[HN Gopher] How to parent more predictably (2018)
___________________________________________________________________
How to parent more predictably (2018)
Author : yamrzou
Score : 71 points
Date : 2023-08-13 07:37 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.jefftk.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.jefftk.com)
| keiferski wrote:
| Can anyone recommend parenting books that are either from other
| cultures or from a long time ago? When I read articles like this,
| I nod along and agree that it all seems rational. But then I get
| a creeping feeling that all this over-optimization is a trait of
| contemporary Western culture and not necessarily the "best"
| advice for raising healthy kids, whatever _best_ is supposed to
| mean. (I'm not sure.)
|
| I think it would be insightful to read parenting advice from
| different cultures and eras and think about it from first
| principles.
| throw0101a wrote:
| Perhaps:
|
| * https://old.reddit.com/r/Parenting/wiki/recommended_reading
| keiferski wrote:
| This all seems pretty recent and by American authors. I'm
| asking for more of: how do Indian/Chinese/Japanese/Mexican
| parents raise their kids? How did 19th-century American
| parents raise their kids? And so on.
| kdamica wrote:
| You might be interested in Hunter, Gather, Parent.
| keiferski wrote:
| I will check that out, thank you
| acid_dog wrote:
| The Anthropology of Childhood might be interesting to you:
| https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/anthropology...
|
| As well as this article: https://aeon.co/essays/why-runa-
| indigenous-people-find-natur... (Amazonian childcare)
| mbro1985 wrote:
| This isn't really a parenting book, but rather an analysis of
| parenting advice from different cultures & eras, and their
| outcomes: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/29101505 I
| enjoyed it particularly for its critique of modern Western
| parenting.
| keiferski wrote:
| Thanks, this looks insightful.
| andrepd wrote:
| I sympathise with the sentiment, but I would still prefer to
| take advice from scientists and psychologists and doctors, than
| absorb fucked-up value systems from yore.
| keiferski wrote:
| _Thinking from first principles_ is the opposite of
| "absorbing" ideas.
| turnsout wrote:
| I don't think there's any reason to believe other cultures or
| time periods had parenting more figured out than us... But I do
| believe in a first principles approach. Basically, be good to
| your kid, use natural consequences instead of punishment and
| rewards, and model the behavior you want to see.
|
| If you're curious about that approach, check out RIE parenting
| or Respectful Parenting.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| How much do you enjoy coaching books ?
|
| We have pletora of business and self-help books, a ton of them
| are about management, and we're talking about adults being
| litteraly paid to be there getting managed. If you see
| tremendous value in these current books, I'd argue reading
| current parenting books will be of the same quality.
|
| If you're looking for older books to compare, wouldn't any
| "best seller" book be a good comparison point on what was seen
| as acceptetable advice at the time ?
| bythreads wrote:
| Danish: https://via-ritzau-
| dk.translate.goog/pressemeddelelse/nordis...
| watwut wrote:
| It is also worth checking _actual_ stats for those other
| periods and cultures. Things like violence rates, youth
| criminality issues, alcohol abuse by minors and so on. People
| often idealized past, but when you check above, you fairly
| often find out current kids are not all that bad.
|
| In my culture, kids used to be beaten a lot. So did women, for
| that matter. And guys getting into drunk fight with nearby
| village were also something fairly normal. It is improvement
| that all three happen less nowadays.
| yonatan8070 wrote:
| Reading the title I clicked this hoping to read an interesting
| code related blog post... I was disappointed
| twodave wrote:
| The thing about parenting advice is it's usually just tailored to
| whatever worked for some random person's kids. What if you (as my
| wife and I have) adopted 4 kids over the course of 8 years, all
| with FASD who are all insane in different ways? We have had to
| learn 4 radically different approaches to parenting.
|
| Our key has been understanding the needs (emotional, mental
| health, etc.) of each child and accommodating those needs. I
| think this translates to normal parents and their biological
| children, though maybe the needs aren't so severe. Some specific
| ways this has played out for us:
|
| - for our kid who needs to understand "why" she can't do what she
| wants or else has a panic attack, we have had to spend an
| inordinate amount of time explaining our philosophy of parenting.
| Sometimes this means "opening her eyes" with some information
| that is probably a bit mature for the typical kid her age, but
| for her that's outweighed by understanding our good intentions
| for her better.
|
| - for the super needy one who stuffs her emotions and ends up
| having migraines and puking everywhere when she's not doing well,
| this meant spending a lot of money on a mental health specialist
| to figure out her exact needs, experimenting with basically all
| aspects of her life and tuning things over time. We spend about
| half an hour with this one every evening just talking about her
| feelings, making her feel heard and nothing else.
|
| - kid #3 has the most severe case of FASD but is probably the
| most emotionally healthy of the bunch. For him we just have to
| accommodate his education and development in a way that keeps him
| confident and develop some "key words" when we want him to adjust
| his behavior. E.g. when I need him to stop joking around, which
| is all the time (haha), I tell him to "lock it up," and he knows
| what that means.
|
| - #4 had 4 other homes before coming to us, so he has always had
| abandonment issues. He doesn't remember any of it, but it's part
| of him. As a result he tends to want to be more self-reliant and
| he doesn't deal with big changes very well. When we still needed
| outside help he would have difficulty anytime we changed nannies.
| For him this meant we just really needed to reinforce his concept
| of family, remind him we won't ever leave, etc. And then also let
| him do things for himself since that's where his confidence comes
| from.
|
| Those are just some examples. And as kids grow their needs
| change. In my experience parenting is not a set of steps or a
| magic formula. It is time invested in knowing your children's
| needs (whatever those are) and helping them reach their full
| potential (whatever that is). It's trial and error. It's
| sacrifice.
| jefftk wrote:
| Rereading this post 5 years later and with now a third child (2y)
| it's pretty close to what I would write today.
| spicyusername wrote:
| Another thing that's worked well for my children is using
| positive reinforcement in as many stations as possible. The
| carrot, not the stick.
|
| If you do X, you'll be rewarded with Y.
|
| vs
|
| If you don't do X, you'll be punished with Z.
|
| Kids, even young ones, are pretty smart. In most situations
| simply being reasonable, consistent, and explaining your
| rationale goes a long way.
|
| "You can't watch more TV because doctors have said X hours are
| the maximum healthy amount."
|
| "If we start another game before cleaning the other one up, the
| house will be too messy and it's unfair for Mom and Dad to do all
| the cleaning for messes we didn't make"
| kashunstva wrote:
| The three skills presented here are useful and deal strictly with
| shaping behaviour. I would add some random personal observations:
| 1) Being more predictable also involves being more available and
| predictable about trying to understand the seemingly wildly
| fluctuating emotions to which kids are prone. So I'd argue that
| predictably "seeking first to understand then be understood" is a
| way of building empathy and trust. 2) What works at one stage of
| life doesn't necessarily work at another. Teens, for example,
| have much more complex lives and the levers you can pull are
| different. 3) Where possible predictably offering choice builds a
| sense of agency and self-efficacy. 4) The author acknowledges
| that socioeconomic disadvantage can cause this to go off the
| rails. To that I would just say there are 1001 ways it can fall
| apart. Child with mental health issues. Parent with health
| issues. Any life changes. Fortunately, kids are pretty resilient
| if they have one or more trusted adults in their lives who are
| empathic , caring and reasonably predictable.
| sambeau wrote:
| My most valuable piece of advice for parents is to keep your
| children informed about your plans for the day, especially things
| about to happen soon, and bear in mind that kids have their own
| plans and time schedules (and don't wear watches).
|
| For instance, if you are about to go out, give them fair warning
| and a few reminders. Especially the all-important: if you need to
| save your game, you need to do it now.
|
| Similarly, if kids are taking turns with toys, your kid might be
| patiently waiting their turn. To be suddenly yanked away before
| their turn will, quite rightly, feel like an injustice. I used to
| tell them all that if its someone's turn coming up that they
| should get to have it before we leave. Kids are usually fair in
| these circumstances.
|
| These simple rules meant my kids never had leaving tantrums, and
| rarely had tantrums at all.
| marklubi wrote:
| I would follow on with advice that if you tell them, "we're
| leaving in 10 minutes" make sure that it happens in ten
| minutes.
|
| I've seen so many other parents set expectations, and then
| ignore them. It sets a bad precedent that is left open to
| interpretation and conflict.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I feel like if we treated kids a little bit more like adults,
| things would be much better. These reactions are pretty
| reasonable relatively speaking, kids are just not quite as
| adept at navigating reality as adults are. With a little help
| they can be pretty good though.
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Yes and no. I think we should at least treat them as
| intelligent beings and give them enough information to
| understand the world around them.
|
| "As adults" though is super difficult to balance. They'll
| still do illogical things (you can explain its cold outside
| and they need a coat, they'll still get out in t-shirt) and
| need a ton of flexibility. It's kinda hard to square that
| they have a brain but don't use it the same way when looking
| at them in terms of "partially adults". My mental image is of
| aliens learning about our society.
| aaomidi wrote:
| If they're cold they'll learn and not do it in the future.
|
| Honestly the consequences of some actions are so basic,
| just let them see how it goes imo
| makeitdouble wrote:
| Spoiler: they don't learn until some point, when they
| become able to project themselves in the future and act
| accordingly.
|
| Many basic assumptions just don't work until their brain
| evolves past specific points.
|
| Some research around the subject: https://www.sciencedire
| ct.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08852...
|
| [edited for clarity]
| watwut wrote:
| Yeah, they don't. They will be cold again and again and
| show Pikachu face again and again. It changes from
| certain age, but that is much higher age.
| andrepd wrote:
| Oh absolutely. One of the lessons of e.g. Montessori
| education is that treating kids as grownups will lead to them
| acting as grownups.
| watwut wrote:
| I found out the same thing. There were still tamptrums with
| mine, but significantly less of them.
|
| However, when they know we leave in 10 minutes, they expect
| that and leaving is easy. And thinking about it, even adults
| get angry if you demand they do something RIGHT NOW at random
| moment. Even adults want to know in advance, finish youtube
| video or page of the book.
| swader999 wrote:
| This is the only way we could ever leave a playground.
| laserlight wrote:
| > Similarly, don't make commitments unnecessarily. Instead of
| "I'll go downstairs and get your bear" maybe "I'll go downstairs
| and look for your bear." While with adults we understand that
| when a person says they'll do something they mean they'll put in
| a reasonable effort and may fail if the task is surprisingly
| difficult or if factors outside their control intervene, [...]
|
| I'm not sure adults understand it either. Many times, I've seen
| managers calling out a team member for not delivering by the time
| that they told they would. So, I started to add a caveat to
| almost everything I say about the future: "I plan to [...]".
| jiggawatts wrote:
| This is underrated advice. More than once, my spouse has
| promised my son something as we're about to leave that I can't
| deliver, guaranteeing a tantrum or at least some level of
| having to drag him along while he's sulking and disappointed in
| me.
|
| The new family rule is: Don't promise the kid something you
| won't personally deliver for certain! Which means, don't
| promise anything on behalf of anyone else, even if that other
| person is well-meaning.
| lordnacho wrote:
| The problem I have with a lot of parenting advice is it's always
| written by someone with fewer than 30 kids.
|
| Now I'm not saying you don't have a right to say anything until
| you have enough kids to fill a bus, far from it.
|
| But the advice you get is always variations of the same. Try to
| be patient, try to be reasonable. If you need to make threats,
| have it escalate slowly. Follow through on consequences.
|
| This works for most people, because if you have under 30 kids,
| you have a good chance of never getting a kid who is on the 1%
| level of difficulty (Rule of 1/3n).
|
| In fact my first kid was normal in that sense. Ask him to do
| something, he does it eventually. Not too many issues. Patience
| and reason prevailed, I didn't even have to make a lot of threats
| before he just got it. At that point perhaps I should have
| written a book about parenting, because it was working great.
|
| Second kid, no. It's not that the kid doesn't understand the
| trade: clean up first, then get read to. It's that the kid
| objects to the very idea that there's a deal. I'm being
| unreasonable in presenting this Faustian trade, no kid should be
| held prisoner until they unwillingly clean up after themselves!
| Consequences? Sure, try to hold to the things you said. No
| dinner, take away toys, stern voice, shouting.
|
| Nothing helps. I can't be the only parent who has tried all the
| variations of "be reasonable". But that's also where the advice
| ends. I guess in programming we have the same problem: you've
| seemingly looked everywhere for the error, now you have no ideas
| left, but the problem is still there.
| endymi0n wrote:
| My experience has been that it still has paid off to stay
| consistent. My youngest one is also extremely stubborn with a
| rage issue (I wouldn't dare to say 1% but at least 5%), and I
| can't count the time outs I've had to distribute. All of them
| as a consequence with advance warning. Partially it was
| borderline violent, but I've always did my very best to only
| use as much force to not hurt her, but just keep her from
| hurting herself and others as well as escaping the isolation
| from stimuli (I've always stayed with her the entire time). One
| time I carried her screaming and shouting through a whole
| restaurant of people and stayed a whopping 20 minutes in front
| of the door until she was calm and my food was cold.
|
| At the time, it looked like no progress at all, but fast
| forward 4 years and she's 7 now, well behaved, thoughtful, but
| still confident and strong willed: the upside of stubbornness.
| I feel like we did a decent job there.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| It seems quite reasonable to write advice for handling 97% of
| kids.
|
| If your kid belongs to those other 3%, you likely need a more
| specialized book.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| LOL I feel like me and my siblings were all the second kid.
| We're all very stubborn.
|
| Dealing with an unreasonable child is very difficult because
| the consequences mean nothing. You take away all their stuff
| and it's just fuel to continue stubbornly disobeying, if you
| say "no dinner" they will just not eat, etc.
|
| My unsubstantiated opinion is that you probably have to wait
| them out and not give them too much attention. Taking away more
| things doesn't really work.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> always written by someone with fewer than 30 kids_
|
| And even if you got a book written by someone who'd had 30
| kids, their experience is (if they have their own kids with the
| same partner) 30 draws from the same genetic distribution and
| still won't transfer all that well to randomly selected
| children.
| lordnacho wrote:
| Not to mention, the people who need the advice are not going
| to be selected from the general population.
| iteria wrote:
| I think I have a high difficulty child. My kid has ASD and whew
| meltdowns and all that label entails.
|
| I don't think that I had change my parent much, although the
| results I got at first would be considered less than ideal. I
| agree that consistency is key. My kid wails, screams, and more,
| but eventually she does come to understand that her actions
| have zero impact on the rules. The rules are what they are.
|
| I also don't have a lot of rules I'll be honest. I really only
| have 3 core rules and all the rules she gets are all
| enforcement of those rules. The rules are 1) don't impede my
| ability to keep you healthy and safe 2) you must be able to
| operate and be productive within your slice of society 3) you
| are not allowed to be a direct or indirect physical, mental, or
| emotional danger to yourself or others. That's it.
|
| They seems vague and they're probably abusable, but it gives me
| a compassion go operate from. It allows me to let things go.
| There are many things I wish my kid would do, but ultimately
| when I check The Rules, I find she's not really in violation of
| breaking anything but my dreams for her or my preference for
| how I personally want her to live.
|
| I think this ideal makes me both a strict and lax parent, but I
| like the results I'm seeing now. It was a long hard battle at
| the toddler years, but she's mostly accepted how it goes I
| think because she can know how it will go.
|
| I'm come to believe that having core values and being
| consistent about their enforcement is the way to deal with
| kids. As long as you aren't too oppressive and they have some
| space to act as they please, I think you can eventually get to
| a good state. I guess we'll see how right I am in a decade lol
| pineaux wrote:
| [flagged]
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| You would really beat your kid over something as small as not
| cleaning up after themselves? Maybe they would start
| listening to you, but only because they fear you.
|
| Personally, when I have kids I want them to respect me, not
| fear me.
| jefftk wrote:
| (author)
|
| I'm not in favor of physical punishment, but I don't think
| "as small as" is a good way to think about it. You're
| teaching them a general pattern (varies by parent, but
| perhaps "when I require you to do something you have to do
| it").
|
| If they learn that if they refuse strongly you will just
| drop it, you'll get a lot of that.
|
| This is how it works for adults too: if you are involved
| with the legal system on a minor matter, and then start
| disregarding the courts requirements ("contempt of court")
| they will escalate this quite far, up to jail time.
|
| This is also worth thinking through before you make a
| demand of your kid: is this really something that you are
| willing to enforce? Is it that important? Can you start
| with something weaker than a demand and talk about it
| first? ("Your room is really messy and I'm having trouble
| getting to the dresser to put your clothes away.")
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| My point was that physical violence is a severe
| punishment and not cleaning up after yourself does not
| seem like it warrants such a severe punishment.
|
| I don't think that forever escalating punishment is an
| effective strategy. If your child won't listen to you
| after punishment one step below physical violence, going
| further probably isn't going to help. Continually
| escalating the situation to enforce something feels like
| a very one dimensional approach.
|
| It seems like you agree with me, given that in your
| article your said "even better, though, is avoiding
| commands and threats entirely".
|
| Sidenote: I really hate "when I require you to do
| something you have to do it" as a reason. Always hated it
| as a kid, still hate it as an adult. I hope I only use it
| very sparingly when I have children.
| jefftk wrote:
| (I'm not sure we disagree very much on what to do, but
| mostly on how we think about it?)
|
| _> My point was that physical violence is a severe
| punishment and not cleaning up after yourself does not
| seem like it warrants such a severe punishment._
|
| I understood that to be your point when I wrote my
| response, fwiw.
|
| _> If your child won 't listen to you after punishment
| one step below physical violence, going further probably
| isn't going to help._
|
| Maybe your objection to physical punishment isn't "it is
| too harsh a punishment for refusing to clean up" but
| instead "I don't think it will work"?
|
| _> I really hate "when I require you to do something
| you have to do it" as a reason. Always hated it as a kid,
| still hate it as an adult. I hope I only use it very
| sparingly when I have children._
|
| Agreed! It is a a very large exercise of authority to
| require someone to do something regardless of whether
| they agree. So I rarely require the kids to clean up,
| even though at this point my oldest is nine. Instead,
| it's usually something like not being willing to help
| them start something new until they have cleaned up what
| they were already working on.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| > _Maybe your objection to physical punishment isn 't "it
| is too harsh a punishment for refusing to clean up" but
| instead "I don't think it will work"?_
|
| Definitely both. I believe that it's ineffective, but
| even if it was effective I wouldn't be inclined to use
| it.
|
| I feel like punishment in general is thought of as a very
| one dimensional thing, but in reality people have much
| more complex motivations.
|
| You kind of get at that with "it's usually something like
| not being willing to help them start something new until
| they have cleaned up what they were already working on".
| It's not really punishment, but it's still a motivator
| for them to do the task.
|
| I feel like you can teach kids the general pattern like
| you mentioned without "punishing" them per se.
| pineaux wrote:
| Yes if you have a reasonable person in front of you. But
| your children can be very unreasonable and cruel just
| because they are playing. The "why" questions will just
| continue until you are exhausted and they will not have
| done it anyways. Also, "because I say so" is the truth
| and the reason. "I say so because I want you to do it,
| and I want you to do it because I say so. " Its a
| chicken/egg problem
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| I completely disagree with your approach. You don't win
| against an unreasonable person by escalating the
| punishment. They're unreasonable, by definition they're
| not going to respond like a reasonable person would and
| back down. It's just a poor strategy.
|
| > _Also, "because I say so" is the truth and the reason_
|
| I have understood that since I was a child. My point is
| that it's an extremely poor reason. You are relying
| entirely upon your authority as a parent/boss/whatever
| and not providing any real rationale.
|
| Relevant (Specifically "formal authority is a blunt,
| fragile instrument"):
|
| _" As an engineer, if you really feel strongly about
| something, you just go off and do it yourself. As a
| manager, you have to lead through influence and
| persuasion and inspiring other people to do things. It
| can be quite frustrating. "But can't I just tell people
| what to do?" you might be thinking. And the answer is no.
| Any time you have to tell someone what to do using your
| formal authority, you have failed in some way and your
| actual influence and power will decrease. Formal
| authority is a blunt, fragile instrument._"
|
| https://charity.wtf/2019/09/08/reasons-not-to-be-a-
| manager/
| austinjp wrote:
| Um, just no. Escalating punishment, and including physical
| punishment, is a guaranteed way to induce extreme problems.
| Prisons are packed with people who lived that life, listen to
| some interviews. Breaking people leaves broken people who
| break more people.
|
| Note: I'm not saying punishments are a bad idea. But severity
| as the variable to tweak, that's demonstrably a dreadful
| plan.
| pineaux wrote:
| Sure, just throw your certainties in my face like the
| truth. You name prisons, but you forget that until
| recently, most children were subjected to physical violence
| and most of them did not go to prison. But if you read the
| above correctly you would understand that it is not about
| breaking at all. On the contrary. It is about
| proportionality and that is also the hard part. We are
| physical beings, why should all punishment be executed on
| the mind? Why is torture of the mind better? Is burden
| someone up with a significant debt is not seen as torture,
| but it is. So much so that some people commit suicide.
| TheCoelacanth wrote:
| They may not all have ended up in prison, but certainly
| they, on average, went on to commit a much higher level
| of violent crime.
|
| Violent crimes of all types have trended downwards
| steeply in the time since those types of punishments
| stopped being accepted. We are well rid of them.
| uoaei wrote:
| The first paragraph is a great way to guarantee your child
| with anarchist tendencies (read: recognizing power structures
| for the inherently exploitative systems that they are)
| definitely becomes an anarchist in the philisophically
| rigorous sense, if they're not already too traumatized by
| their experiences by the time they learn to reason about
| these things well.
|
| The second part is teaching the child to externalize value
| systems so that they never develop healthy ones for
| themselves.
|
| I hope you are just speculating and don't really have kids.
| uoaei wrote:
| Maybe to clarify a positive point rather than leaving only
| negative ones behind...
|
| The thing about children is: they are already _people_ when
| they exit the womb (i.e. agents, at least in the ways we
| talk about LLMs today if not more than that), then they
| become adults with more or less consistent modes of being
| and acting, and then they get to exert their own influences
| on the world (read: other people). The duty of a parent is
| not to make their own lives easier or to assuage themselves
| that they "did everything right", but to create net-good
| lasting change through their parental legacy, whatever the
| cost to themselves. The choice to have a child has already
| been made -- the rest is owning up to that choice.
|
| Of course, what's "good" is a personal matter, but suffice
| it to say that we can all agree that the good that is
| created by parenting exists far past immediate vectors of
| control and into the psyche of the child. So to treat
| children as anything less than agents in and of themselves
| is to instill in them a dangerously false ideology from the
| very beginning that morphs into antisocial pathologies as
| their belief systems and worldviews ossify in age. This
| lesson can be impressed on them in myriad subtle and
| apparently "correct" ways of parenting, in ways that the
| parent believes are backed by only the best intentions, but
| that ultimately harm the child and perpetuate their
| capacity for harming others.
| bythreads wrote:
| Out of curiosity: is that legal in your neck of the woods?,
| its a punishable offense over here.
| camgunz wrote:
| My partner read Hunt, Gather, Parent which is more or less
| about getting kids to do chores and not yell all the time. It's
| not not in the category of "miracle cure books", but the
| general thesis of, "do chores together and don't paint them as
| chores but things the family does together, try not to get
| angry" seems relatively sane.
|
| Our kid is ~6 mos. so it's not applicable now, and thus can't
| give you practical experience. But yeah, 100% sympathy here.
| Wading through parenting advice is just like, epistemologically
| annihilating. Hang in there :)
| martindbp wrote:
| > I can't be the only parent who has tried all the variations
| of "be reasonable".
|
| You're not. It helps to get an assessment from experienced
| preschool teachers, in our case, I asked out of the current
| 100+ kids if there was anyone more stubborn/difficult and there
| wasn't. The problem is most parents think their kid is
| "difficult", so there is little understanding from them, and
| definitely no understanding from 20-somethings who think it's
| just bad parenting...
|
| One example is the concept of "timeout", you mean that kids
| simply accept this without escalating? When applied on my son
| that would just lead to a series of escalations until he throws
| up from crying too hard. Or he tries to leave the house and run
| away leading to having to be physically constrained for his own
| safety, leading to screaming until throwing up and loss of
| voice for a few days. Thankfully he's since matured and is
| quite well adapted, but ages 1-5 were rough.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| Dealing with kids with special needs can be a challenge. And is
| definitely a 1 out of 30 difficulty you are describing. I've
| had "regular" kids, and special needs kids I took care off, the
| difference of emotional energy needed to take care of them is
| incomparable. Normal kids, feel as almost no work to me to be
| honest.
|
| They can have emotional moods of a 2-3 years old up till
| teenage years.
|
| The biggest thing to live a happy life, even just for yourself
| is to not get emotional, best is to not even raise your voice.
| Anger, even mild, is extremely draining to yourself. And makes
| the kids feels terrible, even if they look blank to it,
| creating a vicious cycle.
|
| Leave expectations out of the door. Don't expect reciprocity.
| Be extremely consistent, make sure you're schedule is
| easygoing.
|
| Steps of dealing with an emotional escapades:
|
| 1. Get them out of the situation. Best is physically, but don't
| do it agressively if possible. They get a chance to reset. Do
| not ever correct kids in front of other kids.
|
| 2. Acknowledge their feeling. Start with understanding.
|
| 3. Explain why and how it's no acceptable. But don't tell them
| they are wrong, focus on their behaviour; and give them an
| acceptable way out.
|
| 4. Only allow them to return to their wanted activity if they
| act appropriately again. That can be in their room, timeout, at
| times you have to get creative.
|
| And also very important: get them out of stimulating situations
| (such as parties or busy playgrounds) half an hour before they
| normally would be overstimulated. When overstimulated, these
| kids normally need 1 hour, till sleep time to fully get back to
| normal.
| public_defender wrote:
| > fewer than 30 kids.
|
| I agree. And I'll go you one further. I have kids. I also used
| to work in a psychiatric hospital for kids, so I frequently had
| 30 and most of them were in the bottom quartile on common "easy
| to parent" metrics. On my first day a kid had found a lightbulb
| and broken it. She was threatening to eat it. I was shadowing
| someone and they sort of nudged me forward to see what I would
| do. I said, "you'd better not eat that" in a pretty
| authoritative tone. The kid responded, "or what?"
|
| This was sort of a lightbulb moment for me. It's your first
| hour on the job, and you've been presented with an "imposing of
| consequences" dilemma. Your dilemma partner has threatened to
| eat some broken glass. What result?
|
| Anyway, I obviously didn't escalate with threats of
| consequences, right? Or my username would be prosecutor. The
| action:reaction, misbehavior:punishment model operates as
| violence for some kids. Parenting has to be adaptive and
| parents have to sort of ride the bronco and parent the kid who
| shows up that day.
|
| Unfortunately for you, nobody would probably publish a book
| titled "sometimes you just have to clean the kid's room and
| still read to them and there are different rules for the older
| brother but that's all fine and good," but anecdotally that's
| the truth.
|
| Anyway your parenting experience sounds normal (in the sense
| that it's normal for a parent to have an uncommonly
| oppositional kid), so don't feel like you're doing anything
| wrong. Good luck.
| ZephyrBlu wrote:
| Your story is really interesting because it highlights how
| ineffective consequences can be if someone refuses to
| cooperate.
|
| I'm curious what you would consider the "correct" approach in
| that kind of situation is?
| public_defender wrote:
| I'm not an academic, but I don't really think there is a
| correct choice. I think there are strategies that work in
| the moment to de-escalate. From among those, we often have
| a choice of damnations regarding long-term goals (e.g.
| "what will she learn from this if I..."). I think we are
| often poor estimators of long-term impact, though.
| WesolyKubeczek wrote:
| So what did you do with that kid? The suspense is killing me.
| public_defender wrote:
| I had to walk back pretty quickly and save the credibility
| I had. So I pivoted to something like "There is no 'or
| else,' you'd just better not--as in it would really be
| better if you did not. I think you'll be pretty sad and
| miserable if you do that."
|
| This turned out to be a step down the correct path, even if
| pretty embarrassing in the moment. Someone with a better
| relationship with the kid stepped in and used that
| relationship to de-escalate, a la "please don't do that
| because it will hurt you and I wouldn't like that because I
| care about you."
|
| What I found to be key in a situation like this was: (1)
| focus on the person, not the behavior; (2) Have full
| attention on the situation; (3) try to determine/address
| root causes. It's obviously impossible to do all that stuff
| in real life sometimes, but I can try.
| uoaei wrote:
| I've had parents, and enough therapy to know how they fucked me
| up. I have friends who are in similar situations and who are
| comfortable discussing such topics. Arguably this is a much
| more productive way to develop a better perspective on how to
| raise children than any given parent, whom we cannot guarantee
| have the same kinds of insights.
|
| I think it's a right view that parents don't trust the advice
| of other parents proferred willy-nilly, but then apparently
| desperate and exasperated parents see no other options and so
| keep reaching for the same failing systems and directives that
| float around in the zeitgeist. I suggest to look within, and
| act through empathy.
| [deleted]
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _The problem I have with a lot of parenting advice is it 's
| always written by someone with fewer than 30 kids._
|
| William Sears, who has written numerous books, has eight kids
| of his own, and is/was a practicing paediatrician:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sears_(physician)
|
| > _But the advice you get is always variations of the same. Try
| to be patient, try to be reasonable. If you need to make
| threats, have it escalate slowly. Follow through on
| consequences._
|
| You may wish to look at the books/advice that a larger pool of
| parents have found to be useful:
|
| * https://old.reddit.com/r/Parenting/wiki/recommended_reading
| jgalt212 wrote:
| > mostly just my observations with my own two kids
|
| I appreciate this line. Maybe right, maybe wrong, but I won't
| take parenting advice from anyone with zero or one children.
| spicyusername wrote:
| I would say one child gets you the pass too.
| jgalt212 wrote:
| you can make that argument, but not sure many parents who
| went from 1 to 2, or 2 to 3+ would agree with you. The game
| changes--scarce resource allocation and sibling rivalry
| (which is mostly a function of the former).
| [deleted]
| bawolff wrote:
| I'm always amazed at how much parenting advice comes down to
| "don't be an asshole to your children"
|
| Like imagine if the article was about being a manager and had
| advice like: follow through on promises you make to your direct
| report. Everyone would respond, "no shit". Suddenly when it is
| about children this is sage advice.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Yeah sounds easy until you have kids and it isn't. Imagine the
| employee who like acts like a 5 year old all the time.
|
| That is what looking after a 5 year old is like! The good,
| beautiful, bad and ugly of that.
|
| Now imagine you have the next shift is not 8 but 1.1million
| hours.
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