimately, if there is a place with this culture then I will try
| to make it so I can reasonably live there.
| fnimick wrote:
| Meanwhile I know people who look at analytics and numbers to
| decide what sports and activities their child (who is still in
| elementary school!) should be doing in order to maximize college
| admissions chances. It's madness. Don't play violin (even if you
| like it) because there are too many people doing that, you have
| to do something unique. Don't play basketball, it's too common
| and therefore too hard to stand out, you have to do something
| exotic. It's better to be average at something rare and expensive
| than pretty good at something ordinary.
|
| We ramp up the pressure younger than ever, tell people that their
| entire future hinges on their success and getting ahead of their
| peers right now, then we're surprised that people crack under the
| stress?
|
| (FWIW, the sports that seem to come up on top are rich, exclusive
| sports like fencing and polo, because they serve well as class
| signifiers in admissions)
| hooverd wrote:
| Epee is the common man's sport, foil is for fancy lads, and
| sabre is for people who want to be pirates.
| atonse wrote:
| Yeah again the same social aspect is the challenge. We've
| resolved to tell our kids to forge their own path but they hear
| differently from friends, teachers, and other parents.
| doubled112 wrote:
| As a dad of two, this timeline sucks.
|
| Even children need to be optimized for maximum success (so
| profit) now? Must have missed that memo.
| fnimick wrote:
| The "optimization" really is around signifying class. How
| much can you afford the exotic activities, how good is your
| network to get that unpaid internship or that volunteer
| opportunity, and of course you can't be in a financial
| situation where your child has to do menial work like retail.
|
| There was a discussion here a while back with a college
| admissions person where they confirmed that volunteer work is
| a bonus where actual work is not. It's not explicitly stated,
| but anyone who comes from a family where they _have_ to work
| is at a disadvantage.
| anon291 wrote:
| > Even children need to be optimized for maximum success (so
| profit) now? Must have missed that memo.
|
| Well ... no they don't and this is the problem. 'Regular'
| people for some reason feel the need to replicate what 'they'
| do. Why do you see 'them' do this and then think 'my children
| need what they are doing with theirs'.
|
| Look.. the data are unequivocal. Most people are unhappy. If
| you are not unhappy with your life, you are the outlier and
| the exception. Thus... don't try to do what others are doing,
| since most likely they're unhappy. Just enjoy yourself.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > Meanwhile I know people who look at analytics and numbers to
| decide what sports and activities their child (who is still in
| elementary school!) should be doing in order to maximize
| college admissions chances.
|
| Those people are dumb; ignore them. They're "fighting the last
| war", so to say.
|
| Seriously, an orchestra needs 30-40 violins per tuba. There has
| to be a lot of violin players, or there is no orchestra (the
| Harvard orchestra is short on violin players right now [1] -
| they certainly aren't going to be taking many more "unusual"
| instruments without more violins)
|
| The injury rates for young athletes keeps increasing (as in
| younger than 25-30). Plenty of research shows that specializing
| in a single sport at a young age is a strong contributor to
| this. Of course those "elite" coaches want your kid to give up
| everything else; when your kid burns out or get injured the
| coach just moves on to the next kid in line.
|
| Just opt out of this system, your kids will be fine.
|
| [1] https://www.harvardradcliffeorchestra.org/current-roster
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Most school orchestras are not chamber orchestra, they
| separate band and the strings into separate classes with
| separate performances.
| floren wrote:
| They're not trying to optimize so the kid can be a profession
| violinist -- god forbid, there's hardly any money there at
| all! No, the idea is to just do things which make the kid
| look different on a college application. That's it. Once the
| Harvard letter comes in, the cello can be sold, it's served
| its purpose.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| Yeah, I totally get that :)
|
| But you know, just about every single good university has
| an orchestra - lots of them have multiple (symphony,
| philharmonia, etc). There are way more kids playing music
| for their school than will ever be professional musicians.
| And there is a need for 2-3 times more violin players than
| cello players.
|
| If your kid _enjoys_ playing violin _and_ wants to play in
| college, that will count for a lot more than someone who
| plays a cello just so they can write it down on their
| application.
| j-bos wrote:
| Looking back I've never been more active on internet stuff,
| social media, mindless youtube, the hn loop, than when unable to
| hang out IRL and do stuff with friends. Given screens are
| correlated with mental health issues, the article premise seems
| plausible.
| meter wrote:
| I can empathize with the "friends" part.
|
| When I was in college, I was either studying or running around
| with friends. The only time I mindlessly scrolled on my phone
| was when I ate alone in the cafeteria.
|
| Hanging out with close friends, I hardly felt any urge to use
| my phone. I really miss that.
| nazgulnarsil wrote:
| I think most video games are too structured to really qualify as
| play. This would be why more freeform games have been such
| surprise smash hits.
| [deleted]
| mseepgood wrote:
| Playing video games does not count as play, I assume?
| nathanfig wrote:
| (speculating) Multiplayer games with friends still provide a
| lot of the same healthy cooperation/conflict that play creates.
| But yeah I doubt it can be considered a whole substitute.
| j-bos wrote:
| Games alone or online feel very different from games played
| together in the same room. Even if they're the game.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Man do I ever lament the decline of 'couch co-op' games. Even
| to this day it's so nice to be able to go over to a friends
| house, crack open a beer and play together.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I've had a hell of a time finding good co-op games over the
| years too.
|
| Streets of Rogue was really fun for couch co-op, especially
| given the comical consequences of accidental explosions or
| poisoning air ducts with the wrong chemical. There's a
| character for every playstyle too.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Sequel is coming out "soon". Definitely my most
| anticipated upcoming release.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Yeah but then how do you get the other kid to pay for a new
| console and $80 video game when they can just play at their
| neighbors house?
|
| Who could have ever foreseen the rampant hollowing out of
| the holistic life in the service of making a few people
| richer....
| giantg2 wrote:
| It's the legal structure.
|
| We live in a society where a small mistake can ruin the rest of
| your life; where parents can be jailed for allowing previously
| common freedoms to children; where children are increasingly
| subject to age restrictions; where parents are under increasing
| threat of legal actions; surveillance is everywhere; and more.
|
| Many of these things were done with the best intentions of
| protecting children. How much joy does one get out of keeping a
| toy sealed in a box, preserving it's "value"? How much more
| valuable would that toy be if one enjoyed it during their
| childhood? We're keeping our kids in the packaging to protect
| them, but we're losing the real value.
| janalsncm wrote:
| The argument in TFA makes sense at a conceptual level. Kids that
| aren't allowed to play will be a neurotic mess.
|
| But I hesitate to write off teen mental health as just a result
| of over parenting or social media. Those are probably
| contributing factors, how much is not clear to me.
|
| Another contributing factor is the economic knife hanging over
| everyone's head. It's not enough to just finish high school like
| it was in the 1950s. It's not even enough to finish a bachelor's
| degree now, even though only 40% of millennials have accomplished
| that. So just being above average isn't enough. You need to be
| excellent.
|
| If you compare pretty much any other time in American history to
| the post-war economy, every metric is going to look worse. Does
| it mean we should be letting kids play tackle pom pom [1] during
| recess? So I'm not convinced by the hand-wavy _look how great
| things were back in the day_ analysis.
|
| This analysis would be much stronger if it tried to account for
| confounding factors. For example analyzing countries where life
| expectancy is not decreasing.
|
| [1] https://www.yellowbullet.com/threads/school-yard-recess-
| game...
| itronitron wrote:
| You could also make the argument that teens only seem to be
| having a mental health crisis because adults are spending more
| time listening to them.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| > Moreover, the 2019 Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System
| survey revealed that during the previous year 18.8% of US high
| school students seriously considered attempting suicide, 15.7%
| made a suicide plan, 8.9% attempted suicide one or more times,
| and 2.5% made a suicide attempt requiring medical treatment.
|
| Wait a minute, what?
|
| Nearly 1 in 10 attempted suicide? So in a middle school of say
| 400 kids a kid would know almost 40 peers that tried to kill
| themselves? I wasnt in middle school in 2019 but this just doesnt
| seem right. Maybe im misunderstanding.
|
| Edit: it says high school not middle school, but point stands
| MattGaiser wrote:
| I would be curious at how far you have to go for "attempted",
| especially when most supposed attempts did not require medical
| intervention (so it might consist of getting the materials and
| not having the final nerve to go through with it).
|
| But having graduated high school in 2014, my anecdotal reaction
| based on that experience would be that it seems on the high
| side but is plausible.
|
| My reaction certainly isn't "no way."
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Yeah there is a lot of gray area. Its also self reported, so
| they could also feel motivated to over report for some reason
| or another
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Maybe there's something like a "mental health crisis" that
| could be why it's so high.... /s
| nexuist wrote:
| It's not a "mental health crisis," it's schooling in general.
| The suicide rate among teenagers plummets when school goes
| out, or in the case of 2020, when a pandemic forces everyone
| to stay at home.
|
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/19/teen-
| su...
|
| https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-
| of...
|
| https://pages.uoregon.edu/bchansen/Back_To_School_Blues.pdf
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Im not denying that. Im saying those numbers are shockingly
| high
| [deleted]
| twh270 wrote:
| Apparently it's even worse (slightly, but still...) in 2021
| according to
| https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/su/su7201a6.htm.
|
| This is horrifying. These kids are going to become adults who
| will, to some extent, struggle to have successful, satisfying
| and rewarding lives.
| itronitron wrote:
| Hopefully they won't get hooked on opiates like so many
| adults in the free-ranging generation before them.
| loa_in_ wrote:
| This is already the case
| rossdavidh wrote:
| 2.5% of 400, or 10, made a suicide attempt requiring medical
| treatment. That doesn't mean the rest aren't in trouble and in
| need of help, but it's likely that in a previous decade we
| could have missed them.
|
| Still, 10 out of 400 needing medical treatment for a suicide
| attempt, is awful, and seems much higher than when I was in
| high school.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| 8.9% attempted suicide. Thats what im referring to as nearly
| 10%
| rossdavidh wrote:
| Sure, but if it didn't result in seeking medical care, then
| maybe nobody ever hears about it. This being true both now,
| and when we were in high school, it is hard to judge if
| that number is too high to be plausible or not.
|
| The 2.5% number is more directly comparable to past
| numbers, if we assume that suicide attempts that lead to
| requiring medical care are more likely to get reported
| somehow.
|
| Maybe, in the past, some high schooler one night decides to
| drive his car faster and faster on a deserted road, hoping
| that it will end up with death by car wreck. Then, they
| decide against it, slow down, pull over, cry, and
| eventually go home. We never hear about it unless they
| admit to somebody that it happened. But, if they end up
| putting the car in a ditch and get treated at a hospital,
| perhaps we do.
|
| My goodness what a depressing topic to comment on. Anyway,
| hope everybody out there reading this feels ok! If not, it
| gets better, keep trying!
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Yeah that sounds way off.
| black_13 wrote:
| [dead]
| rossdavidh wrote:
| I am especially interested to hear from non-USA readers of HN, as
| to how much of this sounds like what is happening in their
| countries vs. how much is a unique American issue.
| DoingIsLearning wrote:
| Outside looking in:
|
| - In the rest of the world University applications are (mostly)
| decided on academic scores. This adds academic pressure but it
| means outside school work the time is yours (probably not so
| true in Asia though). In the US I get the impression that kids
| (and parents) need to create some sort of 110% intensity
| overachiever halo in all their out of school activities (as
| early as possible) to be able to pad their applications in
| order to impress an Admissions Officer.
|
| - Your infrastructure is (beyond insanity) car hostage and the
| SUV arms race adds to even more pedestrian lack of safety. That
| pretty much makes a lot of kids confined to a few blocks around
| the house until they are 16. If you were to say to anyway in
| Europe that a town with more than 50k people has multilane
| streets but with no sidewalks they would probably protest.
|
| - Having said that I still feel that at least for teenagers
| smartphone/social media usage is a major cause of mental health
| decline across the globe (so not US exclusive). It's the whole
| problem of comparing other people's filtered best with your
| internal self-perceived worst.
| 2-718-281-828 wrote:
| i'd assume that play deprivation is also a major cause of mental
| problems in adults. me personally i just recently discovered the
| joy of games feasible with one or two standard decks of cards.
|
| current selection:
|
| - skat
|
| - gin rummy
|
| - german whist
|
| - spite and malice
|
| i found playing cards to be an amazing catalyst and temporary
| distraction while having a drink with a friend. it relieves the
| pressure of having to talk more or less nonstop. and shifting
| attention to the game away from conversation tends to engage the
| subconscious producing new interesting subjects to discuss.
| similar to that effect of ideas popping up during having a
| shower.
|
| any standard card game enthusiasts here? what's your game of
| choice?
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Before everyone begins chastising parents:
|
| >> He notes that this is a correlation, not proof of causation,
| although experiments with animals support the claim that play
| deprivation causes anxiety and poor social development.
|
| I also wonder if "playing" in Minecraft, or Roblox supports this
| definition of play. Or even RPGs like DnD. It's interactive, and
| allows children to experiment. It's not a physical world, but I
| don't know if these parameters were explored.
| jstarfish wrote:
| > I also wonder if "playing" in Minecraft, or Roblox supports
| this definition of play. Or even RPGs like DnD. It's
| interactive, and allows children to experiment. It's not a
| physical world, but I don't know if these parameters were
| explored.
|
| I don't think so, but that's my opinion.
|
| These virtual worlds have entirely different sets of rules that
| do not reflect those of reality or social norms. Kids do go
| through the same motions of testing boundaries, but they're
| testing boundaries that would get you punched in the face or
| jailed IRL-- but they get away with it without consequence
| because it's all virtual. There's no consequence to scamming
| other kids in Roblox or destroying people's artwork in
| Minecraft. It's completely normal behavior to them.
|
| Tabletop D&D doesn't count; it's in-person, so if you're
| tossing around slurs or being conspicuously offensive, someone
| _will_ correct your behavior.
|
| That's the extent of their socialization, and then they're
| unleashed into the real world expecting things to work the same
| way there.
| adamredwoods wrote:
| >> but they get away with it without consequence because it's
| all virtual.
|
| I'm not sure. From my limited observations of my N=1, and
| even from observing some Minecraft Youtube channels, there
| are definitely rules and consequences. But these are tested,
| changed, negotiated when new members (usually classmates) are
| brought in.
| rcurry wrote:
| When I was like 12 my teacher was an army reservist and got the
| idea to teach us how to rappel off the top of the school, lmao.
| So we all got together with our families and rappelled off a four
| story building. It was bananas and we all had so much fun. Now
| days they'd probably charge that teacher with a felony.
| moffkalast wrote:
| > There is also evidence that teens who have part-time jobs are
| happier than those who don't, because of the sense of
| independence and confidence they gain from the job.
|
| Genuinely wondering where they got any data for that, given that
| child labour is generally illegal these days and all. What kind
| of part time jobs for children that pay actual money exist in the
| present?
|
| I suppose you've got the rare ones like acting, modelling, toy
| testing, but those come with a lot of other factors that are
| probably hard to control for and in most cases I doubt the kids
| are paid directly. Maybe they counted getting $5 from your
| parents for mowing the lawn.
| twiddling wrote:
| < given that child labour is generally illegal these days and
| all
|
| In the US that's changing...
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Teenagers can work almost anywhere in the US. There are special
| rules restricting how much they can work, and under what
| conditions, but there aren't any states that outright ban
| teenagers from any kind of paid work.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| Ahhhh. So it's not social media?
|
| That said, social media aside, I wouldn't want to be a teen
| today. Too much fear. Too much gloom & doom. Too much adults
| preaching "Don't do Y and/or Z (and not offering "do this
| instead" alternatives).
|
| And parents are looked down upon for not overseeing their kid's
| every move. So yeah, the parents live in fear as well.
|
| This level of fear is not healthy.
|
| We've removed agency and replaced it with a void. Is it any
| wonder teens are struggling?
| nathanfig wrote:
| One major cause would not subtract another
| Waterluvian wrote:
| This may be obvious or well-discussed but I had an epiphany some
| years back when my dad, regarding my kids, said (paraphrasing),
|
| "they're not playing. 'Play' is a misleading term. They're
| testing the world. They're learning how things work. How gravity
| works. How friction holds lego together. How actions cause
| reactions. How friends and strangers behave when you do things.
| How to use language with make believe. How to comfortably and
| safely explore new ideas out loud with their action figures. How
| to discover what feels good and what doesn't. They're not
| playing. They're growing."
|
| My kids are young. But I'm confident this is generally true for
| teenagers, too. One quick example: I played WoW and looking
| back... I learned a ton about how to work in a team. How to be
| social. What social behaviours work and don't work. How to deal
| with people you don't like. How to delay gratification. How to
| plan. And it was all in a low-stakes environment.
| Aachen wrote:
| Of course. Kids aren't supposed to play instead of working just
| for the heck of it, there's a real purpose to it. I thought
| this understanding was part of upbringing and realising what it
| is you've been doing
| pomian wrote:
| Brilliant comment. We had a principal in our little community
| school who had exactly that attitude. He encouraged 'playing",
| and was often criticized for his efforts, by parents who didn't
| understand. Overall, however, the kids from that school were
| all eager learners, curious as to the world around them,
| socially very well integrated, and easily adapted to the rigors
| in high school and later. Play, is under valued.
| OO000oo wrote:
| The parents have every reason for concern, not because
| there's something wrong with the principal but because
| there's something wrong with the society their children are
| entering.
|
| The parents realize that their children will be screwed if
| they don't get into a good college, and the poorer parents
| need scholarships too! The principal's philosophical musings
| won't pay the bills.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| My parents drove me to burnout, dropping out of college,
| and becoming an anxious traumatized wreck, by only
| providing support in response to achievements, and
| destroying my self-worth whenever I strayed from their
| chosen path of maximizing academic accomplishments to get
| into the most prestigious and stressful college possible. I
| don't plan to have kids, because I'm not doing well enough
| to provide an environment of psychological safety where
| they learn that they have worth as individuals and not just
| for their achievements, and I cannot give them a world
| where they will be safe from homelessness and starvation
| even if they do not find a high-paying college degree.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Kids don't need a college degree to avoid homelessness or
| starvation. They do need valuable skills, but that could
| be HVAC, electrician, carpenter, mechanic, any number of
| things that don't take anything more than some
| community/vocational college or just working your way up
| from entry-level to get into.
|
| People who are homeless or starving are mainly mentally
| ill, or simply have no skills to offer any employer and
| no desire to do any better.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| yeah the AI is coming for your highfalutin desk job, but
| the carpenters will be making decent money for a while
| yet.
|
| basic woodworking skills are things that they can start
| picking up in HS shop classes; I spent summers working in
| a furniture factory framing chairs as a kid.
|
| got a neighbour who does asphalt paving -- just
| driveways. Dude is booked solid through the Fall and into
| December, and does alright. Not Palo Alto FAANG money but
| he's got a nice truck and a fishing boat and a nice
| garden that we bonded over / share tips about. point is:
| plenty of options for doing alright; the rest of the
| world ain't SF or NYC
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Yeah I know a guy who started as an entry-level drywaller
| in high school (truly one of the shittiest jobs in
| construction) and he now owns one of the larger drywall
| contractors in the area, he makes way more money than I
| do in software. Has more hassles than I do though,
| drywall company employees tend to come with a lot of
| headaches.
| OO000oo wrote:
| Yeah everyone can just be a business owner. That'll work
| out just great.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I think you're making a connection between "if you're
| focusing on open-ended stuff at school you aren't learning
| X, Y, Z." I can empathize and to an extent I agree that
| this is a concern with "fitting into the real world."
|
| As someone who never ever even remotely had the grades to
| get into an engineering program and has spent his entire
| career as a robotics engineer, experiencing a lot of
| terrible engineers with advanced degrees (among a ton of
| incredibly brilliant ones!), I'm just not sold on it being
| that big a deal. I think the larger harm is a parent
| applying that kind of pressure.
|
| All that being said, everything in moderation. I don't
| think it means, "hey let your kid do whatever." But it also
| doesn't mean, "force your child to study the violin and
| load them up with an entire childhood of structured
| programs until they hate you."
| hgomersall wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. Young kids need to play as part
| of their education. It seems reasonable to me that play
| makes you better trained to achieve those things you
| describe as important.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| "Play is the work of the child" - Dr Maria Montessori
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| We often explained to ours they they were going to work like
| mommy and daddy, they just work at school (which was a
| Montessori and it was awesome).
| smogcutter wrote:
| If you keep your eyes open for it around (neurotypical)
| adolescents you'll see that this is very true. _Everything_
| they do that they know is observed by others is an experiment.
| What happens if I say... what happens if I try... what happens
| if I wear...
|
| They're _very_ keenly tuned in to social feedback, far more so
| than we may realize as adults.
|
| IMO this is also why it's so important as an adult to be very
| intentional and unambiguous when appropriate. Flat statements
| like "that's rude" or "that was very kind" can be very
| powerful.
|
| Also worth considering how online interactions change the game-
| they're trying all the same gambits, but the kinds of feedback
| they get are very very different than in person.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > Flat statements like "that's rude" or "that was very kind"
| can be very powerful.
|
| Labels without understanding is kinda pointless. My friend's
| 5 year old has translated 'rude' to mean 'something I don't
| like'. Whenever he gets a timeout he calls his parents rude.
| It's actually pretty hilarious.
| roody15 wrote:
| Well said!
| brianmcc wrote:
| I really like this. The only thing that's missing from it is
| "fun" perhaps? I don't think it's "playing" unless there's also
| some intrinsic enjoyment!
| GoodJokes wrote:
| [dead]
| theptip wrote:
| WoW is an interesting example. I'm sure there are lessons to be
| learned in any activity; it's not like structured playtime is
| giving you zero information to update your world model.
|
| I suppose the question is whether the "learning density" is
| high or low, and diverse, in video games. I spent a lot of time
| on single player games as a kid and am open to the idea that
| MMOs give you more learning (particularly social, of course),
| but I do wonder how they compare with, say, team sports or
| running around the woods with your friends.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm even more bullish as to whether WoW counts as much more
| than team play with training wheels on.
|
| When you screw up team play on the playground you can make
| enemies, rivals that will follow you through school for years
| to come, a reputation (for better or worse). You may have to
| look another kid in the eye and tell them, "No".
|
| I don't doubt you can acquire some skills from online play,
| but if you think you're leveling up in self-esteem, social
| skills, I imagine that will get really put to the test when
| you find yourself alone at a party, or in an interview for a
| job.
|
| Like flight simulators, they can be educational but I suspect
| it's a whole 'nother level of learning and experience when
| you could die if you screw up.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| That's usually on my mind, especially since my parents did a
| lot of "you're on X all the time" where X was at least a
| dozen different things throughout my teenage years.
|
| The way I'm approaching it is simply: all things in
| moderation. Did you go outside today? Do a bit of tidying?
| Spend some time at the craft table? Go nuts with Super Mario
| after dinner. Did you wake up and play Mario for a few hours
| and get cranky when your brother asked you to play outside?
| Might be time to press the parental finger on the scale.
| cloudripper wrote:
| > They are testing the world.
|
| I like this a lot. That is so true. Personal anecdote:
|
| When I got my first car as a teenager (a cheap, used, beat-up
| sedan), I would often take it out to 'play', ehm, 'test the
| world'. I lived in a rural area and would drive random, remote
| backroads for hours with no maps (and no cell phones at the
| time). I would try to see if I could get lost. I never
| succeeded. I was always able to eventually find my way, while I
| was simultaneously building spatial awareness and a general
| sense of direction that accompanies me to this day. The winter
| time gave me the best 'testing' environment. I would drive
| these backroads when they were icey and very slick. When I had
| certainty there was no traffic anywhere near, I would see how I
| handled my car when I lost control. A few rotations later,
| after spinning uncontrollably, I was able to regain steering
| and was able to navigate out of the problem.
|
| Risky? Sure. Useful skills? Yes. Would my parents have stressed
| out knowing what I was doing, definitely. I'd like to think I'm
| a much better driver today because of it and have gotten myself
| out of some potentially consequential accidents because of my
| awareness of how a vehicle handles when out of control.
|
| Many people learn from doing - many kids especially. Being
| raised in proverbial padded rooms may mask very beneficial
| learning that corresponds to the real consequences of life that
| we will inevitably face in adulthood. There will always be risk
| by letting our kids loose a bit more, and thats probably the
| scariest of things for many parents..
| lossolo wrote:
| I also played WoW and learned a lot. I was leading a guild and
| was a raid leader in a somewhat semi-competitive environment
| (we were competing with other guilds on our server for first
| kills). If you want to learn how to be a team leader in a
| highly competitive environment where people fail, things do not
| go as planned, and you need to improvise, where stress comes
| into play when you fail for the 27th time over the last 4
| hours, then you can do it there for free. You learn how to make
| hard choices (you may need to replace a friend with another
| guildmate if they are holding the whole team back by failing
| game mechanics, etc.), how to lead a team, how people behave in
| stressful situations, how to keep the team together, and how to
| keep morale high, etc. So next time you see a kid playing WoW
| with others, don't underestimate the learning experience he
| will get there.
| emadda wrote:
| Play is the Trojan Horse for getting the organism to learn the
| principles of reality.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Very true with rough and tumble play as well. Which i imagine
| is virtually non-existant for kids raised only by single
| mothers. And is extremely important for adolescent boy.s
| Basically it teaches limits - what hurts and what causes pain
| to others. And overall leads to much healthier social
| development. Jordan Peterson talks a lot about this
| https://youtu.be/Ay1KVzVXbjc
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| How on earth do you even get to the conclusion that rough and
| tumble play is off limit for kids of single mothers? Those
| kids are much more likely to go unsupervised for extended
| periods of times and are also more likely to learn life
| skills earlier as they support their mother.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| I never said it was off limits.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| I think children of single mothers are over-represented in
| tech circles and likely on HN, which (alongside your poor
| grammar/capitalization and citing of a charlatan) is why
| you're being downvoted. The truth hurts, but it's true none-
| the-less. Boys raised by single mothers have terrible
| outcomes compared to full families, or even of single
| fathers. This is a sociological fact.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Most people do that with peers, not parents.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| never got in a fight with my parents, but there sure were
| plenty of shoving matches and occasional fists with the 8th
| graders on at me old schoolyard...
| nonethewiser wrote:
| Parents can play rough with their kids. They tend to if
| they value it. If they dont value it why would they let
| them play rough with others, who obviously care about their
| kids less than they do?
|
| To be clear, im not saying it has to come from their
| parents. Just that it's usually the dad powerbombing the
| kid on the bed and advocating for contact sports. This
| dynamic illustrated: https://imgur.io/8RZn2YF
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's scrimmage for life
| lolinder wrote:
| I wholeheartedly agree based on my own kids, but want to add a
| caution lest someone misunderstand: this testing, learning, and
| growing is of a kind that can _only_ be done without adult
| supervision. It 's not something that you can give them with a
| private lesson. It's not something that can be taught in a
| classroom. It's not something that can happen _at all_ without
| adults letting the kids figure it out on their own by random
| trial and error.
|
| Parents generally have a strong instinct to try to make things
| easier for their kids than they were for themselves growing up.
| We know the food is hot, so we blow on the kid's food or let it
| cool before giving it to them. We know the toy will break if
| it's repeatedly thrown down the stairs, so we impose a rule
| that "we don't do that in our house". We know X, Y, or Z, so we
| sit down with them and _explain_ it to them.
|
| I don't think that these explanations and rules have no place
| (I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto a
| wood-burning stove!), but we need to recognize that it's a
| strictly inferior way of learning something when compared to
| experience. And as you point out, unstructured play is where
| kids _get_ that experience in a low-stakes environment.
|
| Play serves a valuable purpose, but as soon as parents get
| involved to try to assist the purpose evaporates.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| I worked for a guy who designed playgrounds for
| kindergartens, schools and similar.
|
| He stressed the importance of spontaneous, unstructured play.
| As you note it leads to important social development, it
| improves creativity and could lead to much better academic
| performance into the teens according to the studies he showed
| me.
|
| When he designed a playground it wasn't "here they can do A
| and there they can do B", but he strived to provide spaces
| that facilitated spontaneous play. He wanted the kids to do
| their own thing, and provided as many options as possible. An
| important factor here is that kids enjoy different kinds of
| play. Not everyone wants to kick a ball, some want more
| social play so might need a space that allows for that,
| perhaps a secluded sitting group.
|
| However as you note safety is a big issue. He had a guiding
| principle of two kinds of safety. There's subjective saftey,
| if you're high up you know falling might hurt. This is what
| kids should learn, and it's important they get to do that
| without permanent injury.
|
| The second kind is objective safety, which relates to the
| environment and equipment, which facilitates this learning of
| subjective safety. There shouldn't be rocks near by equipment
| which could cause permanent injury if a kid fell of the
| equipment. There shouldn't be gaps in the swing attachment
| where a kid could lose a finger, and so on.
| jwells89 wrote:
| I'm not a parent, but I can imagine how difficult it must be
| for some parents to be able to "let go" in this way sometimes
| and let kids be kids.
|
| I think if I had kids my gut feeling would be to prevent harm
| and unpleasant experiences, because I wouldn't want to
| experience those things myself, much less those in my charge
| who may not be equipped to handle it as well. If I allow
| myself to be driven by that instinct however, they'll never
| be well equipped which does not make for a well rounded
| adult. It hurts to see immediate family hurting even in
| trivial capacities, but a parent must seemingly be able to
| endure that if the children are to come to be able to stand
| on their own.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| > I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto
| a wood-burning stove!
|
| Famously, the Dusun in Borneo teach their children to respect
| knives by allowing them to play with them (and cut
| themselves) as toddlers.
| kulahan wrote:
| Obviously things are different when speaking about a
| different species, but when training dogs to herd large
| animals, you often start training them on something small
| like goats or sheep. Ideally, they learn what a hoof to the
| face feels like BEFORE they start working with, say,
| horses.
|
| I guess my point is that anyone who needs to train safety
| totally understands how important it is for someone to
| understand the specific danger _intimately_
| bmitc wrote:
| It's a curious thing to only be able to teach the dangers
| of something by having children try out and experience the
| reprecussions of dangers. I think an important skill in
| life is to actually predict and understand danger ahead of
| time. As in, a knife won't just give you a bruise, it could
| be easily fatal if used in even the most mildly wrong way.
| Falling/jumping from great heights isn't something to just
| experiment with and try. Running in a busy street isn't
| something to try just to understand the dangers. Running up
| to an American bison isn't something to just try and see
| what happens. Etc.
| evandale wrote:
| Some of these dangers are relative though. A 6 foot fall
| for a toddler is probably not going to kill them but
| relative to the size of the kid it's a great height they
| can experiment with. A 10 foot drop for an 8 year old is
| a great height to them but they'll survive.
|
| The bison example, I would think any child would be very
| wary of walking up to a bison. On top of that, if a child
| were to approach a bison I highly doubt the bison would
| come out with full offensive. They'd probably assume a
| defensive posture to scare the kid away. If the kid kept
| coming you should keep in mind that mammals recognize
| babies of other mammals. It would be pretty extraordinary
| for the bison to consider a human child as a threat and
| attack them.
|
| The cars though, yeah. I don't even want to get into
| that.
| watwut wrote:
| Mammals eat babies of other mammals. Nature ain't nice to
| babies.
|
| Famously, lions kills lion babies, that is babies of own
| species when they encounter babies of another lion group.
| borski wrote:
| > Falling/jumping from great heights isn't something to
| just experiment with and try. Running in a busy street
| isn't something to try just to understand the dangers.
|
| Unless your kids are interested in and want to learn free
| running and parkour, at which point this is how you
| learn. Of course there is reason to be careful, but fear
| often plays a large role in that.
| Gerard0 wrote:
| Of course we told (many times) our 3 yr old son not to put
| his hand on the stove.
|
| And one day he just had to try it and feel what all these
| stories were about. He started crying immediately. We went to
| the hospital and came back rather quick. It wasn't so bad,
| just had to have a bandage for a couple of days.
|
| Some weeks later he does it again. On purpuse.
|
| !!??
|
| I tell my brother and he answers: "I kind of understand him.
| Sometimes I want to do it too."
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Yeah, the idea that kids will only do stupid things once
| isn't necessarily true.
|
| Similar story: I have a good friend who, as a kid,
| regularly had to have poison control called for him. It
| didn't matter what his parents did to hide the stuff he
| shouldn't drink, he would still try to get to it and drink
| it. Despite having to have his stomach pumped multiple
| times.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(philosophy_o.
| .. feels obligatory to mention here:
|
| > _a theory in education which posits that individuals or
| learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by
| passively perceiving it within a direct process of knowledge
| transmission, rather they construct new understandings and
| knowledge through experience and social discourse,
| integrating new information with what they already know
| (prior knowledge)._
|
| A bunch of the big One Laptop Per Child people were strong
| constructivists. It didnt seem super successful, but the OS
| really did a lot to build a more open sandbox for compute
| that kids could more directly be involved with, see &
| manipulate. I wish that effort had gone a bit better, had
| developed more compelling learning software & been given a
| shot at a much bigger scale, where more could have been
| learned/tried.
| HWR_14 wrote:
| > We know the toy will break if it's repeatedly thrown down
| the stairs, so we impose a rule that "we don't do that in our
| house"
|
| For many parents, the toy is expensive enough that it
| warrants a rule (like the stove.)
| Waterluvian wrote:
| It's all relative. For us, it's fine to watch my kid
| completely smash a lego set down the stairs because they're
| holding it like a waiter, it's another thing when it's the
| Nintendo 3DS (both examples from this week)
| chmod775 wrote:
| > it's another thing when it's the Nintendo 3DS (both
| examples from this week)
|
| On the other hand, if you don't buy them a new 3DS right
| away, there's a valuable lesson here somewhere.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| When we interrupted it we did have that discussion. "You
| play it so much and if it breaks there isn't another
| one."
|
| It seemed to register. But I think one of these days some
| sacrificial tech will really teach them this. And I
| wonder if that will make all the difference for
| respecting cell phones.
|
| I mentor a highschool robotics team and 90% of the kids
| phones have cracked screens.
| lfowles wrote:
| Indeed, it's not just that I'm anxious the toy will break.
| It's that I'm anxious the behavior will continue and the
| replacement will be broken in short order and so on.
| borski wrote:
| Make them work for it. If they break a toy, they have to
| work to get the replacement. Very early on, that might
| just mean doing their chores on time, or reading a book,
| or whatever - but the point is that when they break
| something, it takes work to replace.
| ddq wrote:
| Why replace it? You're just teaching the child that
| breaking things has consequences for others but not for
| them.
| jjk166 wrote:
| At some point in time you made the determination that the
| value of the child possessing that item was greater than
| the cost to purchase said item. While them breaking the
| item may have changed the equation, generally it doesn't.
| In real life if you accidentally break something, you
| replace it and move on. If the child is old enough
| perhaps have the replacement come out of their
| allowance/have them do something in exchange, but if they
| are too young to take care of the issue themselves, they
| are too young to be responsible for taking care of the
| issue.
| lfowles wrote:
| I've tried preaching philosophy to my toddler but he just
| doesn't seem to get it for some reason :) Some toys do
| get "broken" (but easily fixed so they reappear in a week
| or more), but out of sight means out of mind! He won't
| even remember it exists as soon as he gets thirsty and
| wants his drink instead, so effectively there are already
| zero consequences outside of a minute of anguish. I, on
| the other hand, do like the option of having toys to
| distract him while fixing dinner and some are way more
| effective than most.
| evandale wrote:
| I never understand this view, but admittedly I don't have
| children. I have a cat though. She's the first pet I've
| ever had in my life.
|
| I got lots of warnings from lots of people. Don't let her
| out or she'll cry all the time to go out. Keep her away
| from the door or she'll run out and you won't see her
| again. It sounded very difficult.
|
| However I didn't follow this advice and let my cat out in
| my backyard. And I found out that people were right and
| she does cry to go out all the time.
|
| At the start. So I ignored her. I didn't even tell her to
| be quiet. I let her whine and cry as much as she wanted.
| She was 100% fine and had everything she needed except
| the ability to go outside.
|
| She started to scratch the screen to voice her
| displeasure. I'm the boss and so she lost screen door
| privileges. She tried to negotiate but failed horribly
| because, again, I am the boss. She is a cat. The next
| weekend she got screen door privileges back and scratched
| the screen on day 2. She lost them again because I'm the
| boss and I don't want her to scratch my screen. When she
| got her screen privileges back again she never scratched
| the screen again.
|
| The door thing, same. She snuck out once. Then I started
| locking her in a safe room with everything she needed.
| It's still her room to this day and she can trash it as
| much as she wants, just like she could as a kitten.
| That's the only room she can do that and seems to
| understand that. She doesn't really come near the door if
| I'm leaving now, and if she's close she will not try
| sneaking out.
|
| She just turned two this past month, and while she was a
| nightmare as a kitten, she is a complete angel now.
|
| I'm not totally perfect and for example I can't keep her
| off my desk if it's in the sitting position. So I've
| learned to deal with it. If I don't want her on my desk I
| need to either keep her out of my office or use it
| standing. I can't seem to win this battle and I tried
| everything. I'll say that not buying a kid a new iPad
| seems like a much easier thing to do.
|
| I'm sure children are a lot different but the "I can't
| teach children philosophy" excuse sounds pretty weak. I
| don't understand how children can have that much power
| over an adult.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| > She just turned two this past month, and while she was
| a nightmare as a kitten, she is a complete angel now.
|
| A story of our young kid.
|
| We had twins when she was 3. And she really liked them.
| Until they started moving and getting into her stuff.
| Then she really hated them. So much so that she would go
| out of her way to hurt them. When going to the bathroom,
| she would go the long way so she could step on their
| fingers. When we weren't looking, she would push them
| over. When one of them knocked over one of her toys, she
| picked him up and bodyslammed him.
|
| It made life a living hell. We tried everything we could
| think of. Time outs, losing stuff, whatever. Right
| afterwards, 10 minutes later, she would be on them again.
|
| Then one day, about 3 months after it started, it just
| stopped. Like magic. No clue why.
| IanCal wrote:
| > I'm sure children are a lot different
|
| They are.
|
| Beating them into submission because you are the boss and
| they are just a child is not a long term solution.
|
| They are a lot more complex than cats.
|
| > I don't understand how children can have that much
| power over an adult.
|
| Oh I can easily just lock my son in his room, make him
| dance to get fed, anything really. It'd be abuse and
| wouldn't result in him growing into a well rounded child
| and adult and he'd hate me, but I could force him to
| behave in basic ways like you're describing.
| evandale wrote:
| I didn't beat anything into submission.
|
| I set ground rules and gave her safe ways to be upset. If
| she misbehaved she lost privileges she enjoys.
|
| I never neglected her if that's what you're trying to get
| at. That's a pretty low-blow to accuse me of based on
| what I wrote. Be better.
|
| Obviously locking children in rooms isn't right. How
| about this, instead of locking kids in a room, you could
| try making a toy room and locking them OUT if they're
| misbehaving. Is that inhumane torture? That's basically
| what I did with my cat.
| IanCal wrote:
| "beating into submission" is a phrase that does not mean
| physically beating.
|
| > I never neglected her if that's what you're trying to
| get at.
|
| If you did that to a child it would be neglect, that is
| the point. Children aren't cats.
|
| It is more complex with a child. It's easier when they're
| a baby, but increasingly more subtle as they get older.
| Nobody is saying you can't take things away from them or
| set boundaries, but you're talking about very simple
| things that may work with very young children but aren't
| enough as they get older.
|
| "Do as I say because I am the boss" is just not good
| enough. Maybe you'll get compliance but that's not enough
| if you want a healthy relationship with your child as
| they grow.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| Obviously this depends on the age of the child and the
| cost of the replacement, which are outside the parent's
| control, but how quickly the toy is replaced can be a
| factor too. When a toddler drops a toy behind some
| furniture (on purpose, multiple times) you can leave it
| there for a week or two, and they will learn not to do
| that with things they care about.
| kajaktum wrote:
| Whenever this kind of opinion props up I wonder how far would
| you let your child to "fail"? Clearly we need our children to
| stumble and fail in a low-stake environment before they
| actually experience them later on in life. This naturally
| involves taking some risk. I remember being able to walk
| freely around the village pretty much without any
| supervision, I did get hurt a lot either from running into
| walls or getting scratches from sword play. The problem I see
| is that modern people have absolutely zero tolerance for
| "failure" in this regard. Clearly I could have been
| kidnapped, fallen into the river, fall from a tall tree, got
| run over by the cows or whatever. Let's face it, this comes
| with risk. But modern society can't seem to tolerate even a
| single dead children. Is that for the better? Maybe? But I
| think trying this has a long term cost. Trying to min/max
| risk taking and maintaining absolutely zero children suffer
| is just not going to work. We'll probably lose on both ends.
|
| Note: I have no children nor do I plan to. Exactly because I
| have no idea how to deal with them nor do I want them to
| suffer being with me lol
| seszett wrote:
| > _modern society can 't seem to tolerate even a single
| dead children_
|
| You mean _parents_ can 't seem to tolerate even a single
| dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents
| only ever have one or two children.
|
| Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their
| children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can
| rationalize away.
| hilbert42 wrote:
| _"...especially when most parents only ever have one or
| two children. "_
|
| That I believe is part of it. My parents were children
| before WWII and both came from large families--there were
| seven siblings on each side. On the other hand my
| generation had typically two kids.
|
| It would be ludicrous to suggest that my grandparents
| didn't love their kids or care as much about them given
| their numbers but the fact is--put brutally--there was
| considerable solace in having 'spares'.
|
| Today, it is very easy to forget that prewar many more
| kids per capita never reached adulthood. Most people
| alive today have never known a time without penicillin or
| the pre-polio-vaccine days. People in those days were
| much more fatalistic about life and the lives of their
| kids as life back then was considerably more 'fragile'.
| Today, we _expect_ our kids to reach adulthood and
| outlive us, back then most hoped that would happen but
| they were more circumspect about it. When a kid died of
| course parents would be terribly upset but when it
| happened they always knew there was more chance of it
| happening than just a remote possability.
|
| I noticed this fatalism in my grandparents, especially my
| grandmother, she came from a big family and she had a big
| family and in both cases some kids died before reaching
| adulthood.
| kajaktum wrote:
| > You mean parents can't seem to tolerate even a single
| dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents
| only ever have one or two children.
|
| If every parents react the same way then that is
| effectively the whole society no? Imagine the reaction of
| a modern day town if a child had broke their neck from
| the playground, what would the reaction? I wouldn't put
| demolishing the playground outside of the realm of
| possibility.
|
| > Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents,
| their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that
| they can rationalize away.
|
| Yea and this is why this is quite interesting to think
| about for me. In a way, perhaps it is better that
| failures to happen in small numbers many times, instead
| of 1 big societal level failure that only need to happen
| once. I think part of the problem is that people have
| access to global news today. Even 1 children choking on
| some candy or whatever from the other side of the globe
| would mean that every children would be stripped of this
| experience.
| borski wrote:
| > Imagine the reaction of a modern day town if a child
| had broke their neck from the playground, what would the
| reaction?
|
| This is extremely locale-dependent. In the US? There
| would be lawsuits, fences, height restrictions, and so
| on.
|
| In the Netherlands? They'd put up a sign, maybe.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| except when someone shoots up their school, it seems
| seszett wrote:
| I don't understand what you mean, but I might be missing
| something since school shootings aren't a thing here.
|
| Are you saying that parents don't care when their
| children are killed in a school shooting?
| bongoman37 wrote:
| [dead]
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yes, I grew up in a small town and pretty much had the run
| of it from the age of 6 or 7, and quite a lot of freedom
| even before that. My friends and I would be out all day,
| every day, all summer long - probably never more than two
| miles from home but definitely in that range. With my own
| kids I'm less protective than a lot of parents in my
| neighborhood but I wouldn't really be comfortable with
| that, certainly not at that age and even if I was none of
| their friends would be allowed to do that, most kids stay
| on their block or cul-de-sac.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > only be done without adult supervision.
|
| I disagree. It's best done with adult supervision, by adults
| who either at least allow play, if not are still playful
| themselves.
|
| Yes teens do need some time without adults for a sliver of
| contexts, but the vast majority of learning is optimized when
| having the availability of at least 2 responsible adults who
| aid when called on but do not impose.
|
| Lots of our ideas about teenagers, what kids can and cannot
| do etc are very recent and very contrary to history's proof
| that they absolutely can
| toshk wrote:
| You can definitely enrich & join play. You just have to also
| enjoy & play and not supervise.
| lolinder wrote:
| Oh, for sure, sometimes joining is great! But not all the
| time, and the kids should still be in charge.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| The way I explain this is, "my job is not to protect my kids
| from harm, it's to protect them from irreparable harm."
|
| I've had this instinct whenever my kids are on the jungle gym
| to say, "slow down!" "That's too high!" etc. but I usually
| catch myself and think, "if they fall is it a cry or a
| hospital visit?"
| ant6n wrote:
| >> The way I explain this is, "my job is not to protect my
| kids from harm, it's to protect them from irreparable
| harm."
|
| I also like to protect my shit from harm. Kids can be quite
| destructive in their play.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| If you don't allow your kids to fuck up, they will never
| build healthy behaviors around fucking up. It's very
| helpful for kids to give them safe chances to fuck up.
| duckmysick wrote:
| I've been wondering: how do we teach kids about addiction
| (substances, gambling, phone/internet) and its
| consequences?
|
| Theoretical explanation is not effective. Letting them
| experience it first hand might be too destructive,
| because of the nature of the addiction.
|
| Can any parent chime in what worked and what didn't?
| pineaux wrote:
| This was already a solved problem. Just get the kids use
| all the stuff away from parents when they are between 14
| and 18. Yes it will do a little bit of brain damage, but
| getting pissdrunk at that age and having your parents
| nurse you back to normal is a great experience for a kid.
| I know this from first hand experience, when I was 14 (it
| was sorta normal in the Netherlands at that time). I was
| a lot more carefully with any substances afterwards. As
| for addiction: kids are getting addicted to their phones
| and games all the time.
| em-bee wrote:
| what works is living by example. and letting the kids
| grow up in an environment where nobody does drugs.
| showing them the bad outcome that others suffering from
| addiction experience may also be instructive. but
| generally kids do as the parents do. if you have a good
| relationship with your kids so that they are not trying
| to take drugs out of protest, then they won't be tempted
| to try.
| pineaux wrote:
| I think this is bad advice.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| I think you'll end up with drug-naive kids, which may be
| a similar risk. You've just shifted the risk to an older
| period of their life. Kids need information, not naivete
| enforced through ignorance.
| plasticchris wrote:
| I watched requiem for a dream when I was a preteen. It
| was super effective.
| dror wrote:
| - Lead by example. Be responsible about your own use and
| be honest about it.
|
| - Help them engage in constructive risk taking behavior.
| Sports are a common example, and there's plenty of
| research showing that they reduce harmful behavior.
| Teens, specifically males explore risky behavior. They
| have these new magnificent bodies and they want to test
| their limits.
|
| - Be present, available and engaged with them. Some of
| the time, they'll want you out of their face. That's
| fine, but try and keep routines like family meals, and
| talk to them, if they're willing.
|
| - Try to maintain the family. Sometimes a
| divorce/separation is the right thing, but for the kids,
| most of the time, keeping the family together in a dual-
| parent family is very important.
| Two4 wrote:
| While your comment addresses the most common factors
| contributing to addiction, it doesn't really answer the
| question of how to let children experience the
| consequences of addiction in a way that's low stakes and
| not irreversible.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Let them play monopoly with allowance money?
|
| /s
|
| In all reality the most effective drug and vice talks I
| ever got were in High School.
|
| The first was from our school's substance counselor who
| was a former crack addict, and mother of one of our
| fellow students. She just told her story, and talked
| about all the horrible shit she saw, but never once told
| us drug war lies.
|
| The other was from my English teacher a few weeks before
| graduation. The gist of it was: "there's nothing I can
| say that will stop you from experimenting with drugs. A
| little bit of drugs probably won't ruin your lives, and
| might be fun, but pay attention to the people who don't
| moderate, and the people who do. The results speak for
| themselves."
|
| What it came down to was it was the two people that were
| honest with us who got heard. Some DARE cop lecturing us
| from a DEA handout about how marijuana addiction would
| ruin our lives didn't work, because kids aren't stupid,
| and they know BS when they hear it.
| jdougan wrote:
| "Drugs will make you feel awesome. Never trust _anything_
| that makes you feel like that"
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| That sounds like the right way to do it. I would have
| welcomed that down to earth honesty at my school. We only
| got half the info we needed, the half they wanted us to
| hear, and at that point I lost trust in them.
| jxramos wrote:
| I've been day dreaming about as more social data goes
| public on the internet how can that enable us to peer
| into the lives of folks who post material and leak
| details of their lives online. Can sociological studies
| be made where these bad choices can be reviewed in
| accelerated form where the individuals who picked the
| wrong path show the fruits of their choices visually and
| the decline is evident just looking at them and hearing
| the things they talk about.
|
| Not sure how feasible it is, but I think with all the
| photo and video data we now have on hand what sort of
| longitudinal studies we can produce from imagery alone
| with the occasional detail and context self professed by
| the individuals involved.
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| People can disregard fucking _anything_ they don 't want
| to hear. Still, perhaps, might work.
|
| > where these bad choices
|
| drugs = bad choice, always? There can be good sides too.
| chasd00 wrote:
| my kids aren't old enough to comprehend these things yet
| but family friends take their kids to volunteer at
| homeless shelters, food pantries, etc. Seeing addiction
| and what it does to lives first hand is a good motivator
| to not let it happen to you.
| uoaei wrote:
| Witnessed this kind of thing today. Doting father of
| three boys on vacation. They're all ditzing around on
| busy sidewalks and the father barks "Control yourselves!"
|
| It occurred to me at that moment that this kind of
| hovering and scolding teaches children to _externalize
| the responsibility of understanding their environment and
| their place within it_. They will literally never learn
| the lessons this father wants to impart because he will
| always be there to act _for_ them, until the children 's
| brains lose the plasticity necessary to properly
| internalize those things. Perhaps they will always
| struggle with a psychological complex they can never
| fully understand.
|
| I know this because I had a doting mother who always
| defined my priorities for me. I learned to nearly fully
| externalize the maintenance of those priorities to her
| expectations (which were transitively pinned to those of
| the formal academic and "professional" systems).
|
| Because of this I'm currently going through something of
| an existential crisis -- I really don't know what I
| _want_ to do. My career has been unfulfilling and trying
| to develop lasting hobbies and interests have not borne
| out the deep kinds of satisfaction others seem to be able
| to achieve. I still hold out hope I can find something
| that "gets the ball rolling" but learning patience while
| watching myself continue to orient myself toward goals
| that have definitive, quantifiable, socially-acceptable
| ends has been unsettling. I want to feel comfortable in
| my day-to-day, or at least confident that the processes I
| enact encourage the development of a more whole being.
| watwut wrote:
| The busy sidewalk thing is about innocent passersbys not
| having to deal with rowdy kids bumping into them or
| otherwise bothering them. And actually, kids that are
| told to watch it actually overall do take more care about
| that sort of stuff then if parents just let them do
| whatever.
| SomewhatLikely wrote:
| My young kids would be totally unaware if they were
| bumping into others, or causing them to stop abruptly, or
| otherwise interfering with others. Of course if those
| strangers yelled at them or provided some less harsh form
| of feedback it might register with them, but I find most
| people don't say anything so it's on me to let my kids
| know the effects they're behavior is having.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > I find most people don't say anything so it's on me to
| let my kids know the effects they're behavior is having.
|
| People are terrified of saying anything because of the
| likely reaction of the kids' parents. The "it takes a
| village" mindset is gone. If someone's kid runs into you
| and you so much as say "excuse me" to them, you risk the
| parents getting in your face, holding up their cellphone
| camera, yelling "You don't talk to _my_ kids. Go mind
| your damn business, Karen! " Not worth it--so bad
| behavior in public goes uncorrected.
|
| Even when kids aren't involved, people's reaction more
| and more to public criticism/correction is to get
| belligerent and tell you to mind your business.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| Truly.
|
| I was at a park concert once, the kind where everyone is
| sitting, and there was a large family in front of me. One
| of the kids (around 12 I would guess, old enough in any
| case) kept standing up, roaming around, and generally
| blocking the view of the people behind him, even though
| he wasn't watching the show (he was literally munching on
| snacks and facing back in the crowd). I wouldn't have
| cared if he was excited, dancing, enjoying the show, but
| that was just not the case.
|
| I asked him if he could sit down so I could see. His dad
| immediately got in my face and demanded that I apologize
| to his son. He didn't leave until the police got
| involved.
| uoaei wrote:
| Sure, it's important to give them feedback. That's a
| different thing from merely thinking for them, however. A
| (brief) conversation about the effects they may have on
| others and the feelings they expect others to have would
| go a long way toward engendering more pro-social
| considerations.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Eh don't beat yourself up. I grew up with a lot of
| unstructured play time and I still don't feel like I have
| any real passions or a very satisfying career. I think
| that's pretty normal and a lot of what people talk about
| with regards to passions and interests is just bullshit
| or making conversation.
|
| A father or mother admonishing their kids to behave in
| public is not really anything new either.
| scruple wrote:
| I'll offer a perspective. I'm a father of 3 young kids (4
| year old twins, 20 month old). I often find myself in
| situations where I also need my children to stop whatever
| they're currently doing and pay attention to me.
|
| You mention this happened on a sidewalk. Cars drive next
| to sidewalks. The American culture of cars is _the number
| one_ cause of anxiety in my life as a parent to young
| children. I do not want to feel this anxiety, I do not
| like how it makes me react towards my children, who just
| want to play and have fun and explore the world and try
| to understand it. But cars exist. And today they are a
| _much bigger_ problem than they were when I was their
| age, for a whole variety of reasons that are very well
| understood and articulated by people far more intelligent
| and capable than I am. And my children are, practically
| every single day, within 4-6 feet of cars that are a)
| much larger than they have any right to be, and b)
| driving much faster than they have any reason to, to the
| point that if they are careless about where they are, or
| what they are doing, they run a very serious risk of
| being killed.
|
| That is why I sometimes respond to my children the way
| that I do, in line with what you've observed here. I
| don't like it, either, but it is what it is.
|
| Now, I go out of my way to get my kids into big, wide,
| safe open spaces on a daily basis, and I will
| deliberately ignore them (within reason -- I keep tabs on
| where they are, etc.) so that they can go off and find
| interesting ways to play, hurt themselves, whatever. But
| I still have to engage with the automobile problem
| multiple times almost every single day of our lives.
| rcpt wrote:
| > Cars
|
| This is 99% of it (other 1% is fear of other parents
| scolding you). There's a beach bike path near us with
| only one street crossing in 5 miles. My 6 and 7 year old
| are free to explore the whole thing unattended provided
| they avoid that crossing. It has playgrounds and all
| kinds of stuff they can stop their bikes at.
|
| But I won't let them cross the street we live on because
| none of these drivers are thinking about pedestrians and
| even if they were I doubt any of the lifted trucks could
| even see a 4ft tall kid.
| uoaei wrote:
| I didn't mean to make it seem like I was challenging the
| parent's decision to involve themselves in the behaviors
| of their kids. I'm speaking more to the curt, evidently
| anxious outburst rather than a more even-handed and
| considerate approach.
| [deleted]
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >'Play' is a misleading term.
|
| In psychology, the rest of your post is what "play" means. It's
| basically anything done as practice, or with low stakes, or
| without other purpose.
| legitster wrote:
| As a parent of a young kid, I am rarely worried about him. He
| knows how to watch for traffic. He knows how to find his way home
| from a friends'. He knows enough about what is dangerous to do.
|
| It's the police and CPS that I am afraid of. The ubiquity of
| smartphones has made tattling and "calling someone" so easy. And
| it's almost never from other parents! The parents are more
| worried about "what people will think" than they are their own
| kids actually being hurt!
|
| Also, there are so many fewer kids in a neighborhood than when I
| was a kid (both from a declining birthrate - and also the
| monopoly older/kidless people have in suburban housing right now
| is very underreported) that there is less safety in numbers.
| There are only 2 other kids on our block.
| alexpetralia wrote:
| _(deleted - posted under the wrong comment)_
| afavour wrote:
| Agreed. Also in NYC and while I do trust my kid with road
| safety I've witnessed so many drivers blowing through a red
| light, speeding, parking in the middle of a crosswalk and
| pulling all kinds of dangerous manoeuvers that the streets
| don't actually feel particularly safe. There's just zero
| enforcement out there.
| [deleted]
| doubled112 wrote:
| I was in an intersection one morning after walking the kids
| to school, and almost hit by a man running the all way
| stop. It wasn't even the standard for the neighbourhood
| rolling stop, but full on blowing through it.
|
| I threw up an arm in disapproval, and he flipped me off in
| return, like I was the problem. Sometimes the entitlement
| is unreal, and I'm not sure how much enforcement it would
| take before people did the right thing.
|
| There was a YouTube video of a man standing on the sidewalk
| next to a puddle with an umbrella, then a brick. Perhaps
| staged, but I'll let you guess which one kept him drier.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| "About 1 in 36 children has been identified with autism spectrum
| disorder (ASD) according to estimates from CDC's Autism."
|
| When I was growing up, basically no one had it. The rates were 1
| per 1,000 or lower. So one or two kids in the entire high school.
| Now you can expect one in your class. Many of these kids are
| supper naive and vulnerable, just trying to fit in. One reason
| why the right is skeptical of what is being taught to them.
| honkycat wrote:
| You know that weird kid in your class? That kid would have an
| ASD diagnosis these days.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| Sorry to burst your bubble, the rates of Autism likely haven't
| changed (or changed in a minor way), what has changed is the
| rate of diagnosis. A lot of the kids currently being diagnosed
| also have parents that are autistic but undiagnosed. Same thing
| with ADHD.
|
| The paths available in society have gotten less friendly to
| those with ADHD/Austism (by default), so more people are
| seeking diagnosis today than in the past.
|
| Also, if you go far enough back, the U.S. used to
| institutionalize people with mental conditions, which is a
| pretty strong case against seeking any sort of diagnosis.
|
| The decrease in child mortality might have also increased the
| occurrence of certain conditions in the population, but I'm not
| aware of specific studies to that effect.
| tegmark wrote:
| [flagged]
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| I have a friend with an autistic kid. The kid is 3 can't talk
| and doesn't respond to facial expressions, along with a long
| list of specific easily recognizable common behaviours. The
| idea that these common traits would have not been diagnosed
| by previous generation of educators is wishful thinking at
| best.
|
| Key signs of autism in children include:
|
| 1. Social communication difficulties: Lack of or limited eye
| contact Difficulty understanding and using nonverbal
| communication (e.g., gestures, facial expressions) Trouble
| with understanding and using gestures, body language, and
| facial expressions Difficulty developing and maintaining age-
| appropriate relationships with peers Challenges with sharing
| interests or enjoyment with others Repetitive behaviors and
| restricted interests:
|
| 2. Engaging in repetitive movements (e.g., hand-flapping,
| rocking, spinning objects) Insistence on sameness and
| routines; becoming distressed by changes in routines Intense
| focus on specific interests or topics, often to the exclusion
| of others Communication difficulties:
|
| 3. Delayed speech development or difficulty in acquiring
| language skills Unusual patterns of speech, such as echolalia
| (repeating words or phrases out of context) Difficulty
| initiating or sustaining conversations Challenges in
| understanding and using language pragmatically (e.g., taking
| turns, using appropriate tone of voice) Sensory
| sensitivities:
|
| 4. Heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli, such as noise,
| lights, textures, or smells Seeking or avoiding certain
| sensory experiences (e.g., seeking deep pressure, avoiding
| crowded places)
|
| 5.Unusual play and behavior:
|
| Engaging in repetitive and imaginative play that lacks social
| aspects Using toys in unusual ways or showing little interest
| in toys altogether Engaging in self-stimulatory behaviors
| (stimming) to self-regulate or express emotions"
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| also possibly adults?
| lgleason wrote:
| The kid that does really well in school, makes it big is going to
| have an opportunity for a lot more play later in life. The kid
| who does nothing but play will probably end up having very little
| opportunity and have to work long hours later in life to barely
| make ends meet with lots of stress and little opportunity for
| play. So its a trade off.
|
| Obviously if the kid comes from a rich family that is willing to
| support and leave all of their money to the kid that changes the
| equation, but I have seen examples where those kids still ended
| up as drug addicts etc..
| tinycombinator wrote:
| I don't think it's as simple as having 100% play vs 100% work.
| There's got to be some optimum balance here that we're clearly
| not satisfying, with our flawed notion that 100% work is the
| best route. It's possible for people to have a satisfying
| social life while also doing very well in school, and it's also
| possible for a loner to have a depressing life while failing at
| school.
| tegmark wrote:
| [flagged]
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > The kid that does really well in school, makes it big is
| going to have an opportunity for a lot more play later in life.
|
| Really? There's a constant push to "grind" more, even for well-
| paid professionals. This is a cultural problem, not one of
| attainment. Consider how Elon Musk, one of the richest people
| in the world, claims to work ~16 hours a day. Someone with a
| steady job in construction probably has a lot more free time
| than him.
| honkycat wrote:
| we grew up in a less prosperous time than our parents and
| grandparents so our parents didn't have any time to raise us and
| were constantly economically terrorized.
|
| I will also ALWAYS point out that our parents could go to bars at
| 18 and actually had places they could gather socially without
| parental supervision before half-way through college.
|
| They put kinds in child jail, tell them to behave or else, make
| them sit through hours and hours of shitty classes in un air-
| conditioned rooms with checked out teachers. ( note: this is not
| how the children of the wealthy experience school )
|
| Once again, you can point to economic factors like the erosion of
| the public spaces, the massive over-building of suburb and road
| infrastructure making outside objectively dangerous, and
| outsourcing public spaces to corporate owned malls that were
| NEVER profitable.
| tegmark wrote:
| [flagged]
| 1letterunixname wrote:
| Old guy perspective: When I was a kid(tm), I played with a
| neighbor almost every weekend be it skateboarding, building a
| fort, playing Nintendo, or riding bikes around the neighbor. That
| was back when toy guns didn't have orange tips and parks didn't
| have ultra-safe, ultra-boring equipment.
|
| Perhaps the real losses of community and public commons (other
| countries call it "commonwealth") create a desert of human
| interaction. Maybe this is partly why the US has an absurd number
| of depressed and maladjusted young people.
| stainablesteel wrote:
| yes, and i'd love to put this through the frame of generational
| differences, which play a significant part, but we've honestly
| made a work/school/eat/fuck off culture that just doesn't help
| anyone raise kids
|
| i mean, its even gotten to the point where no one is having them.
| other countries around the world apply all the golden rules of
| economics to become wealthy and successful, but it fails in 2
| main areas: education/upbringing, and maintaining a stable
| birthrate/population
|
| we're eating ourselves alive through a more insidious version of
| the soviet-era snitching system while proclaiming that
| cannibalism is immoral
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Anecdotal, but still.. back when I was a kid, we had school until
| 13h (1pm), maybe an hour more or less, and after that we were
| 'free'. We did have some homework, but that was usually left for
| the evening, or copied in school the next day. We did a bunch of
| stupid stuff, went around, from 'adventurous' trips around the
| city to sitting on the same benches for 6 hours talking about
| stupid stuff and arguing about stuff, that we couldn't google
| right then, because google didn't exist yet. They (the parents)
| didn't even wait for us to come to dinner, since sometimes we
| were impossible to reach (if we weren't on the same benches next
| to the apartment buildings).
|
| "Kids these days" (at least the ones I know) have their whole
| days scheduled for 'stuff'... school, home, music lessons, sport
| practice, come back home at 8pm, homework, sleep. On weekends,
| they're packed in the cars and taken somewhere 'in
| nature/countryside', so they wouldn't spend their days at home or
| outside sitting on a bench for the whole day.
|
| I'm an adult now, for quite a few years, and the thing I miss the
| most about childhood is the "freedom",... after school, you were
| free to do whatever, and during the summer, you were free for 2.5
| months... no responsibilities, no timetables, schedules, no
| nothing... just kids and stupid (then important) kid stuff.
| viburnum wrote:
| I'm confused, play is something small children do, not teenagers.
| Do they just mean free time in general?
| crtified wrote:
| Free play is but one element of an ideal childhood.
|
| A kid can play free as much as they like, but that doesn't parlay
| into success if that kid routinely goes home to unhappiness and
| imbalance in other areas of life.
| caesil wrote:
| I wonder if this doesn't have a lot to do with cars.
|
| In surrendering utterly to the preeminence of streets, we have
| essentially taken our open, free world and overlain it with an
| immense grid of electric fences -- thick lines all over the map
| that, if children wander across them, might easily lead to their
| deaths.
|
| So "hold hands everywhere" and "don't let your children run free
| outside" become the norms. The only safe place is locked inside
| or behind fences; the wider world is a death trap for children.
|
| Play inherently requires a degree of freedom, but children have
| none. We are just prison guards eternally transferring them from
| one captivity to another.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Absolutely, and America has double problem where denser
| neighborhoods are seen as unsafe due to crime. And less dense
| neighborhoods means kids can't go anywhere without having an
| adult drive them.
|
| So kids are stuck at home, miles from a playmate.
| elibailey wrote:
| I agree, and not just because busy streets are unsafe for kids.
|
| Neighborhood != community. Imo with: - Lack of interesting
| nearby spaces - poor walking options (unsafe, unpopulated,
| unshaded) - poor transit options - growing options online -
| polarization
|
| Families are less likely to spend leisure or errand time
| in/near their neighborhoods. And kids suffer for that.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone
| https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Routinely in New York City at least, you can kill someone using
| a motor vehicle almost with complete impunity.
|
| The driver who led to Sammy's Law (which still hasn't passed)
| only received a 180 day license suspension a year and a half
| after the accident, even though he sped past a stopped vehicle
| on the righthand side (the vehicle had stopped for the child).
| Death by car is often considered acceptable.
|
| There is really no disincentive to dangerous driving, to say
| nothing of the preeminence of driving more generally.
| throwaway-243 wrote:
| 7,485 pedestrians were killed by cars in the whole of the US
| in 2021.
|
| this is a great example of where whataboutism is not a
| logical fallacy. i mean what is your solution? ban all
| driving?
|
| sure, but give me a proper public transport network that can
| supply the suburbs and rural areas. fix urban cost of living
| while you're at it.
| ecshafer wrote:
| Remove zoning restrictions is step 1 to allow denser more
| walkable areas, which will reduce urban cost of living.
|
| Step 2 is to change the highway code to make stroads
| illegal and make more normal safe roads.
|
| Step 3 is change the fha rules so more dense homes are
| built.
|
| Step 4 change cafe standards so smaller lighter cars are
| the norm, possibly tax suvs and trucks.
|
| These are all stroke of a pen changes.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > These are all stroke of a pen changes.
|
| In a democracy you need buy-in from society at large.
| What's the plan on achieving that?
| mm263 wrote:
| You can poll people about things that they want, but
| (like it happened with many great inventions) people
| don't actually know what they need. Do they want less
| car-centric environment? Most will answer "no" because
| they've never lived in a society that wasn't as car-
| centric. Most people are not urbanists and most are
| content with their lives. You can poll them and do
| inquiries to death, or you can allow experts to implement
| all of the things that are unambiguously good from any
| perspective, let people grumble for a bit, adjust and
| after that reap benefits.
|
| A part of being a democratic society is accepting that an
| opinion of an average person is worthless.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| > i mean what is your solution? ban all driving?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
| uoaei wrote:
| 2021 is obviously an outlier in terms of driving and
| walking. Can't quite tell what point you're making but your
| example is not representative.
| uoaei wrote:
| Which is absolutely wild to me. It is a great responsibility
| to wield a multi-ton machine in the proximity of other
| people. Driver's licenses are handed out quite freely and it
| seems the reason has less to do with competence than a
| complete failure of the economy as we know it if people
| couldn't bring themselves between the places that earn them
| money and the places they spend them, especially considering
| how far apart they are from each other in cities built after
| cars were brought into public awareness.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| It seemed wild to me years ago, but in aggregate and after
| reading your comment it makes more sense. Private vehicle
| ownership is a great deal for for a variety of businesses
| (cars, insurance, maintenance, road builders, oil
| companies, attorneys), and who cares if a few people die,
| because that's how capitalism works. :(
| fallingknife wrote:
| No. It's paranoia. Cars have been around for a long time.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Cars as we know and use them have only been around for 100
| years, which is very little time compared to say the
| evolution of the human brain.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Kids needed to learn to look out for lions and snakes
| though.
| lapetitejort wrote:
| Cars have been around for 100 years, but cars with grills
| taller than the average child going 60 down residential
| streets is somewhat new.
| alexdbird wrote:
| There are a _lot_ more of them too, they 're quieter, and
| there are more distractions inside for the driver.
| WaffleIronMaker wrote:
| I would say that American car-centric development and
| distrust of others go hand in hand. The more people wall
| themselves away into their castles in the suburbs, the less
| they feel part of a community, and the more they distrust
| others.
| cloverich wrote:
| In theory I agree. But in practice, where I grew up, it was
| pure suburbia. I lived a few miles from school. No
| sidewalks, and roads very car centric. In elementary and Jr
| high I used to bike to school, regularly, and I don't
| remember it being abnormal; I remember a lot of kids doing
| it. I remember my dad commenting on it being weird that
| there was a crossing guard we had to wait for on our school
| corner (which crossed a 4 lane busy-ish street) on one of
| the rare days where he picked us up in his car.
|
| I think a big part of this is just our risk tolerances
| change. We naturally want to protect kids, and looking
| historically we've taken safety to relative extremes
| compare to 20 years ago (and similarly before then). Its
| natural to want more security, and its obvious how it
| helps. But its not as obvious what we've given up in
| return.
|
| Interestingly, I moved to Portland recently, and live mid
| way between suburbs and downtown; its fairly dense but
| mostly SFH or townhomes in my neighborhood, many
| businesses, some homeless. Kids of all ages walk to school
| and are... just everywhere, around here. Its quite normal
| to see people walking with their kids too. Its just got a
| really great mix of urban density -- you can walk to
| stores, bars, school. There's a few high traffic streets,
| but they are not large and the speed limit is 20mph. I
| think what this neighborhood has taught me is, while our
| risk tolerances are lower than ever, its still a bit of a
| design and culture choice to not let kids walk around. Its
| nice to see here, in Portland of all places, there's a bit
| of a counter trend going on. I hope its what the future
| looks like in other places (here and elsewhere) too.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Is it paranoia? If it wasn't for guns, cars would be the
| number killer of kids under 16. Note: This includes kids IN
| cars being ferried around from activity to activity.
|
| Granted the numbers are lower now than before but that's
| because of various safety and traffic calming efforts. Seems
| like we should push harder on that front, so parents can feel
| safe encouraging their kids to just pop over to their friends
| place on their own.
| Tade0 wrote:
| According to this poll:
|
| https://reason.com/2014/08/19/august-2014-reason-rupe-
| nation...
|
| Americans are split regarding whether there should be a law
| requiring 12-year-olds be supervised when playing in a park
| - no cars there.
|
| As an European, to me this is absurd. At twelve I had a bus
| card and the privilege to go wherever, as long as I
| respected curfew.
| pj_mukh wrote:
| Well that's my point, the parents thinks its a dude in a
| white van to be scared off.
|
| But the numbers say its the actual white van going too
| fast on a four lane road (speed limit 45mph) next to the
| park. This isn't that much of a problem in older European
| cities.
| Tade0 wrote:
| The city I grew up in was levelled by Nazis during WW2
| and rebuilt to be car-centric.
|
| The OP said that everyone is walled off by cars so they
| have a mindset of controlling their children, lest they
| get run over. You're saying that they're actually afraid
| of kidnappers etc., while they should be of cars. To me
| these points are contradictory.
|
| In any case do you think removing cars will solve the
| problem? My guess is that no, because this mindset
| appeared decades after cars took over, and these things
| are actually not related.
| jstarfish wrote:
| It's paranoia. The pedophile panic of the last few decades
| led to nobody letting kids out of their sight.
|
| Things like the sex offender registry "help" but don't at
| the same time. It's not something I ever concerned myself
| with ("I know the stats, it's usually a relative!") until
| someone encouraged me to do it while closing on a house.
| I'm now acutely aware of the fact that there are dozens of
| child predators within a 1-mile radius of my home.
| moffkalast wrote:
| Cars do make it worse, but probably aren't what it all stems
| from. As an example, I lived a 5 min walk away from the primary
| school I was attending and wasn't allowed to make the trip on
| my own for years. They gave me a payphone card and I had to
| call one of my parents to come and walk me back.
|
| Helicopter parents don't let things like logic and convenience
| get in the way of taking every atom of independence from their
| kids. It may also have something to do with trust. Nobody
| trusts their kids with anything these days anymore and then
| they expect them to somehow grow up capable of taking
| responsibility? Like, how?
| bluGill wrote:
| Not really. Cars don't help, but even when it is a safe, kids
| are not allowed on their own.
| poorbutdebtfree wrote:
| Don't underestimate the mental toll of witnessing global
| warming's impact on teen heart attacks. Also how many states are
| not responding quickly enough to affirm the 5000% hockey stick
| growth pattern since 2020 of trans kids? Teaching pronouns and
| gender fluidity in kindergarten and how to have gay sex in middle
| school is not enough!
| rafaelero wrote:
| Why talk specifically about children when the uprising on mental
| health issues has been seen across the board, from kids to adults
| and elders? It doesn't seem like a smart stratification if you
| want to find the correct cause.
|
| Also, multiple twin studies show how parenting have negligible
| effects over life outcomes, so I am pretty skeptical of this
| theory.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| My knees and elbows were constantly hurt from all the activities.
| twiddling wrote:
| I remember my friends and I playing tag in a copse of trees
| which were close enough to swing to and from branches between
| them. Fell out once and laid there on the ground , breath
| knocked out of me, staring at the dappled light through the
| trees...
|
| In my 50s and I still smile when I think about that day.
| atonse wrote:
| We have really made it a point to have our kid play freely as
| much as possible and minimize scheduled activities (piano lessons
| etc.) the problem is that most of his friends are in a million
| classes so even if he's free, they often aren't.
|
| That's been the big challenge. So then there are these magical
| days where they all don't have any activities and those
| invariably happen to be the days ALL kids look forward to. Cuz at
| the end of the day, they just want to play with their friends.
|
| But that has taken planning in the past where we coordinate with
| parents for those free play days.
|
| But those days are the exception. I wish they were the rule.
|
| We've actually noticed how amazing his mood is after a day full
| of unorganized play hanging out with friends.
| alex_lav wrote:
| My sister and I have separate mothers. My mother, who I lived
| with, was pretty absent throughout my childhood. I never really
| had any monitoring on how I spent my time, for better or worse,
| but that reality allowed me to kind of chase interests (or
| ignore interests) and cultivate a lot of passion and curiosity.
| My sister's mother was the exact opposite. She prioritized
| "getting to be a mom" over my sister's time and enjoyment, so
| she became a Scout Leader, Soccer Coach, Ballet Coordinator,
| Cheer Coach etc. and had my sister join all of those
| activities. Every day was school from 7-whenever, straight to
| dance, straight to homework, straight to bed. I don't think my
| sister ever had more than an hour or two free for her entire
| childhood. The outcome is kind of wild. She's an anxiety mess,
| overly controlling, but also unable to really think for herself
| or prioritize her interests (maybe because she doesn't have a
| ton?), and usually just takes the path of least resistance or
| that she's been told to take. I feel sad for her, but I
| obviously was powerless to stop it.
| azemetre wrote:
| Might be an issue with your social class? I know plenty of
| poorer parents whose children aren't filled with a myriad of
| activities because the family simply can afford to pay them,
| the kids simply act like kids.
| afavour wrote:
| I'd hesitate to make any broad point with stuff like this. My
| daughter sounds like your son, she loves unstructured play. My
| son on the other hand is much happier with structured
| activities. I don't think there's anything wrong with either.
| fnimick wrote:
| Sure, but are you maximizing his college admissions chances via
| skills in carefully selected activities in order to stand out?
| (mostly joking, but this is how a lot of people approach
| scheduling these days)
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| When does little Johnny learn intrapersonal skills, conflict
| resolution skills, active listening skills, how to build and
| maintain friendship skills, or self-determination skills?
| gloryjulio wrote:
| I agree. You get to be really careful where you want to put
| ur skill points. Play time is part of the skill tree too ;)
|
| Full scheduling of random stuff doesn't mean it would always
| help the children. It's the children's version of appearing
| busy.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| A full schedule is bad for a kid. They need to learn how to
| keep themselves entertained, or plan their own activities,
| or manage their own time, and they can't do that if they
| get a day plan from sun up to sun down.
| shard wrote:
| Kids can keep themselves entertained very easily
| nowadays, YouTube/Tiktok/games can suck hours away in the
| blink of an eye. It's not like when I was young where
| going outside and hanging out with friends was the most
| fun choice.
| atonse wrote:
| haha I have been maximizing the annoyance level of my parents
| and others by telling my kids these things:
|
| - don't focus on GPA, focus on actually gaining knowledge and
| understanding how the world works. good grades are a measure
| of how you understand things. they should never be the goal.
| I was a C student and I am more curious about things than
| many of my peers with fancy degrees.
|
| - forge your own path, there is always a thousand different
| paths out there. College is just one.
|
| - no replacement for hard work. don't expect anything in
| life. anything worth getting, you'll have to compete with
| many others to get it so learn to be a good competitor.
|
| - college should be approached with all the tradeoffs and as
| any other investment. We've told them we will not pay for
| their college. so they will have to make choices about
| getting the best bang for your buck. We're the only parents
| in our whole social circle that aren't saving for their
| college. it feels weird and isolating when that topic comes
| up.
|
| - first think about the kind of life you want and then make
| choices to get you that life.
|
| they're already sick if my lectures. and they're 10 and 5.
| :-)
| m-ee wrote:
| Assuming you're American you are really screwing then over
| by not paying for college. The FAFSA assumes a parental
| contribution. It's not just other parents, but the federal
| government and all the colleges themselves that have the
| expectation that you will contribute.
|
| There's no exemption for "I want to teach my kids financial
| responsibility". If you're high income your children will
| be ineligible for any financial aid and have few options
| for funding their own education.
| AlgorithmicTime wrote:
| There's always the Post-9/11 GI Bill. 36 months of
| tuition at the most expensive in-state rate in whatever
| state you attend school in plus Basic Allowance for
| Housing equal to an E5 with dependents is quite good.
| surge wrote:
| The problem was they never factor in the single mom with
| 3 kids, she made "enough" that I qualified for less
| grants, but she still had 2 other kids to raise and also
| help put through college since we were only a couple
| years apart.
|
| The FAFSA is such a crappy measuring stick for college
| affordability. I ended up having to make up the
| difference with loans, now it wouldn't be feasible.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| In school I didn't care about grades. Still went to a good
| college.
|
| In college I didn't care about grades. Still graduated.
|
| At work I don't care about promotions. I still get raises
| well above inflation and am doing great.
| medvezhenok wrote:
| You happened to luck out by choosing a career that's in
| demand (whether consciously or unconsciously), and are
| probably pretty good at it. Otherwise your story would
| sound very different. I am the same way, but straddle the
| professional world and the artistic world (trained /
| educated in both), and certainly appreciate the
| randomness involved and how much luck was involved in the
| fact that I happened to be interested in tech (and had
| the opportunity to pursue it when I did).
|
| I have many friends without the same opportunities and I
| would be struggling just as much as them if it weren't
| for the tech bits (and a little bit of being in the right
| place at the right time)
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| Definitely luck involved there! But also I think that as
| long as you have a realistic plan and are able to
| consistently work on it early (I started learning web dev
| at 8) you can mostly disregard the standard education and
| progression systems. I think that railroading a child
| through the systems without a plan is wasted effort. Not
| that there aren't good things to learn that way. I ended
| up learning a ton about art and art history thanks to my
| college's degree requirements.
|
| I guess what I'm saying is you can throw a child into
| extracurriculars and just sort of hope the extra work
| makes the difference between comfort and struggling. Or
| you can encourage them to find hobbies and reinforce the
| ones that will lead to comfort and stability as my
| parents did.
| jzawodn wrote:
| I wish I could upvote more than once.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Same thing as adults. Everyone is too busy to get together,
| especially after having kids.
| evrimoztamur wrote:
| This makes it sound like the adult pains of holding friendships
| alive as you grow older. Everybody is busy with their lives and
| coordinating even with your closest friends leads to 'agenda
| conflicts' that push your time together weeks or months ahead.
| It's sad to see that this is happening to kids (who are often
| pushed into scheduled extracurriculars for better academic
| opportunities) too.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| A good approach is for a social circle to block out social
| time. Saturday night, every other week or every third week
| seems to be the sweet spot where it's constant enough to make
| people not create recurring conflicts, but sparse enough that
| people can still make other weekend plans. Not everyone can
| make it every time, but between people inviting new people
| and a core group of regulars, you can keep it up in
| perpetuity.
| jimkoen wrote:
| > (who are often pushed into scheduled extracurriculars for
| better academic opportunities) too.
|
| Gotta say though, this seems to be purely a thing in the
| english speaking cultures. Apart from sport and maybe an
| instrument, extracurriculars aren't a thing in most european
| countries.
|
| Extracurriculars are so peculiar that our ministry of
| education deems it necessary to make it a mandatory point for
| teachers to discuss when talking about american childrens
| typical day in school.
| grey413 wrote:
| Things like this are actually some of the main reasons I'm
| moving my family to Europe. In Europe, my kid can be her
| own person with her own schedule and her own environment to
| explore on her own terms. In america, she'd be isolated and
| dependent.
| mantas wrote:
| Unfortunately it's getting worse here. In my youth few
| kids had scheduled activities. 20 years later, many kids
| are on a rather tight schedule.
| taeric wrote:
| Not really discounting your experiencs, but 20 years ago
| plenty of folks had scheduled activities. Music lessons
| didn't get invented in the past two decades. Nor did
| school/college prep. Indeed, the numbers typically show
| that those that did this, had a better chance of success
| at whatever they were scheduled to do. (This fits
| expectations, too. People succeed at that that they are
| prepared to do...)
|
| Would love to see updated numbers on it.
| lazide wrote:
| I think you're confusing things a bit. Of course someone
| will be more successful at doing thing x if they are
| scheduled to do thing x.
|
| That is good for planning/preparing for the future.
|
| Being scheduled to the gills means that the 'now' is
| constantly filled with planning/preparing/doing things
| for the future though.
|
| And with no time for the present or for being able to
| think/daydream.
| taeric wrote:
| I'm not confusing it. I'm questioning if people are
| really more scheduled today.
|
| Especially as we get to middle and high school. Many of
| us had jobs back then. Isn't uncommon for many small
| businesses to have a lot of help they use their children
| for. Not even going back to farms. Though, hard not to
| see all of the chores that many of those would have
| around the place as scheduled.
|
| Edit: Tried to stealth fix, but I did flip a less to a
| more at the top there. Apologies for anyone that may
| respond to my mistake there.
| jimkoen wrote:
| Doesn't make a difference for college admission, and it
| likely will not for a long time. It's mostly grades that
| decide who get's into college and bologna affirms that
| you have a free choice on where to attend. It does make
| sense to prepare your child for college in such a way
| that it is able to live self sufficiently and teach
| discipline in learning, but no university gives a crap on
| what debate club you ran in high school.
| watwut wrote:
| I am in Europe, have friends in 4 different countries and
| extracurriculars are a thing in all of them.
| shard wrote:
| > this seems to be purely a thing in the english speaking
| cultures
|
| This is a major thing in many East Asian cultures as well,
| China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea. Korea had to pass a law saying
| that private academies have to close at 10pm, so that kids
| aren't studying past midnight, but some academies still
| stay open secretly as the parents are demanding the extra
| hours. It's a vicious circle: kids compete for the few
| spots in top universities so they can get into the best
| companies, average qualifications rise, so next generation
| have to compete even harder for the same few spots.
|
| This is carried over to the US as well. Asians compete for
| the few spots in top universities, as they are held to
| higher standards already, and this just keep ratcheting up
| the average standard for Asians each generation.
| C-x_C-f wrote:
| I'm not familiar with this custom, but wouldn't kids with
| more balanced extracurricular lives have an advantage
| over those who fill their day to the brim? Surely after
| some point you hit diminishing returns, and after that it
| becomes downright damaging (in terms of mental health
| etc). So I'd expect the cycle to balance itself after a
| while, with parents eventually recognizing the importance
| of downtime. What gives?
|
| (I suppose the answer is that there's an economic
| incentive in squeezing your kids into a pressure cooker
| of endless commitments, to the point where the pros
| outweigh the cons; but this assumption makes me feel like
| I'm being unfairly cynical to the parents in question.)
| taeric wrote:
| Depends. If you think it is just diminishing returns,
| than you always get more the more you put in. Just not as
| much. You have to drop to negative returns for that to go
| away.
|
| And indeed, in that framing, it is going to be tough to
| make it so that those who can afford to spend their time
| shouldn't do so.
|
| So, are there policies where we could make it so that
| folks can put a legit value in the things they are
| neglecting for this extra spend in time? I can certainly
| hope so.
| shard wrote:
| > wouldn't kids with more balanced extracurricular lives
| have an advantage over those who fill their day to the
| brim?
|
| Depends on what you mean. Afterschool activities often
| include sports, so there's some balance between academics
| and physical activities, but physical activities won't
| get you into a good school unless you are at a
| competitive level, so there are high pressures there as
| well.
|
| As for parents who recognize the importance of downtime?
| The ones that can afford it... send their kids overseas.
| But of course, even with added downtime, those kids are
| more academically competitive, so they end up ratcheting
| up the standards in the area they go to.
| nyanpasu64 wrote:
| You end up with generational trauma, Asian parents who
| were worked to the bone as children, saw peers find
| higher-paying jobs as a result, the people who had mental
| breakdowns are presumably brushed aside and viewed as a
| source of shame, many keep grinding through the system
| because the alternative is poverty as a farmer, end up
| with scars repressed and treating their children the same
| way... and the children who break from the pressure bond
| over the Internet and try to treat each other with
| kindness, but are often unable to provide for each other
| because they're too mentally scarred to find jobs and
| make a living.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| After bedtime, I would grab a book, creep into the
| bathroom, and hop into the dry bathtub to read. I
| preferred this to a flashlight under the covers.
|
| Mom would find me, send me back to bed, and shame me for
| reading. Then I was further shamed and humiliated when I
| was fitted for spectacles in third grade. Of course my
| parents blamed myopia on reading books in poor lighting.
|
| That bathroom was actually the site of innumerable
| playtimes for me. Battleships and Cartesian divers in the
| tub, Rubik's cube maintenance, trying to get my alligator
| lizard to drink from the tap. It was a dingy, dusty
| playground where I felt kinda safe and clean.
| jimkoen wrote:
| Question is, what did you read? I don't think these kids
| going to night school are there to read popular youth
| literature.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| TFA subject is "Play".
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > This makes it sound like the adult pains of holding
| friendships alive as you grow older.
|
| Bring back the pop-in!
| xwdv wrote:
| A pop in? Where a friend just shows up unannounced with a
| knock at your door and a tip of the hat and says they were
| just in the neighborhood and felt like they should drop and
| has a seat on your couch?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Sure. Maybe they catch you at an awesome time, maybe they
| don't and they leave- it's a pop-in after all. Keep
| expectations low. At least you saw them.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This is how my grandparents and their friends do it and
| they clearly have better communication with their friends
| than I do with mine.
|
| Maybe this whole "scheduling" things was a mistake.
| surge wrote:
| I think the advent of cell phones killed the pop in,
| everyone can call or text now before popping in.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| or just shoot a text to say hi and check in.
|
| no need to roll up and see how your week has been, just
| send someone a how-do and maybe to a 5 min facetime
| lazide wrote:
| Meanwhile in the real world, most folks seem to have a
| panic attack if anyone knocks on their door. Or they have
| to make a phone call.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Ughh..this is not an exaggeration. I remember recently
| when Amazon delivered a package to my house meant for a
| neighbor down the street. I had time so I walked over and
| knocked on the door. After about a minute I saw a young
| lady barely pulling the window blinds apart to peek out.
| When she saw there was still someone there (an out of
| shape nerd who looks like a Best Buy worker--the opposite
| of intimidating) just holding a package, she let out a
| shriek from the depths of damnation, and basically stood
| there screaming until I set the package down and walked
| away. You could hear it from the sidewalk. People have
| gone la la.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| That goes back to a time when most homes had a stay-at-
| home homemaker.
|
| Today, I'm not really crazy about the idea of a random
| pop-in, having to cut the few hours of time that I do
| have for laundry, dishes, or just a bit of down time, to
| have to make coffee and find snacks and sit down for a
| chat. If I were home all day that would be quite
| different, or so I think.
| vitaflo wrote:
| Where I grew up people still do pop ins. You get around
| your problem by helping the person out with what they
| were doing when you popped in.
|
| Doing the dishes when you pop in? Cool, you get to dry
| them as I wash. Everyone basically follows this rule.
| There's no expectation of entertaining guests if you pop
| in for a visit.
| watwut wrote:
| I was about to read HN now what
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I feel like a literal pop in does not work for many
| people due to mobile phones and suburbs. Suburbs make it
| so you have to go at least a little out of your way to
| visit someone, which means you might as well call to make
| sure they are available before wasting your time on a
| detour.
|
| Although, I see no problem with impromptu visits, I get
| them all the time. They just happen to call or text
| before coming.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Agree. Even when I was a kid, "pop-ins" were only
| immediate neighbors, maybe within a 3-4 house radius.
| Anyone farther away you'd call first, even with
| landlines.
|
| These days many people don't even know the names of the
| people living across the street.
| lazide wrote:
| That works if someone isn't frantically trying to get
| from point A to point B, or so overwhelmed they are
| trying to find some time to stop and think. That's the
| challenge for most Suburban parents around here anyway.
| jjk166 wrote:
| Everyone is busy at times, but if you are always
| frantically trying to get from A to B or overwhelmed,
| that's probably an issue in its own right in need of
| addressing.
| lazide wrote:
| Of course! That's also practically what most middle class
| folks with kids are in all day every day. Upper middle
| class too.
|
| If not that well off, it's usually worse.
|
| And near as I can tell, that barely keeps their head
| above water, if that.
| kulahan wrote:
| That sucks. I used to ride the bus home after school, throw my
| backpack at my house, and run off to play with my buds until
| the sun started to go down. It was the most amazing part of my
| day, just being free to be a kid and DO WHATEVER. Sometimes
| we'd walk to the stream and pick up rocks to look for bugs and
| crawfish. Sometimes we'd play card games. Sometimes we'd go to
| the park and play "wall ball", which obviously included a
| painful peg to the back with a tennis ball if you failed
| whatever the goal of that game even _was_!
|
| Anyways, point is, this fostered my interest in nature (looking
| for bugs), my sociability and strategy (card games), and my
| agility and teamwork (wall ball). This was stuff I worked hard
| at too, because they were _my_ interests.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Structured lessons and organized sports are not the problem,
| kids have been taking piano lessons and swim lessons and
| playing Little League baseball since forever. But it can't be
| exclusively that. They need unstructured free play as well.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Unfortunately all you're going to do is create a child who is
| disadvantaged compared to the ones who are managed
| mantas wrote:
| Disadvantaged in what sense? It's likely those kids won't
| even go for the same grind as ,,managed" kids.
| lossolo wrote:
| Kids that have more math lessons, in most cases, will be
| better at math than the ones that don't. There are limited
| amount of jobs, students per class in college etc so they
| compete with each other. If you are living in the same
| system as most people in this thread, which is capitalism,
| then to live a somewhat problem-free life with financial
| security, you need to be either very lucky or participate
| in the rat race.
| bowsamic wrote:
| Less ability to compete in the job market with others who
| were managed in basically all skilled jobs
| jjk166 wrote:
| When was the last time a job interviewer asked what
| extracurriculars you did when you were 14?
|
| There is an extremely small sliver of society where that
| one additional extracurricular makes the difference
| between getting into an excellent school vs a merely
| great school. For everyone else, the long term value is
| quite dubious.
| bowsamic wrote:
| As much as you might want it to be, your life right now
| is not a blank human plus qualifications. Who you are as
| a person is shaped by your life before this point. A
| person who has invested in those extra curricular skills
| will simply be more skilled now, from precise ways (the
| specific skills learnt) to more general ways (the
| required concentration and perseverance etc)
| majormajor wrote:
| The kids at the opposite far end of the spectrum are pretty
| disadvantaged too when they get a job that doesn't have
| everything planned out for them and where their parents (or
| their parents ability to pay tuition) have no sway.
|
| _Especially_ when their reactions to things not being
| structured to favor them at every step leads to them having a
| negative reputation...
|
| Those who thrive in both good and bad circumstances can find
| intrinsic motivation even when things don't go their own way.
| A young adult who's never exposed to the need for that can
| flounder, just as much as a young adult who's never been held
| to any standards can.
| bowsamic wrote:
| That's like pointing out how money corrupts or makes you
| not appreciate wealth truly. That may be true in some
| cases, but it's still much better to be rich than poor
| majormajor wrote:
| I think you are making a big and unjustified leap from
| "minimizing scheduled extracurriculars" in the post
| you're responding to to "won't be prepared at all."
|
| And that's an especially dangerous assumption if you buy
| the original article here's claim that _not_ doing that
| is a big problem for mental health.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| these would be the ones whose parents show up at job
| interviews
| lgleason wrote:
| Yup, I've seen the effects of this first hand.
| bowsamic wrote:
| I am one of the unmanaged kids and I am very much competing
| with all the managed ones. I'm 28 and still feeling the
| effect quite heavily. My wife was managed and she just has
| such a stronger work ethic and honestly better mental
| health than I. It's a miracle I got to where I am frankly
| ccleve wrote:
| I came here to post exactly this. It is appalling that we live
| in a neighborhood where everyone can walk, there are plenty of
| kids that my son knows within a mile, he's 14 and more than old
| enough to be out on his own, but every one of his friends is in
| a math class, or French school, or out of town on vacation,
| constantly. He goes to the park and there is no one there. So
| he stays home and watches anime. The only way we can get him
| out is to call other parents and schedule something.
|
| There is something deeply wrong here. I blame other parents who
| overschedule their kids.
| dgb23 wrote:
| Boredom can be a great breeding ground for creativity.
| feoren wrote:
| This is absolutely true, but the problem is that we are
| oversaturated with time-wasters that prevent that kind of
| deep, creativity-breeding boredom. There's always another
| phone game, another show, more social media -- and these
| things were specially designed to hold your attention and
| prevent you from being "good bored". South Park nailed it
| with their discussion about how the problem with doing pot
| as a kid is that it makes you OK with being bored. Well,
| now we have millions of things like that.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Road trips. I remember those wonderful long boring trips
| before our girls had phones.
|
| Oh, and even after, gee, sorry, not charging phones when
| on the road.
| teaearlgraycold wrote:
| As someone that was always surprised at how much more free
| time I had compared to other kids back in my school days -
| I'm still very much in support of limited structured
| activities. Me and the boys would just goof off on bikes and
| in backyards. This was 15-10 years ago.
|
| I'd talk to people in class and they'd claim to have like 1
| or two hours free between school and sleep. And I had
| something like 8 hours free. What the hell?
| myth_drannon wrote:
| Yes, this culture of parents scheduling play dates drives me
| insane. And even if you try to schedule, everyone is so busy.
| Kids have karate and 30 minutes later baseball and that's
| after school. It so much different from our childhood and we
| struggle to integrate into it.
| Tade0 wrote:
| When I first heard about play dates it reminded me of a
| scene in _The Devil 's Advocate_ where one of the wives of
| the lawyers said that whenever she wants to see her
| husband, she has to schedule an appointment.
| qooiii2 wrote:
| It's tough but doable. You have to get on people's
| calendars a week or two out whenever you can, and if you're
| lucky, it eventually turns into easy, low-stress, open-
| ended playdates.
|
| Meeting other parents is a huge effort, though! It's
| basically dating all over again. If your kids ride the
| school bus, that's a big help because you automatically
| meet nearby parents who are home in the afternoon.
| Otherwise, you have to go to lots of events and ask parents
| for their phone numbers, but the majority don't work out
| for random reasons.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| I think the parent is not so much complaining that it's
| doable, more that the concept of play dates as a thing at
| all is what's infuriating. I agree with this as well.
|
| When I was young, my parents knew the parents of maybe
| one or two of my friends, and that was only largely
| because they knew each other from somewhere else. We
| didn't need to have our parents organize and sync up
| their schedules to go play together. We'd just go and
| meet up. If no one was around outside, might go up and
| knock on the door of a few friends see if they wanted to
| do something. But ultimately, we had largely free reign
| to ourselves.
|
| Now, at a later age, I also really wouldn't want to have
| to get to know the parents of my kids' friends either.
| Meet once or twice to get to see them face-to-face, maybe
| get some basic contact info just in case, but for the
| most part, I don't really want my kids' social
| relationships to be based on how well I can get along
| with other parents (with a few small exceptions.)
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| I used to think parents who overscheduled their kids were
| reacting to incentives put in place by college admissions
| offices and secondary selective admissions schools, and
| ultimately employers who demand elite credentials.
|
| But as I've studied this issue and experienced life, it seems
| to be the case that credentials are in reality overrated
| compared to competence and experience. The vast majority of
| colleges will admit anyone, and the vast majority of
| employers requiring a degree just ask that you have a degree
| of any kind.
|
| So now I think parents should just chill, not because it's
| the altruistic strategy in game theory, but because that's
| how the actual labor market works. Parents are killing
| themselves and their kids for no reason.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I'm at the age where I'm seeing the endgame of this, our
| cohort of kids & friends are applying to college. They did
| all these after-school activities, tutors, sports, etc. They
| were over programmed over achievers. And guess what, even
| with their 4.5 GPAs and impressive resumes, they aren't
| getting into the colleges they want (University of
| California). So what was the point of all that?
| medvezhenok wrote:
| This is the result of NIMBY, but for education. Same as the
| housing market - once you're in it, you're invested in
| housing prices not going down (and certainly not build-
| build-build as we should be doing).
|
| What we should have done is expand access to elite colleges
| commensurate with demand, and thereby dilute the status of
| the "elite" college. Harvard still accepts ~2000 people,
| around the same as 40 years ago, even though demand has
| skyrocketed. That is basically leading to more and more
| competition over the same slots, same as the bidding wars
| in the housing market. And all of the alumni of the
| University get to ride the wave of more and more
| exclusivity (they benefit from a low acceptance rate), so
| this is unlikely to change.
|
| Artificial scarcity rules the day.
| viburnum wrote:
| Better to not have "elite" colleges at all.
| ccleve wrote:
| Agreed. We're at a point where if you want to get into a
| top college, you have to be _interesting_. You must have
| done something unusual, ambitious, creative, or anything
| beyond sports or band or violin and a bunch of AP courses.
|
| Guess what? Kids who have never had time to play are ones
| who have never had time to develop cool interests.
|
| Jack Nicholson said it best (repeatedly): All work and no
| play makes Jack a dull boy.
| sharadov wrote:
| Why this burning desire to go to a top college?
|
| I know enough of those who went to these so-called top
| tier colleges, meanwhile I took my time getting through
| an average college, but nonetheless exploring interests,
| making eclectic friends.
|
| Most people around me were treating life like a sprint -
| My young self even back then knew it was a marathon.
|
| I am not saying be aimless but don't drive yourself crazy
| at this altar of success - it will come, but there are
| life lessons you learn in your 20s - that are the
| foundation for a better life later.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Because the kids now, and their parents, have mostly gone
| through an education system that constantly hammers you
| on how you need to get into the top college, you must go
| to college, you should be taking as many AP classes as
| possible to get into a top college. They've had 30 or so
| years to be propagandized into believing it.
|
| There was also definitely a strong undercurrent of first-
| generation immigrants to the US pushing their kids hard,
| because they had no reason to distrust the message that
| if you want to succeed in the US, you need to go to a top
| college so you can get a good job.
| [deleted]
| afavour wrote:
| > I blame other parents
|
| Ah, the mantra of our parental lives!
|
| These classes kids go to aren't always some kind of arduous,
| academic overachiever factory. My kid goes to a Spanish
| immersion after school program once a week and she _loves_
| it. She's made a ton of friends there. We're not shoving her
| through the door.
|
| Don't get me wrong, some parents do go over the top with it,
| no doubt. But a lot of these activities are genuinely
| enriching.
| omnicognate wrote:
| It's not about your kid going to a Spanish class once a
| week, and the objection isn't that doing that isn't
| enriching for your kid.
|
| The problem is over the holidays when all your kid's
| friends have been sent to camps and summer schools (mostly
| as a form of holiday childcare for working parents
| presumably) or taken away on holiday, leaving your kid with
| nobody to play with. It presumably varies a lot but it's a
| real thing in our and our childrens' lives. The summer
| holidays should be filled with friends and play, not spent
| at home with your parents because nobody's available.
| watwut wrote:
| I still prefer my kid I'm camp or summer school over the
| kid on Netflix or Steam or whatsapp whole day. Or over me
| forcing them away from the above after which they still
| don't go play outside with friends, because friends watch
| anime or play video game.
| hattmall wrote:
| Blaming other parents is great and probably correct, but
| putting blame on things outside of your control is a cop out.
|
| Why don't you move to an area that's not like that, or you go
| an play with your kid at the park until other kids show up.
|
| or build an app that makes the makes scheduling the play time
| very seamless.
| jeremyjh wrote:
| Yeah dude why don't you take your 14 year-old to the park
| to play with their mom or just launch a startup to solve
| this problem.
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| It's actually a great opportunity to teach your kid to
| code so they can learn to solve their own problems by
| learning to launch their own startups.
| genocidicbunny wrote:
| Teaching your kid to code is not even close to replacing
| social interaction with their peers. (In case your
| comment wasn't sarcasm)
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I met some of my current friends not from school, but from
| seeing them at the park or in the neighborhood while playing,
| walking, or biking around.
| Der_Einzige wrote:
| Given that the anime waifu crowd is a huge reason why AI
| image generation is moving as fast as it does, it's probably
| better for society that he becomes a weeaboo. It's thankless
| work but someone has to label all the images on the -booru
| websites for the good of humanity (unironically).
| m3kw9 wrote:
| adults are human too, this applies to adults to a same, lessor or
| more degree
| clsec wrote:
| Seeing lots of comments about over scheduling children's free
| time.
|
| I took music lessons, did Cub Scouts Weeblos & Boy Scouts, played
| little league, played Pop Warner & high school football and ran
| track. All after school activities.
|
| As for freedom.. I took SF MUNI, BART, Ferries and Golden Gate
| Transit starting at 7 year old. Any free time I had was spent
| playing with friends. And I had to be home by the time the street
| lights came on.
|
| So it is possible to have a lot of after school activities _and_
| plenty of time to play with friends and explore the world.
| ddq wrote:
| Scouting is an interesting example because my experience
| included both ends of the scheduling vs. freedom spectrum. My
| first troop was all about the weekly meetings, merit badge
| classes, memorization, structured activities, and the like.
| Camping trips almost always had a specific goal, like hiking a
| certain trail or getting certain merit badges. My second troop
| was about going camping and making our own fun. Once the
| necessary duties were out of the way, we were pretty much left
| to our own devices and it was infinitely more rewarding, both
| as a kid and in my retrospective analysis. I learned so much
| more just figuring things out with the other boys, especially
| on the social development side.
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