It's a lot of work. I think that's exacerbated by modern lifestyles. We're pulled in a thousand directions and we're less likely to live near relatives, which means that the support systems are not there like they used to be.
Kids demand you. Simple things like watching them playing is huge for them. If you try to understand what they're saying (already at a few months old), you'll be surprised to find it pretty cogent and clear. For example, in the article, the little boy was literally hitting his mother over the head to get her attention. But if you're not listening, you just get upset.
I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that.
It's a lot of work, but not because of lifestyle. In reading the article you see that parents, now, spend more time with their kids than previous generations. But kids are coddled more than ever. Between shuttling them to school, soccer practice, and piano lessons it seems like the parents have decided to give themselves these tasks and are surprised! when they don't have anytime for do what they want.
If anything I learned from the article it's these parents are wimps. The kid almost takes the father's eye out and the strongest punishment is a timeout?! The mother has to ask her son to do his homework?! I guess my family is old school, but throwing anything at my mom would have my ass on ice. And if she has to ask twice, that computer would be gone.
"I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that."
This is an interesting point. Do you not feel that the expression of this desire will make you happier? Did you adopt your child? If not, then how is the creating of a human life in order for you to fulfill your desire to give what you have to offer to a child anything but selfish? Certainly there were kids that existed before that could have benefitted from your gifts. I don't mean to say you should not have had kids for this reason. I think anyone who desires to have a kid and has the means should do so but I don't see anything different in your desire than that of someone who simply wants kids.
Like everything in life, the thought of doing it, trumps the actual doing it. Finishing the basement, writing a novel, building the next great web app, raising kids all seem like great projects to embark on. But it's the dark night of the soul, when you're up for the 10 night in a row (or you have writer's block or you realize you shouldn't have cut that pipe, etc, etc).
Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Speaking as a member of GenX, our lives are so damn easy most of the time, when we run into problems, we don't know how to handle it. However, we adjust.
I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. Wars, the great depression, death of a child, she went through it all. And they did hard physical labor every day.
The thing is we adjust, it's hard at first, but we persevere.
When you watch your kid doing something you taught him, that's just not a feeling you get from purchasing a new iPad. When you sit in structure you built or use a product you built you'll know the feeling. It's hard to explain but in the end, it's worth it.
My wife and I are lucky, in a way. She's Italian. Like, born Italian, speaks Italian, lives Italian. Okay, she lives in Montreal, but damnit, call her a Frenchy and she'll punch me hard enough in that spot on the arm that she knows will get a reaction.
Anyways, we live next door to her great-grandmother (nona), and below her Mother and Father. I swear, her sisters are over often enough that it's normal. Her older sister lived at home till she was 25/26 and got married. Only then did she move out. My wife did the same thing. For them, their entire culture, this is normal. Lawyers living at home with their parents, not batting an eye. This is normal.
Now, I'm American. 18, and I'm out the house, fending for myself. Seeing my cousins was something I did every few years (being a military brat didn't help, neither did parents getting a divorce).
My wife sees her cousins all the time. Weekly. Not all the cousins, but often enough that again, it's normal. It's not some super special event.
What's all this getting to? There is a point, I promise.
Anyways, we had our first son in 2008, and our second is due the end of the month, beginning of August (yay!). Raising our son has been a joy. Ignoring the fact that he is a very laid back and very happy child, having parents/grand parent next door and upstairs, and a very close knit family always present meant raising him wasn't difficult. Couple this with the fact that Quebec hands you a years paid maternity (if you are working, of course), and it's pretty smooth sailing. We could still go out occasionally, assured that the grandparents would take good care of our child.
If we assistance, we literally knocked on the wall, and they'd come over.
Oh, we did our part. We didn't rely on them. And they took advantage, too. When they needed to go to the market, my wife was able to take them instead of having to take the bus or walk. All very practical.
So, you ask a good question:
> I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money.
And I give you an answer: Family.
It's odd. My family loved me, they cared for me, but family to me before I met my wife was immediate. I didn't see grandparents but maybe one a year on Christmas or Thanksgiving. I grew up away from cousins, and at 18, expected to have to go out on my own.
My family wasn't bad. But in my wife's family, I fully realize how other cultures see family.
I look at my brother, living in the US, married, with a second child on the way. I won't go into to many details, but they are struggling, but they get very little support from family. They live almost 2 hours from my father, but rarely see him (compared to how often I see my wives family members), and they get little help from his wives family.
This probably comes from the American cultural of independence. You make it or break it on your own skill, and asking or getting help is seen as a weakness. Children are thrown to the wolves at 18 and expected to thrive. Some do. Many don't.
My son is happy. He makes his parents happy. He's constantly surrounded by people that love him. Parenting is a joy, and we are in a good place. Our biggest worries are silly when we think about them (seriously, we worry about the stupidest things, and laugh about them when we realize what we are worrying about).
I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean I can't feel blessed.
On the opposite end of the spectrum: We're expecting our first child in six weeks. My wife's sister lives two hours away... and every other member of our families lives thousands of miles away, in France and the UK. I have to admit it's a little daunting.
It's not as hard as it seems. Patience is key, but it all comes naturally. Really. I was nervous, but honestly, it's rather easy. Yes, having the relatives close by helped.
The best way to look at the situation is to remember that people have been having babies for thousands of years under much more difficult situations.
Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally.
>Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally.
I disagree.
I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them.
Watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my lad J the other day wherein the girl Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her and so give her everything she asks for.
I'm not going to say that you need a degree in Ed-Psych or anything either ...
When you say "it's rather easy" that sends up a few flags for me. Perhaps you can answer this one for me: my (now nearly 5yo) boy has enjoyed learning chess with me and on the whole can move the pieces around and make some trade-off decisions under close instruction, he messed up the board at our last game (after a long chess haitus) because he was losing and then starting flinging stuff around; in short he was upset not to win and said he wouldn't play again. Should I encourage him to play or forget the game (that I know he enjoys and has been nice to play together). If I get him to play should I let him win?
My youngest is now 15mo and is getting fussy about his breakfast food, should I give in and give him what he'll eat at the risk of limiting his palette and enjoyment of a variety of foods or should I force feed him (and starve him if he won't eat it)?
OT now, long post, sorry.
TL;DR I don't think it's easy nor that it all comes naturally.
Regarding your 15mo there's a good book called The Hungry Monkey. It's about a food critic who is trying to get his child to eat well. The upshot of the story, and from talking to various chefs in the story is that kids eat what kids eat.
It seems that the palettes of people continuously evolves, so even if he devours ice cream and doritos now, he may end up being the food writer for the Times when he grows up.
The key seems to be to present good foods to him. Let him see you eat it. But have something he'll eat too that you can bring out if he doesn't eat. It's more important for his development to eat any food, and humans are ridiculously resiliant to diets lacking in diversity (just use a multivitamin for deficiencies in key vitamins and minerals). Probably the only thing to watch out for is a LOT of sodium. But I'd be less concerned about things like fat and sugars than I would be for an adult.
Thanks for the advice, I've heard this before about palettes and agree to a large extent particularly as I've seen my eldest move away from some unhealthy foods as he grows up and also to eat several foods that I really can't stomach (eggs, mushrooms).
I confess it was a slightly made up problem intended to elucidate the point. He tends to have rice snaps for brecky with some fruit but his diet the rest of the time is quite varied. He is less accepting of new foods than his brother was.
>> "Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her and so give her everything she asks for."
That's not love. That's the point Roald Dahl is making (IMHO). The only family in the story that really knows and understands what love is, is Charlies' family. He is the richest boy in the world, because he has a family that truly loves him. Even though they are financially poor.
Love isn't about giving people what they ask for, it's about giving them what is best for them in the long run.
I don't buy my kids toys every time they ask for them. Not because I don't love them, but because I don't want them to take money for granted, and I want them to have a good life balance - because I do love them.
I agree it's not all easy, but I think a lot of it does come naturally if you're in the right mindset to let it come naturally. The most important things IMHO are to be relaxed, confident, and make sure you give the baby as much time as you can etc. babies and kids pick up so much on parents that are uptight. Relaxed parents = relaxed kids.
>> "Should I encourage him to play or forget the game (that I know he enjoys and has been nice to play together). If I get him to play should I let him win?"
I'd encourage him to play again and let him win a couple. If he's a bad winner (Gloating, taunting, saying you're rubbish etc), beat him brutally the next game. I remember my oldest had a year or so when he absolutely hated losing and didn't like playing games with me unless he won. He grew out of it though.
This is trivially true: "Love isn't about giving people what they ask for, it's about giving them what is best for them in the long run."
...but the more I learn, the more I find that my intuition has been often wrong on "what's best for them in the long run". Usually just in subtle ways, but sometimes in larger ones.
Being a relaxed parent is good advice, though that was more how I was a good uncle (but I'm learning to make adjustments to become a good parent).
It's super-important to understand that kids are not little adults, even once they start talking and can seem that way. So I don't agree with your game advice (I don't think the lesson you're teaching will be the one the child learns), but you're probably quite right that they'll grow out of it anyway. :)
And I'll stop there, because my opinions are based on tons of reading & talking with parents, but only about a year of being a parent myself so far....
I must admit I didn't read anything really to do with parenting before becoming a parent. It seems like there are so many different variables, every child is totally different, that reading books might even spoil things, and you might start looking to books for solutions rather than your intuition. (This might just be my personality - I don't like reading programming books either that teach specific programming style etc). But then I haven't read books on relationships either, but think I do ok there (My wife hasn't divorced me yet ;) ).
I can only say what I think worked with my Son when he did similar things playing games. But then I can't be sure if he 'learnt the lesson', or if he just grew out of it naturally. Seems like trying to play at around their level is best, although that's sometimes pretty hard :) If I had identical twins at least I'd be able to do proper A/B testing! ;)
The things I learn from talking with other parents (the smart/creative ones) and reading are usually ways to expand my possible responses to any situation, or insights into what's happening in a kid's head that we easily misinterpret. I totally agree, children can be dramatically different... but if you read books, go to workshops, etc. as ways to expand your options (rather than seeking a prescription to follow even when it feels wrong... intuition is still valuable!), you can get a lot of value.
I sat in a parents' workshop that covered how to handle the relatively-common "disaster" experience where a child throws a tantrum in the grocery store because the parent won't give them the toy or candy they wanted.
I was already opposed to any physical punishment (and I guess there's the option of leaving your cart and taking them out to the car to wait it out), and obviously giving in is bad because it teaches the kid that screaming in public works. But the other parents had tons of things I hadn't thought of, like:
respond with sympathy for the child's frustration -- they really want something they can't have -- and instead of being angry give them (within reason) space & time to express it
before the tantrum, respond to the demand by talking to the child about all the things you'd like to get, but can't
before even entering the store, have established & reasonable rules about what the child can pick out for themselves, i.e., one thing, under X euros, can't be candy if last trip they got candy
There were others as well that I forget now.. it was all food for thought, though.
To a certain extent though we get to 'brute-force' a solution. After the 20th tantrum, and the 20th different thing we try, we'll probably find something that works for that particular child. Of course it'll likely be completely different for the next child etc :) but that's half the fun!
You would, because you are taking things far to seriously.
Of course loving a child is just not enough. There are a monumental number of other things that need doing. There are mountains of books. A small post on HN isn't going to be the definitive "How to raise your child" post. It was merely a response to a person who is preparing to have his first child.
> Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her
No, they don't.
> When you say "it's rather easy" that sends up a few flags for me.
You are making this much more than it is.
Being a parent is easy. That doesn't mean it doesn't have it's challenges. That doesn't mean you can't mess up. That doesn't mean some days you can't help but pull your hair out.
Being easy doesn't mean can't be challenging.
It's easy, because it's worth it. It's easy, because even when it's difficult, it's rewarding. It's easy, because I love being a father to my son.
You ask me two questions of how I would handle things, as if their was a definitive right answer and everything else is 100% wrong. I know enough to know that their is no right or wrong answer. I can only say what I've done for my child when things arose, and I've learned from them as much as he has.
> It's easy, because I love being a father to my son.
I try to remember to tell my lads that last bit every day - but I think what you're really saying is it's damn hard but that even if it were to make demands of you that were impossible to fulfil you'd still keep doing it because you love your son.
I don't have a kid yet (3 months to go), but so far my take would be definitely no force feeding. I can't imagine a kid would go so far as to not eat when hungry? Would they rather starve to death than touch a vegetable? If you start fretting over food, of course you give the kid leverage over you - now they can refuse to eat to punish you...
And with respect to chess, why would you encourage him to forget the game???
Letting him win - maybe there is a better way, like correcting his moves so that he really wins? I only played with a guy who did that once when I was a child, and I was really impressed. Or instead of playing games, work on chess problems together (nobody wins or loses)? Or play together against opponents on the internet?
I can imagine it is difficult to find the right way to handle it right, but then again, maybe to play or not to play chess is not the most important matter in the world either? If you screw that up, it seems likely your kid would still find other things to get interested in.
My first is 13 months now; we live in central France, and my closest family is a brother (busy with his own family) in the Netherlands. The rest of our families are in the US or Malaysia.
Luckily my wife & I both work from home (so we're both always around to help each other), AND we have some very supportive neighbors & friends here, but it's been quite difficult at times. Here's a huge tip: get a large freezer (the type you put in the basement) and fill it with food like curries (to eat w/ rice) or pasta sauces, soups, etc. -- things that can be easily thawed and made into lunch/dinner with minimal effort & shopping required.
Another tip: prepare yourself to be a parent. Do not assume that it will come naturally, because while some parts do, most really don't, and in the modern world there is a huge array of choices you have to make that require research and thoughtful consideration -- and once the baby arrives you'll find that difficult.
What will actually work with your baby varies on the baby, but you should know a lot about breast-feeding (startling difficult to get started, even with help & preparation), formula (if breast-feeding is impossible -- and it might be for medical reasons -- you should know how formula works), co-sleeping and/or ways to help teach your newborn to sleep alone (not letting them "cry it out", for one), swaddling (amazing but not suited to every baby), ways to carry them & help with gas pains, how to change/clean this tiny fragile thing, etc.. Never mind all of the things you should know about the delivery -- how to avoid getting a default c-section if the labor is slow, etc..
It's worth studying your ass off, really.
Human beings have evolved to have remarkably helpless babies that need educated care because we are capable of teaching each other how to handle that care -- normally, you'd have your entire extended family around you to teach you how to do everything. If you don't -- we didn't -- make damned sure you learn how from other sources (and have help available for when you need it!).
I love having our daughter here. The whole experience blows my mind sometimes, and she's unreasonably cute -- check this out http://robwhelan.com/photos/galleries/12-month_12/img_1153.j... -- but it IS difficult and there's a lot of know-how required particularly if you might not want to just go to the baby store and buy all of the stuff the salesperson says you'll need (hint: your baby will be happier without most of it).
I envy you. I have a cousin living the same city 45 minutes away, and my parents live in another country that is a 3 hour drive away.
We moved here because of my job, which I love, but while raising our two children, I sorely miss the support structure that an expanded family provides. I also grew up in a similar situation, little to no family living in the same city, but my parents had many, many friends in the neighbourhood within walking distance. They might as well have been family.
Now, where I am now, I find it hard to relate to my neighbours (maybe it's me, maybe it's them, I don't know). I don't think I'll ever be able to integrate into the community like my parents did, and we don't have family nearby that we can rely upon on a moments notice.
Would I trade my current job for somewhere closer to family? That's a difficulty choice to make for me, as there's too many unknowns. I wish it were an easy one.
Here's another one: Community. Where I was raised, Aunt and Mama (as in Granny) used to be flexible titles for whoever was around to help take care of you. Neighbours were often as good as extended family members.
>> " the thought of doing it, trumps the actual doing it."
I thought having kids would be cool. Turned out to be awesomely cool beyond compare. They are, and always will be the things I am most proud of. Pretty much every day my kids do stuff that brings me happiness. Yeah I guess sometimes it's hard work, but so is everything :/ If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain...
I'd be totally and utterly lost without my kids (literally sometimes).
I certainly don't have all the answers, but part of why parents hate parenting is a one-size-fits-all approach to what parents are "supposed" to do: issue time-outs, "recite the rules of the house to a 2 year-old," or overuse the good old "1, 2, 3...." There's no single golden path to parenting.
The lens through which parenting is viewed here is too narrow. Parenting isn't about being happier. It is about being a bigger and better person. Children make your life BIGGER. You feel moments of happiness like you've never felt before. You also feel moments of anger like you've never felt before.
It really is indescribable and not for the faint of heart or the selfish. The beautiful thing about parenting is that it shows you who you really are (not who you think you are), and gives you chances every day to grow.
It makes you see what really matters in life, assuming you actually come to this realization. I've seen plenty of people not realize this and fight to keep their identity, their original idea of what they wanted for themselves while also trying to be a parent. That doesn't work.
Part of parenting is a certain amount of ego destruction. You have to go through that if you want to genuinely care for another human being.
This is what makes the experience of parenting so great. It is a kind of Zen experience of making yourself better by destroying your concept of self (and putting another 'self' first more than your own self would like).
The whole "does it make my life happier" is such a shallow consumer thing.
When I was younger I led an interesting life in many ways but I have never had the intensity of experience I have with and about my children. Another really surprising thing was finding out how much I connect back with society - I want to be part of society and change it and make it better - I get what it is for.
Children are not a lifestyle accessory and as the poster above says they push you into all sorts of aspects of your self in all sorts of interesting ways.
The mixture of a startup and three small children has certainly been entertaining and there have been times when I am so exhausted I have nothing else to give but then to go and do something simple - like bathing the children or doing something in the garden with them and it makes it all worth while.
As I frequently find myself telling my children: Things in life that aren't challenging aren't worth while (possibly hyperbole but you get my point)
That isn't quite what I am saying. I am saying that buying something - or in this case having children - and expecting instant happiness is shallow and consumeristic.
Proper happiness comes from deeper things and while this probably isn't the place to go into it I would argue that its not quite what you should be aiming for - depth of experience and quality of experience are better things to be aiming for to my mind.
It is if you're dumb enough to have this as your definition of "happiness":
'When I mention this to Daniel Gilbert, he hardly disputes that meaning is important. But he does wonder how prominently it should figure into people’s decisions to have kids. “When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good,” he says. “The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?”'
I mean, why let a little thing like "meaning" affect the decisions you make in life, right?
We all know how well focusing on immediate pleasure works in areas such as dieting, exercise, finance, career, etc. Why not apply the same logic to having kids, right?
I love being a dad. I love that my daughter looks up to me and wants to spend time with me. It's tough sometimes but kids are filled with so much love they more than make up for it. They're also inspiring to be around. Their attitude towards life is fun and refreshing.
I invest heavily in my daughter and will invest heavily in our next child as well. By that I mean spending a lot of time with them. I work at home most nights but only after my daughter is in bed and my wife and I have some time to hang out.
What I have seen is that some people just aren't interested in being parents and are not entirely sure how they got there. Life is hard sometimes even when you have it easy like I do but even on a hard day being a parent is still great.
I can't say I disagree, but I can say from my own experience that you don't need kids to experience and learn everything you mentioned. Having kids probably makes it easier to experience and learn those things as most people are pretty much committed to their kids once they have them, but they are certainly no guarantee and you would not have to look very far to find examples that run counter to your particular experience.
Of course, this should not be a surprise. If you are no longer fretting about spending too little time with your children after they’re born (because you have a year of paid maternity leave), if you’re no longer anxious about finding affordable child care once you go back to work (because the state subsidizes it), if you’re no longer wondering how to pay for your children’s education and health care (because they’re free)—well, it stands to reason that your own mental health would improve. When Kahneman and his colleagues did another version of his survey of working women, this time comparing those in Columbus, Ohio, to those in Rennes, France, the French sample enjoyed child care a good deal more than its American counterpart. “We’ve put all this energy into being perfect parents,” says Judith Warner, author of Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety, “instead of political change that would make family life better.”
This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.
But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party.
The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.
No reason it has to be the mother though. And the actual family values line is in conflict with Republican views on work. This conflict is partly historic (Protestant work ethic), but partly an interesting indictment of the hypocrisy of the religious rights' support for the Republican party. Their focus on only a few moral issues does a great disservice to the actual morality of the nation. They say mothers should stay home, but support a party who's economic policies make that impossible.
But things like paternity leave, maternity leave, requiring employers to consider flexible working -- these kind of things Europe is doing are far more family friendly than the republican party.
Everything has consequences elsewhere. Make paid maternity/paternity leave compulsory and you make it riskier for employers to hire. So you increase the probability that your father gets three months off after you're born, but you also increase the probability that your father is a long-term unemployed bozo living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris.
The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.
I agree.
No reason it has to be the mother though.
It doesn't have to be, but this seems to be the natural way things go if left to their own devices. Most human societies have the other taking on the vast majority of childcare duties -- it seems to be part of the way our minds are put together that mothers want to do a lot more childcare than fathers do.
So you increase the probability that your father gets three months off after you're born, but you also increase the probability that your father is a long-term unemployed bozo living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris.
Employers wouldn't hire more than they need anyway. Even if that was the case, the flip side would be job insecurity. You can theorize all you want about these tradeoffs, but the experience shows that these measures do work in Europe, and more so in Scandinavian countries. Never have I seen so many child carts as in Iceland, and despite the crash their unemployment is 8% and going down.
Now that our youngest is >1yo (as with his elder brother) then we're back to sharing labour and child care + chores 50-50 (in a way that's probably not open to most people). We've chosen this lifestyle and are below the official poverty line in our country because of it.
However, the little one is still not completely weaned and so needs contact with his mother at times during normal working hours.
Yes it's possible to pump and bottle-feed but breastfeeding is more than just nourishment.
Nature does tend to push the mother into the stay-at-home role, which is why I'm very much in favor of programs to support greater integration of kids into the workplace to try and balance things more towards fairness -- childcare at work (you take your coffee break, the mother takes her breast-feeding break) is one solution. Allowing mothers to work mostly remotely while still breast-feeding is another.
Here in France the approach is well-funded child care that's available for very young babies -- this is a boon to mothers maintaining their careers, but it's certainly bad for breast-feeding more than a couple of months.
This has more to do with higher parental expectations, coming out of the general climate of economic insecurity in the United States. Upper-middle-class parents can hire maids to do some of the chores, but raising children is still exhausting in a society where young people have to be in the right track from preschool in order to have a decent shot at getting anywhere in life.
I don't think the type-A helicopter parents who insist on their children matriculating to elite pre-schools/boarding schools/colleges are that way because they expect their child to be the next Mozart. Obviously, there are some parents like that, but they exist in every society. Most of the parents who drive their children so relentlessly to be overachievers are that way because they realize what happens, in this country, to those who fall off of the elite track.
In the context of the article that perception can be explained by the fact that they were missing out on more of the childless life goodies. Also, being able to afford more childcare doesn't imply having more time to spend with their children.
Is this more of a reflection of how much more selfish we generally are compared with previous generations, or evidence that raising children really is hard?
Parenting is about showing the kid his boundaries.
And by showing the boundaries I don't mean canonically forbidding all nice things and always being "the bad guy". Limits and boundaries have a bad rap in some literature.
The concept of boundaries is universal: boundaries don't enforce anyone to choose one option over another: they just enforce one to choose. Showing the kid his boundaries is not an easy undertaking but on the other hand it is something we all do to each other everyday. At work, at home, with friends, with kids.
By letting one make choices—which is enforced by setting and keeping the boundaries—allows him to gradually learn about himself, and eventually grow to change himself.
Boundaries change as a person grows: first, with a toddler it might be about not gaining anything by hitting or throwing things, not merely being forbidden or removed from throwing things around. Later it might be about deferred gratification: if the child chooses to have everything right away now and the boundaries stick, thus enforcing proper consequences of the kids choice, he will gradually learn that in the long run he gets less by having everything immediately. In adulthood, showing boundaries might be about saying no to someone known to ask around for favours, rarely returning them. The refusal will force him to consider his options: he must either do this or that but no longer both, as he can't get other people to do work for him anymore.
A parent can't change the kid's mind nor himself make the kid a good adult. The kid is a person of his own anyway. A parent can only show boundaries and hope that he manages to be a mirror to the kid's behavior well enough so that the kid will learn something.
Some of this I agree with, but be careful assuming that a child's reason can function like an adult's. Giving them choices sometimes helps them take control of their lives, but sometimes (if they're already cognitively overwhelmed) being forced to choose is an unwanted stress.
Absolutely, consistency is important, and putting some thought into what lesson the child is learning from your interaction (often not what you're trying to teach them).
And the almost-always overlooked key to boundaries/rules is that the boundaries that are convenient to you are cruelly restrictive to your child, whose burning purpose in life is to do what you're doing -- reading your book, using your phone, typing on your laptop, exploring your food, putting on your makeup, etc..
This is learning; unfortunately it's inconvenient when they do physics experiments with the juice glasses, etc..
I've found it very eye-opening how much easier my toddler is once I realized that she could have access to almost everything as long as the interactions were carefully controlled and she learned rules along the way (the same rules we follow, really). Now she's far less excited by the laptop, phone, coffee mug, dinner plate, etc. because she's had a chance to explore them instead of being tormented by them put constantly just out of her reach. She has also learned not to tear book pages (we started with things headed for recycling anyway, and if she tore a page we were sad & took it away for "repair"), so she can flip through "grown-up" books safely -- another thing off the "frantically interested" list. She's most of the way to learning that she's allowed to see almost anything as long as she is careful not to drop it or mangle it.
No punishments involved -- why punish someone for something they didn't know was wrong? -- it's all just learning, and she knows that things get put away when she doesn't interact with them the "right" way, so she has lots of motivation to learn the right way.
And to play devil's advocate: I think it was Freud who traced his love of books back to a childhood anecdote where his father had this big, shiny, colorful book he despised, so he brought it to young Sigmund and they tore it to pieces together.
I agree completely. I'm basically cribbing from my reply to a different comment, but the spoiled kids aren't the ones whose parents never punished them; the spoiled kids are the ones whose parents made it look like the real boundaries didn't exist. (Replacing the toys they carelessly or intentionally broke, giving in to tantrums, etc.)
Sometimes these people also explain why their children shouldn't do something, and people see the "discipline through understanding" crowd as part of this, but saying "don't do this" while sending the message that nothing changes is completely different from saying "When you do that to people they don't want to do nice things for you anymore. We're not going to the Zoo today anymore."
All discipline is painful. Whether it's physical pain or emotional pain. I believe, based on purely anecdotal evidence, that physical pain is less harmful to a child's emotional well being.
Corporal punishment, if administered properly, is over in an instant, and once the child has been made to understand that what they did is not acceptable (and optionally why, depending on the child's age) then reconciliation between the child and the parent can take place.
Also, keep in mind that different types of discipline are appropriate for different children. I don't think it makes sense to spank a two year old, because they probably wouldn't remember why they were being spanked, but a light slap on the hand when they go to grab that priceless vase is pretty effective. I also don't spank my teen-aged son, but he has had to do his fair share of push-ups while listening to me explain to him the error of his ways.
Now, you may be one of those parents who don't discipline your child at all. More power to you, but bear in mind that if you do not discipline your child and teach them proper from improper behavior, then society WILL do it for you. And the methods society uses are probably going to be much more painful.
> I also don't spank my teen-aged son, but he has had to do his fair share of push-ups while listening to me explain to him the error of his ways.
He doesn't have to. It's not an requirement of life that he does. He's just submissive towards you.
I don't see why should it be a requirement. If he does, then why are they still a requirement? If he doesn't, why is it a good thing for him to comply? Why is he afraid? why is he submissive?
I understand you are not going to accept reality here. I know you have rationalizations to justify causing fear and pain in your "parenting". I understand it seem reasonable to you and that's not going to change. I quit.
My mother stopped using corporal punishment on us when my older brother (at 3 years old) explained that he was justified in hitting me, because hurting people was okay if they were smaller than you. He was practicing.
Children, even from when they're very little, know the difference between hurting themselves on something hot and you, their parent, intentionally causing them pain. Even if your punishments are consistent, there's no chance they will mistake you for a force of nature.
I imagine that some corporal punishment is better for a kid than letting them run wild, but that's a straw man; simply teaching them non-violently (i.e., through example) how to interact with others has a better result overall than using pain to control them. This makes sense intuitively and is well-supported by research.
I would never spank my own children, but that's a parenting choice. This societal moralizing about every single aspect of how one should raise their children is a big part of the problem described in the article.
For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse. For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness. Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated. Is everyone who was born before 1950 irretrievably fucked up? How many of them got spankings?
> This societal moralizing about every single aspect of how one should raise their children is a big part of the problem described in the article.
Well, you are trying to add unearned emphasis with "every single aspect". It's not about "every single aspect", although it is moralizing about compulsion and pain.
> For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse.
depends of the definition.
> For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness.
You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness.
> Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated
...
> Is everyone who was born before 1950 irretrievably fucked up?
I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.
Well, you are trying to add unearned emphasis with
No, it's fully earned. I am a parent. I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.
You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect...
Fair enough, you may have put substantial thought into how parenting should work from a theoretical perspective.
...unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness
Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.
I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.
Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?
If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life. Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?
> No, it's fully earned. I am a parent. I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.
I don't doubt you are an intelligent person, but it's not showing. I hope you consider it as a possible description and not an insult.
Let's go by parts:
> No, it's fully earned
it is objectively unearned. To earn the complaint of "moralizing about every single aspect" I need first to moralize about every single aspect. I moralized about one aspect.
> I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.
From me? please justify.
> Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.
Please justify how is it that hitting causing pain is not using hitting and pain to shape children.
> Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?
you changed the subject from causing pain as a value in parenting to preventing psychological damage.
> If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life.
What? you are so far from being able to think about this subject.
> Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?
I'm done. You could tell yourself I'm quitting because I don't have an answer. I just realize this subject turns brains off for very good reasons.
Hello. I am a parent. I am quite familiar with how schizophrenic you will quickly become if you try to do what everyone else tells you to do. I have put considerable thought into corporal punishment. And in my case the thought is both theoretical and practical.
While I grant that there are lots of people who are against corporal punishment as a matter of political correctness, there are also very good reasons not to use corporal punishment that have absolutely nothing to do with political correctness.
The first, and simplest, is that children model their behavior on ours. If you hit your kid, your kid will try hitting other kids. And, according to statistics, they are also more likely to hit other people in their lives, including spouses and their own kids. If you don't want to encourage that behavior, you need to not model it.
The second is that children who experience corporal punishment become more focused on avoiding the punishment than on internalizing the lesson they were supposed to learn. The classic example is the kid running out on a street looking around to be sure that mom isn't watching, and not looking for the car that is coming. Other forms of discipline have much less of this problem.
Corporal punishment also toughens the child's response to punishment. This makes them much less likely to respect alternate forms of punishment. Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.
Now you can try to solve problem 3 by supplementing others' punishment with your own corporal punishment. But only at the cost of worsening problems 1 and 2.
All of this wouldn't matter much if it weren't for the fact that other forms of discipline have been observed to be just as effective in altering children's behavior, and do not have the same drawbacks. Luckily those forms of discipline (and in many cases alternatives to discipline!) exist. And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.
If you hit your kid, your kid will try hitting other kids. And, according to statistics, they are also more likely to hit other people in their lives, including spouses and their own kids.
Your kid will almost certainly hit other kids no matter what you do. (At least if your kid is a boy, I'm not so sure about girls.) Of course you should punish it when it happens, but you shouldn't be surprised, and you certainly shouldn't despair that now your kid is going to grow up to be a wife-beater.
Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.
As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?
And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.
Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids? Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use? One so powerful that the mere threat is enough to get 'em to behave?
Your kid will almost certainly hit other kids no matter what you do. (At least if your kid is a boy, I'm not so sure about girls.) Of course you should punish it when it happens, but you shouldn't be surprised, and you certainly shouldn't despair that now your kid is going to grow up to be a wife-beater.
I am aware of that, and don't despair. But I'm still going to make common sense steps that reduce the odds of that.
As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?
According to the statistics, you cannot give credit to corporal punishment for that. There is a great deal of variability in kids, but _on average_ corporal punishment doesn't result in better behavior. (No matter how many people personally believe otherwise for themselves.)
Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids?
Diversion. Talking to. Counting. Time outs.
Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use?
This "cause and effect" argument strikes me as incredibly shallow thinking. Do you seriously believe that the only way people learn cause and effect is from spankings? Appealing to cause and effect is extremely misleading because a punishment is not a natural effect of the cause of misbehavior. This is true almost by definition - you have to create a punishment because there is no natural negative consequences to whatever they did. That's why no-one punishes kids for falling and skinning their knee - the effect proceeds naturally from the cause. So the punishment is by definition an artificial manufacturing of a negative consequence to enforce the behavior of the parent's choosing -- not only is this objectively true, every child knows this. If you ask a kid why they get punished, how many would say "That's the way the universe works, it's like gravity."? None. They all realize that it's the parent's decision and choice, and are well-aware that other parent's make different decisions.
The reason this is important is that attempting to elide the parent's choice in how and when to punish is an attempt to avoid responsibility for being an authority, with all the questions of legitimacy, responsibility, transparency, appropriateness & fairness that that entails. Saying your actions are natural consequences like gravity means you are making yourself into a tyrant who cannot be questioned. This failure to accept the responsibility of being an authority is also a mark of the permissive parent, who refuses to set any limits at all. Even though they seem like opposites, they have something in common.
Think about spanking like this: would you beat up your colleague at work because he won't implement your specifications properly? If no, why not? If yes, would he be more likely to implement your specifications properly after you have beat him up?
Would a kid be more likely to understand your arguments than your colleague? If no, why would he be more likely to respond to spanking?
Ultimately, how can it really be justified to spank a kid???
Same here, and I'm sorry that some of the commenters immediately play the "child abuse" card. Teaching your kid that there are boundaries is a good thing, or you will end up with, well, the current generation of teenagers and college-aged kids in the US, who have a whole arsenal of excuses why there aren't doing what they should be doing, a sense of entitlement the size of Montana, and zero sense of responsibility.
Beating their ass when they deserve it should be a last resort -- a clear signal that they have gone too far this time. And the fewer of those you have to hand out, the better. If your kid actually listens to reason all the time, great! But for most of them, sometimes this is necessary, and assuming your kid has a normal response to stimuli, it should work a hell of a lot better than a "timeout" (how is that a punishment anyway?).
A "timeout" (or as my mother would call it "GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW!") works as punishment for mysterious reasons. You'd think that the kid would be happy alone in his room with all those toys, but seeing an angry parent and then being left alone to think for a while seems to be reasonably painful.
I don't think the name "timeout" is good, though. It makes it sound too much like part of a game.
I agree, though, that the "timeout" shouldn't be the worst threat in a parent's disciplinary arsenal. Spankings should be given out rarely and threatened far more often.
Timeouts aren't about punishment (at least, not the way they were used in my house). I think it's difficult for people who were raised that way to see the discipline side of parenting as anything other than coercing your child to behave, but it isn't always necessary. For my parents, it was about teaching.
When I had tantrums, my parents sent me to my room. Not because having a tantrum is wrong and I needed to be punished, but because I wasn't in control of myself and needed to let my anger play out without bothering anyone. And you know what? They stopped. They got boring. They taught me that I couldn't get what I wanted that way. (Some parents give in and teach children that tantrums are an appropriate way to get what you want. I don't advocate for this at all.)
Misbehavior was "punished" by the natural consequence of the action. Being rude in a social situation = being removed from it. This how they taught me that you follow society's rules or you don't get to appreciate it. (Intentionally) breaking my stuff = losing it. I don't break things.
The spoiled kids aren't necessarily the ones whose parents never coerced them to behave; the spoiled kids are the ones whose parents hid them from the real consequences of their actions.
Saying "Mommy doesn't like it when you do that" and then driving them to the Zoo anyways is completely different from "Mommy doesn't like it when you do that and I've asked you to stop three times. I don't want to take you to the Zoo anymore; we're going home." The latter option sends the message without also making you an enemy worth rebelling against. Spanking does.
"Teaching" someone that bad behavior leads to a spanking doesn't make them understand why it's bad. It's not true of everyone, but some children (myself included) would not think "when I do this, there is pain, so I shouldn't do this.", as with touching a hot stove or an electrical outlet. They would think "when I do this, my parents hit me, and because they hit me, I don't like them, so let's think of some good ways to make them angry... hmm..." and so the arms race begins.
After reading this article I'm afraid my experience is much different. My wife and I love being parents, and life with our 8 year old son and 6 year old daughter is peaceful and full of laughter most of the time.
It wasn't always this way for me. I grew up in a home that screamed a lot, and most of my family and relatives still live with too much manufactured drama and bad life choices. After I converted to Christianity at the age of 20, I spent the next decade "working out my salvation" before I met and married my wife. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary next week, and I can honestly say my life is fantastic.
I credit a lot of why I've managed to pull off what I have to this book http://amzn.to/9zILXE
My wife and I are big fans of that book as well. We have also forced our older children (13, 11) to read the teen version. Useful advice whether you're a Christian or not.
As someone who just moved from New York to Minneapolis (15 years in NYC, last year with a newborn) I want to add that a LOT of the unhappiness has to do with the city. It is truly hard to raise a child there for reasons too numerous to discuss here. The writers didn't have to go to Scandinavia for examples of happy parents, they just had to get out of the tri-state area.
This considering a kid to be a project seems to have a lot to do with this. All these ideas of how a kid has to be (and also the perfect family with the perfect family home and the perfect family car). I see it the other way round. I am extremely curious to see what kind of person my kid will turn out to be. Granted, there might be a pang of regret in case he wouldn't show any interest in mathematics or science at all, but I don't see myself fighting over it. And I hated school myself, so honestly, in school vs kid, I would side with the kid.
I have a 3.3 year old and a 3.5 week old. The trick to not being too pissed off at a 3 year old is to remember that he is just fucking three years old. He isn't going to listen to everything you say. Most things you tell your kid are about long term socialization that he is certain to learn, so don't stress about it.
You don't stress about it, but you do enforce it. You need to get good at not caring about crying. Crying is the sound of weakness leaving their bodies :)
Having a kid is extremely satisfying. I can't imagine I'd be happier without mine. If you average out these opinions across most of society, the amount of information relevant to me approaches nil. So don't not have kids because of some statistic with happiness research.
The article has these little asides describing a videotaped interaction between a mother and her son...
“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.
“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”
Not that I haven’t been guilty of the same misparenting myself, but.... If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness.
>If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness.
Completely agree. No small wonder parents who feel obligated to negotiate every little thing with their children are so burned out. Kids need nurturing and honest attention, but they'll turn into little controlling tyrants if you let them.
What epochwolf said: turn the TV off and, if necessary, pick up the child and take him out of the room.
A child with the TV in front of him, being asked to do his homework, is not interested in a reasonable discussion of the house rules; he’s interested in stalling. (Also, if he sees this as a power struggle with Mom, he will not want to surrender.) If his stalling tactic is effective, then you not only extend the period of pointless and frustrating argument in this one instance, but you reinforce, in the kid’s mind, the idea that “turn off the TV” is just background noise that can be ignored with no serious consequences.
I think the parents in this article need to grow up. If you have so little emotional maturity that your kid's tantrum makes you upset you have a problem. They are the children, you are the adult. Act like one.
I have two kids, 3 and 6. My 3 year old is at a stage where she throws epic tantrums, mostly when she is tired but this heat wave we are in on the east coast doesn't help. When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I don't feel bad as a parent that she is having a tantrum, she doesn't have the emotional control yet. She will - my 6 year old went through the same thing and when the 3 year old starts up my 6 year old now rolls her eyes and smiles.
>When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try".
I have a friend who has 2 girls, he did this sort of playful taunting with them and it had similar effects to yours.
This sort of thing has not worked at all with my eldest (and we're just entering the tantrum zone with the youngest, hold tight!) who would simply do worse, smashing, hitting, kicking, biting in response. When they are damaging property and hurting people then IMO intervention is required.
Yes, standing back and letting him blow off some steam has helped on occasions but has not been half as effective as for my friend's girls.
Not all kids are the same.
My lad brought me to tears once because he was hurting himself having a tantrum and couldn't be calmed. I don't consider my response childish, but I'm not an objective observer.
What they left dangling were the serene Namibian parents. It just seems less painful there and within our own past as well. Maybe the "slavishly respect your childrens' thoughts and wants" was a big mistake. You know, phrases like, "Children should be seen and not heard" and "Children should speak when spoken to" used to be commonplace.
Maybe there's hope for modern rich societies. I've read that in the French culture decisions that are made as much or more for the benefit of the parents. The family goes on vacations that the parents are interested in, enjoying art museums, sophisticated cities, etc, instead of what the kids want: a theme park in the suburbs. Maybe this derives from an attitude that children are born barbarians, that their natural tastes and desires are stupid, and they need to have civilization pounded into them in order. Whereas we in the Anglo-Saxon derived culture put more value on the natural impulses of children.
Have only been a HN reader for a short time (though I've been linked from here quite a few times), so please pardon my pollution of this story to ask a question: Does this belong on Hacker News?
Is Hacker News turning into Reddit (minus the convenience of subreddits)? I visit both because HN was always just solid tech links and news, but several completely non-hacker stories (outside of the fact that we are humans, might have families, may see someone possibly drown, and might be a white ninja) have made the top in the past couple of days.
I think for young professionals trying to figure out a balance between work, entrepreneurship, career, children and relationships, this article is extremely valuable. There's a lot of big decisions being made in a hacker's life.
HN has always only intended to fulfill one aspect of a Hacker's life. It never purported to offer cooking advice, car buying information, or lifestyle tips. It was about NoSQL versus SQL, language trends, Lisp, functional programming, and on and on. If it generalizes it becomes reddit, and soon a "Real Hacker News" will take over on the tech side while this place features pictures of cats and fictitious Facebook exchanges.
But yes, maybe "Young Working White Collar Adult" would be a good site.
Once in a long while? Yes, absolutely. I greatly enjoy and appreciate seeing parenting insight from other like-minded people on this site, and find the discussion very interesting. I didn't read the article itself, but I often don't, as the discussions here are often more interesting than the articles linked to.
I wouldn't want to see this every day / week / month, but I'm happy to have seen it this time.
Right now at least 10% of the front page are Reddit/Digg-style stories. As interesting as Caucasian ninjas and 4-time lottery winners are, I don't think it helps the cause.
Meh. I'll bravely endure the downvotes and say that it isn't a noob illusion. It's reality. It is the arc that almost every site follows when the users start thinking "people here are interested in non-specific stuff as well!"
Reddit started as a HN. It became a general site. The programming subreddit has become a grunty joke. Slashdot started as a differently managed HN. It has become a joke. Digg....okay, forget about Digg.
HN is becoming Reddit. As short as 6 months ago I could say that every day I visited HN I learned something new and interesting in this industry. I can't remember a single thing new or interesting over the past two weeks, and increasingly it is becoming a place for people to avoid work.
I'd say that becoming a parent will definitely come between you and your idea of happiness. You'll have to re-evaluate your relationship to happiness and satisfaction (and sleep and pain) and that in itself is difficult and not fun.
In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.
In my experience, parenthood is often challenging because we are given so little good information in advance concerning what is actually challenging about parenting.
When we talk about the difficulties of parenthood, we normally talk about sleepless nights and tantrums and expense. We do this, I think, because these are safe topics. They allow us to have ritualized conversations about parenthood. We know what we are supposed to say and we say those things, even though we often don't think they're true or important.
But the real crisis isn't something we talk about. Raising children requires a huge commitment of time and energy--time and energy we can no longer give to ourselves or our spouse. And while almost all new parents try to keep their pre-baby lives intact for some period of time, eventually the futility becomes so obvious that they relent and cull many activities out of their lives to make space for the baby. The real crisis is one of identity. We fear that by cutting so many of the things we care(d) about out of our lives, we risk not being ourselves anymore. Am I the same person now? Is my wife the same? We don't talk about these questions because many of us don't like the answers.
For me personally, any such fears were unwarranted. I love my new life. Having children improved an already wonderful marriage--my wife and I are now an unstoppable team. My toddler has become one of my best friends. The infant just looks like a new buddy in waiting. But I'm a fundamentally happy person. I suspect it's like winning the lottery. If you're happy beforehand, you'll be happy afterward; if you're unhappy beforehand, you'll be unhappy afterward.
There is so much talk in this article about how having a child does not affect your happiness positively, and the cited examples range from dealing with the financial burden to the psychological distress of trying to control a misbehaving kid.
The author even notes with surprise that "housework" ranked above parenting on the list of things that made women happy in a Texan study several years ago. I bet video games are more fun, too.
But nowhere do I see a comparison between how it feels to look back on your life after raising a kid for 18 years, and how it feels to look back on your life after playing Xbox for 18 years.
We're all hedonists; the only difference is who has the patience to do what makes them joyful tomorrow instead of what gives them chuckles today.
Well, as a parent who has to split time between child rearing (2.5 and .5 years old) and writing software, I can tell you that most of this article is true.
The problems are many: for me the two main problems was about 17 years of independent life and good times funded by good wages. Travelling, sports, parties, all-night coding sessions. All of these have been put into the too-hard basket.
The second main problem is the idealised view of parenting fed to us through movies, TV shows and advertising. You're meant to enjoy the bonding times, but running the bath for the 800th time to bathe a wriggling toddler is tedium no matter which way you slice it, and cleaning up poo for the thousandth time is horrid work you wouldn't wish on anyone.
The keys to success I think are a rock-solid partnership going into the child raising, family support available, and lack of other stresses like housing or income or illness. When your tired you just can't handle things in the same way, and with young children in the house, you're going to be tired as you battle to maintain your adult habits of staying up late while children take up your waking hours.
Once you've done it, there's no going back, so you have to work on finding a new level of happiness and honestly say goodbye to your old lifestyle for a while. Friends will slip away, interests will be put on hold, careers might slide for a few years, your house will be messy and ruined. That's the choice you've made, might as well find new ways of getting joy.
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 189 ms ] threadhttp://nymag.com/print/?/news/features/67024/
Kids demand you. Simple things like watching them playing is huge for them. If you try to understand what they're saying (already at a few months old), you'll be surprised to find it pretty cogent and clear. For example, in the article, the little boy was literally hitting his mother over the head to get her attention. But if you're not listening, you just get upset.
I didn't become parent because I think it will selfishly make me happier. I became a parent because I felt I would have something to offer a child and I wanted to give expression to that.
If anything I learned from the article it's these parents are wimps. The kid almost takes the father's eye out and the strongest punishment is a timeout?! The mother has to ask her son to do his homework?! I guess my family is old school, but throwing anything at my mom would have my ass on ice. And if she has to ask twice, that computer would be gone.
This is an interesting point. Do you not feel that the expression of this desire will make you happier? Did you adopt your child? If not, then how is the creating of a human life in order for you to fulfill your desire to give what you have to offer to a child anything but selfish? Certainly there were kids that existed before that could have benefitted from your gifts. I don't mean to say you should not have had kids for this reason. I think anyone who desires to have a kid and has the means should do so but I don't see anything different in your desire than that of someone who simply wants kids.
Life isn't all rainbows and unicorns. Speaking as a member of GenX, our lives are so damn easy most of the time, when we run into problems, we don't know how to handle it. However, we adjust.
I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money. Wars, the great depression, death of a child, she went through it all. And they did hard physical labor every day.
The thing is we adjust, it's hard at first, but we persevere.
When you watch your kid doing something you taught him, that's just not a feeling you get from purchasing a new iPad. When you sit in structure you built or use a product you built you'll know the feeling. It's hard to explain but in the end, it's worth it.
My wife and I are lucky, in a way. She's Italian. Like, born Italian, speaks Italian, lives Italian. Okay, she lives in Montreal, but damnit, call her a Frenchy and she'll punch me hard enough in that spot on the arm that she knows will get a reaction.
Anyways, we live next door to her great-grandmother (nona), and below her Mother and Father. I swear, her sisters are over often enough that it's normal. Her older sister lived at home till she was 25/26 and got married. Only then did she move out. My wife did the same thing. For them, their entire culture, this is normal. Lawyers living at home with their parents, not batting an eye. This is normal.
Now, I'm American. 18, and I'm out the house, fending for myself. Seeing my cousins was something I did every few years (being a military brat didn't help, neither did parents getting a divorce).
My wife sees her cousins all the time. Weekly. Not all the cousins, but often enough that again, it's normal. It's not some super special event.
What's all this getting to? There is a point, I promise.
Anyways, we had our first son in 2008, and our second is due the end of the month, beginning of August (yay!). Raising our son has been a joy. Ignoring the fact that he is a very laid back and very happy child, having parents/grand parent next door and upstairs, and a very close knit family always present meant raising him wasn't difficult. Couple this with the fact that Quebec hands you a years paid maternity (if you are working, of course), and it's pretty smooth sailing. We could still go out occasionally, assured that the grandparents would take good care of our child.
If we assistance, we literally knocked on the wall, and they'd come over.
Oh, we did our part. We didn't rely on them. And they took advantage, too. When they needed to go to the market, my wife was able to take them instead of having to take the bus or walk. All very practical.
So, you ask a good question: > I just can't imagine how grandma raised 9 kids with no ER or acute care and little money.
And I give you an answer: Family.
It's odd. My family loved me, they cared for me, but family to me before I met my wife was immediate. I didn't see grandparents but maybe one a year on Christmas or Thanksgiving. I grew up away from cousins, and at 18, expected to have to go out on my own.
My family wasn't bad. But in my wife's family, I fully realize how other cultures see family.
I look at my brother, living in the US, married, with a second child on the way. I won't go into to many details, but they are struggling, but they get very little support from family. They live almost 2 hours from my father, but rarely see him (compared to how often I see my wives family members), and they get little help from his wives family.
This probably comes from the American cultural of independence. You make it or break it on your own skill, and asking or getting help is seen as a weakness. Children are thrown to the wolves at 18 and expected to thrive. Some do. Many don't.
My son is happy. He makes his parents happy. He's constantly surrounded by people that love him. Parenting is a joy, and we are in a good place. Our biggest worries are silly when we think about them (seriously, we worry about the stupidest things, and laugh about them when we realize what we are worrying about).
I'm not religious, but that doesn't mean I can't feel blessed.
The best way to look at the situation is to remember that people have been having babies for thousands of years under much more difficult situations.
Just love the child. Everything else comes naturally.
Edit: Oh, and, of course, Congratulations! =)
I disagree.
I agree with your encouraging sentiment but I don't agree that simply loving your child is enough - parenting doesn't come naturally to those who haven't grown up around it. Most people nowadays appear to only have their parents model of parenting to rely on and this appears to lead them to polarise away from how their parents treated them.
Watched Charlie and the Chocolate Factory with my lad J the other day wherein the girl Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her and so give her everything she asks for.
I'm not going to say that you need a degree in Ed-Psych or anything either ...
When you say "it's rather easy" that sends up a few flags for me. Perhaps you can answer this one for me: my (now nearly 5yo) boy has enjoyed learning chess with me and on the whole can move the pieces around and make some trade-off decisions under close instruction, he messed up the board at our last game (after a long chess haitus) because he was losing and then starting flinging stuff around; in short he was upset not to win and said he wouldn't play again. Should I encourage him to play or forget the game (that I know he enjoys and has been nice to play together). If I get him to play should I let him win?
My youngest is now 15mo and is getting fussy about his breakfast food, should I give in and give him what he'll eat at the risk of limiting his palette and enjoyment of a variety of foods or should I force feed him (and starve him if he won't eat it)?
OT now, long post, sorry.
TL;DR I don't think it's easy nor that it all comes naturally.
It seems that the palettes of people continuously evolves, so even if he devours ice cream and doritos now, he may end up being the food writer for the Times when he grows up.
The key seems to be to present good foods to him. Let him see you eat it. But have something he'll eat too that you can bring out if he doesn't eat. It's more important for his development to eat any food, and humans are ridiculously resiliant to diets lacking in diversity (just use a multivitamin for deficiencies in key vitamins and minerals). Probably the only thing to watch out for is a LOT of sodium. But I'd be less concerned about things like fat and sugars than I would be for an adult.
I swear, the kid eats better then I do. He get's fresh pasta sauce all the time. >_<
I confess it was a slightly made up problem intended to elucidate the point. He tends to have rice snaps for brecky with some fruit but his diet the rest of the time is quite varied. He is less accepting of new foods than his brother was.
That's not love. That's the point Roald Dahl is making (IMHO). The only family in the story that really knows and understands what love is, is Charlies' family. He is the richest boy in the world, because he has a family that truly loves him. Even though they are financially poor.
Love isn't about giving people what they ask for, it's about giving them what is best for them in the long run.
I don't buy my kids toys every time they ask for them. Not because I don't love them, but because I don't want them to take money for granted, and I want them to have a good life balance - because I do love them.
I agree it's not all easy, but I think a lot of it does come naturally if you're in the right mindset to let it come naturally. The most important things IMHO are to be relaxed, confident, and make sure you give the baby as much time as you can etc. babies and kids pick up so much on parents that are uptight. Relaxed parents = relaxed kids.
>> "Should I encourage him to play or forget the game (that I know he enjoys and has been nice to play together). If I get him to play should I let him win?"
I'd encourage him to play again and let him win a couple. If he's a bad winner (Gloating, taunting, saying you're rubbish etc), beat him brutally the next game. I remember my oldest had a year or so when he absolutely hated losing and didn't like playing games with me unless he won. He grew out of it though.
...but the more I learn, the more I find that my intuition has been often wrong on "what's best for them in the long run". Usually just in subtle ways, but sometimes in larger ones.
Being a relaxed parent is good advice, though that was more how I was a good uncle (but I'm learning to make adjustments to become a good parent).
It's super-important to understand that kids are not little adults, even once they start talking and can seem that way. So I don't agree with your game advice (I don't think the lesson you're teaching will be the one the child learns), but you're probably quite right that they'll grow out of it anyway. :)
And I'll stop there, because my opinions are based on tons of reading & talking with parents, but only about a year of being a parent myself so far....
I must admit I didn't read anything really to do with parenting before becoming a parent. It seems like there are so many different variables, every child is totally different, that reading books might even spoil things, and you might start looking to books for solutions rather than your intuition. (This might just be my personality - I don't like reading programming books either that teach specific programming style etc). But then I haven't read books on relationships either, but think I do ok there (My wife hasn't divorced me yet ;) ).
I can only say what I think worked with my Son when he did similar things playing games. But then I can't be sure if he 'learnt the lesson', or if he just grew out of it naturally. Seems like trying to play at around their level is best, although that's sometimes pretty hard :) If I had identical twins at least I'd be able to do proper A/B testing! ;)
I sat in a parents' workshop that covered how to handle the relatively-common "disaster" experience where a child throws a tantrum in the grocery store because the parent won't give them the toy or candy they wanted.
I was already opposed to any physical punishment (and I guess there's the option of leaving your cart and taking them out to the car to wait it out), and obviously giving in is bad because it teaches the kid that screaming in public works. But the other parents had tons of things I hadn't thought of, like:
respond with sympathy for the child's frustration -- they really want something they can't have -- and instead of being angry give them (within reason) space & time to express it
before the tantrum, respond to the demand by talking to the child about all the things you'd like to get, but can't
before even entering the store, have established & reasonable rules about what the child can pick out for themselves, i.e., one thing, under X euros, can't be candy if last trip they got candy
There were others as well that I forget now.. it was all food for thought, though.
To a certain extent though we get to 'brute-force' a solution. After the 20th tantrum, and the 20th different thing we try, we'll probably find something that works for that particular child. Of course it'll likely be completely different for the next child etc :) but that's half the fun!
And the same child the following month ;0)
You would, because you are taking things far to seriously.
Of course loving a child is just not enough. There are a monumental number of other things that need doing. There are mountains of books. A small post on HN isn't going to be the definitive "How to raise your child" post. It was merely a response to a person who is preparing to have his first child.
> Veruca Salt is spoiled by her parents who simply love her
No, they don't.
> When you say "it's rather easy" that sends up a few flags for me.
You are making this much more than it is.
Being a parent is easy. That doesn't mean it doesn't have it's challenges. That doesn't mean you can't mess up. That doesn't mean some days you can't help but pull your hair out.
Being easy doesn't mean can't be challenging.
It's easy, because it's worth it. It's easy, because even when it's difficult, it's rewarding. It's easy, because I love being a father to my son.
You ask me two questions of how I would handle things, as if their was a definitive right answer and everything else is 100% wrong. I know enough to know that their is no right or wrong answer. I can only say what I've done for my child when things arose, and I've learned from them as much as he has.
I try to remember to tell my lads that last bit every day - but I think what you're really saying is it's damn hard but that even if it were to make demands of you that were impossible to fulfil you'd still keep doing it because you love your son.
Thanks for your comment.
And with respect to chess, why would you encourage him to forget the game???
Letting him win - maybe there is a better way, like correcting his moves so that he really wins? I only played with a guy who did that once when I was a child, and I was really impressed. Or instead of playing games, work on chess problems together (nobody wins or loses)? Or play together against opponents on the internet?
I can imagine it is difficult to find the right way to handle it right, but then again, maybe to play or not to play chess is not the most important matter in the world either? If you screw that up, it seems likely your kid would still find other things to get interested in.
Luckily my wife & I both work from home (so we're both always around to help each other), AND we have some very supportive neighbors & friends here, but it's been quite difficult at times. Here's a huge tip: get a large freezer (the type you put in the basement) and fill it with food like curries (to eat w/ rice) or pasta sauces, soups, etc. -- things that can be easily thawed and made into lunch/dinner with minimal effort & shopping required.
Another tip: prepare yourself to be a parent. Do not assume that it will come naturally, because while some parts do, most really don't, and in the modern world there is a huge array of choices you have to make that require research and thoughtful consideration -- and once the baby arrives you'll find that difficult.
What will actually work with your baby varies on the baby, but you should know a lot about breast-feeding (startling difficult to get started, even with help & preparation), formula (if breast-feeding is impossible -- and it might be for medical reasons -- you should know how formula works), co-sleeping and/or ways to help teach your newborn to sleep alone (not letting them "cry it out", for one), swaddling (amazing but not suited to every baby), ways to carry them & help with gas pains, how to change/clean this tiny fragile thing, etc.. Never mind all of the things you should know about the delivery -- how to avoid getting a default c-section if the labor is slow, etc..
It's worth studying your ass off, really.
Human beings have evolved to have remarkably helpless babies that need educated care because we are capable of teaching each other how to handle that care -- normally, you'd have your entire extended family around you to teach you how to do everything. If you don't -- we didn't -- make damned sure you learn how from other sources (and have help available for when you need it!).
I love having our daughter here. The whole experience blows my mind sometimes, and she's unreasonably cute -- check this out http://robwhelan.com/photos/galleries/12-month_12/img_1153.j... -- but it IS difficult and there's a lot of know-how required particularly if you might not want to just go to the baby store and buy all of the stuff the salesperson says you'll need (hint: your baby will be happier without most of it).
We moved here because of my job, which I love, but while raising our two children, I sorely miss the support structure that an expanded family provides. I also grew up in a similar situation, little to no family living in the same city, but my parents had many, many friends in the neighbourhood within walking distance. They might as well have been family.
Now, where I am now, I find it hard to relate to my neighbours (maybe it's me, maybe it's them, I don't know). I don't think I'll ever be able to integrate into the community like my parents did, and we don't have family nearby that we can rely upon on a moments notice.
Would I trade my current job for somewhere closer to family? That's a difficulty choice to make for me, as there's too many unknowns. I wish it were an easy one.
Here's another one: Community. Where I was raised, Aunt and Mama (as in Granny) used to be flexible titles for whoever was around to help take care of you. Neighbours were often as good as extended family members.
I thought having kids would be cool. Turned out to be awesomely cool beyond compare. They are, and always will be the things I am most proud of. Pretty much every day my kids do stuff that brings me happiness. Yeah I guess sometimes it's hard work, but so is everything :/ If you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain...
I'd be totally and utterly lost without my kids (literally sometimes).
It really is indescribable and not for the faint of heart or the selfish. The beautiful thing about parenting is that it shows you who you really are (not who you think you are), and gives you chances every day to grow.
It makes you see what really matters in life, assuming you actually come to this realization. I've seen plenty of people not realize this and fight to keep their identity, their original idea of what they wanted for themselves while also trying to be a parent. That doesn't work.
Part of parenting is a certain amount of ego destruction. You have to go through that if you want to genuinely care for another human being.
This is what makes the experience of parenting so great. It is a kind of Zen experience of making yourself better by destroying your concept of self (and putting another 'self' first more than your own self would like).
The whole "does it make my life happier" is such a shallow consumer thing.
When I was younger I led an interesting life in many ways but I have never had the intensity of experience I have with and about my children. Another really surprising thing was finding out how much I connect back with society - I want to be part of society and change it and make it better - I get what it is for.
Children are not a lifestyle accessory and as the poster above says they push you into all sorts of aspects of your self in all sorts of interesting ways.
The mixture of a startup and three small children has certainly been entertaining and there have been times when I am so exhausted I have nothing else to give but then to go and do something simple - like bathing the children or doing something in the garden with them and it makes it all worth while.
As I frequently find myself telling my children: Things in life that aren't challenging aren't worth while (possibly hyperbole but you get my point)
Proper happiness comes from deeper things and while this probably isn't the place to go into it I would argue that its not quite what you should be aiming for - depth of experience and quality of experience are better things to be aiming for to my mind.
'When I mention this to Daniel Gilbert, he hardly disputes that meaning is important. But he does wonder how prominently it should figure into people’s decisions to have kids. “When you pause to think what children mean to you, of course they make you feel good,” he says. “The problem is, 95 percent of the time, you’re not thinking about what they mean to you. You’re thinking that you have to take them to piano lessons. So you have to think about which kind of happiness you’ll be consuming most often. Do you want to maximize the one you experience almost all the time”—moment-to-moment happiness—“or the one you experience rarely?”'
I mean, why let a little thing like "meaning" affect the decisions you make in life, right?
We all know how well focusing on immediate pleasure works in areas such as dieting, exercise, finance, career, etc. Why not apply the same logic to having kids, right?
I love being a dad. I love that my daughter looks up to me and wants to spend time with me. It's tough sometimes but kids are filled with so much love they more than make up for it. They're also inspiring to be around. Their attitude towards life is fun and refreshing.
I invest heavily in my daughter and will invest heavily in our next child as well. By that I mean spending a lot of time with them. I work at home most nights but only after my daughter is in bed and my wife and I have some time to hang out.
What I have seen is that some people just aren't interested in being parents and are not entirely sure how they got there. Life is hard sometimes even when you have it easy like I do but even on a hard day being a parent is still great.
This is an important note. Despite the "family values" posturing of the American right wing, the "socialist" Europeans are actually far more pro-family than the conservatives who dominate (even now, having a sizeable minority of the Democratic party) in American politics.
The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.
No reason it has to be the mother though. And the actual family values line is in conflict with Republican views on work. This conflict is partly historic (Protestant work ethic), but partly an interesting indictment of the hypocrisy of the religious rights' support for the Republican party. Their focus on only a few moral issues does a great disservice to the actual morality of the nation. They say mothers should stay home, but support a party who's economic policies make that impossible.
Everything has consequences elsewhere. Make paid maternity/paternity leave compulsory and you make it riskier for employers to hire. So you increase the probability that your father gets three months off after you're born, but you also increase the probability that your father is a long-term unemployed bozo living in a housing project on the outskirts of Paris.
The family values line of "mothers should stay at home" espoused by Pat Robertson et al. probably is better than both parents working, however much childcare you can afford.
I agree.
No reason it has to be the mother though.
It doesn't have to be, but this seems to be the natural way things go if left to their own devices. Most human societies have the other taking on the vast majority of childcare duties -- it seems to be part of the way our minds are put together that mothers want to do a lot more childcare than fathers do.
Employers wouldn't hire more than they need anyway. Even if that was the case, the flip side would be job insecurity. You can theorize all you want about these tradeoffs, but the experience shows that these measures do work in Europe, and more so in Scandinavian countries. Never have I seen so many child carts as in Iceland, and despite the crash their unemployment is 8% and going down.
Breastfeeding.
I don't lactate.
Now that our youngest is >1yo (as with his elder brother) then we're back to sharing labour and child care + chores 50-50 (in a way that's probably not open to most people). We've chosen this lifestyle and are below the official poverty line in our country because of it.
However, the little one is still not completely weaned and so needs contact with his mother at times during normal working hours.
Yes it's possible to pump and bottle-feed but breastfeeding is more than just nourishment.
Here in France the approach is well-funded child care that's available for very young babies -- this is a boon to mothers maintaining their careers, but it's certainly bad for breast-feeding more than a couple of months.
I don't think the type-A helicopter parents who insist on their children matriculating to elite pre-schools/boarding schools/colleges are that way because they expect their child to be the next Mozart. Obviously, there are some parents like that, but they exist in every society. Most of the parents who drive their children so relentlessly to be overachievers are that way because they realize what happens, in this country, to those who fall off of the elite track.
I get the impression that children were much better-behaved in the old days, when they knew acting up would get them belted.
And by showing the boundaries I don't mean canonically forbidding all nice things and always being "the bad guy". Limits and boundaries have a bad rap in some literature.
The concept of boundaries is universal: boundaries don't enforce anyone to choose one option over another: they just enforce one to choose. Showing the kid his boundaries is not an easy undertaking but on the other hand it is something we all do to each other everyday. At work, at home, with friends, with kids.
By letting one make choices—which is enforced by setting and keeping the boundaries—allows him to gradually learn about himself, and eventually grow to change himself.
Boundaries change as a person grows: first, with a toddler it might be about not gaining anything by hitting or throwing things, not merely being forbidden or removed from throwing things around. Later it might be about deferred gratification: if the child chooses to have everything right away now and the boundaries stick, thus enforcing proper consequences of the kids choice, he will gradually learn that in the long run he gets less by having everything immediately. In adulthood, showing boundaries might be about saying no to someone known to ask around for favours, rarely returning them. The refusal will force him to consider his options: he must either do this or that but no longer both, as he can't get other people to do work for him anymore.
A parent can't change the kid's mind nor himself make the kid a good adult. The kid is a person of his own anyway. A parent can only show boundaries and hope that he manages to be a mirror to the kid's behavior well enough so that the kid will learn something.
Absolutely, consistency is important, and putting some thought into what lesson the child is learning from your interaction (often not what you're trying to teach them).
And the almost-always overlooked key to boundaries/rules is that the boundaries that are convenient to you are cruelly restrictive to your child, whose burning purpose in life is to do what you're doing -- reading your book, using your phone, typing on your laptop, exploring your food, putting on your makeup, etc..
This is learning; unfortunately it's inconvenient when they do physics experiments with the juice glasses, etc..
I've found it very eye-opening how much easier my toddler is once I realized that she could have access to almost everything as long as the interactions were carefully controlled and she learned rules along the way (the same rules we follow, really). Now she's far less excited by the laptop, phone, coffee mug, dinner plate, etc. because she's had a chance to explore them instead of being tormented by them put constantly just out of her reach. She has also learned not to tear book pages (we started with things headed for recycling anyway, and if she tore a page we were sad & took it away for "repair"), so she can flip through "grown-up" books safely -- another thing off the "frantically interested" list. She's most of the way to learning that she's allowed to see almost anything as long as she is careful not to drop it or mangle it.
No punishments involved -- why punish someone for something they didn't know was wrong? -- it's all just learning, and she knows that things get put away when she doesn't interact with them the "right" way, so she has lots of motivation to learn the right way.
Sometimes these people also explain why their children shouldn't do something, and people see the "discipline through understanding" crowd as part of this, but saying "don't do this" while sending the message that nothing changes is completely different from saying "When you do that to people they don't want to do nice things for you anymore. We're not going to the Zoo today anymore."
I'm sorry you where abused.
There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse.
I don't to see how is this an argument. I'm not objecting the notion that people can learn to avoid what causes pain.
How is it that what you wrote makes sense and supports your case? (that controlling children through pain is good parenting).
> There is a difference between corporal punishment/discipline and abuse.
You are right. Abuse is just abuse, and corporal punishment is abuse with the propose of shaping someone's behaviour. There is a difference.
I would agree that someone who does "corporal punishment" can have good intentions.
Corporal punishment, if administered properly, is over in an instant, and once the child has been made to understand that what they did is not acceptable (and optionally why, depending on the child's age) then reconciliation between the child and the parent can take place.
Also, keep in mind that different types of discipline are appropriate for different children. I don't think it makes sense to spank a two year old, because they probably wouldn't remember why they were being spanked, but a light slap on the hand when they go to grab that priceless vase is pretty effective. I also don't spank my teen-aged son, but he has had to do his fair share of push-ups while listening to me explain to him the error of his ways.
Now, you may be one of those parents who don't discipline your child at all. More power to you, but bear in mind that if you do not discipline your child and teach them proper from improper behavior, then society WILL do it for you. And the methods society uses are probably going to be much more painful.
He doesn't have to. It's not an requirement of life that he does. He's just submissive towards you.
I don't see why should it be a requirement. If he does, then why are they still a requirement? If he doesn't, why is it a good thing for him to comply? Why is he afraid? why is he submissive?
I understand you are not going to accept reality here. I know you have rationalizations to justify causing fear and pain in your "parenting". I understand it seem reasonable to you and that's not going to change. I quit.
Children, even from when they're very little, know the difference between hurting themselves on something hot and you, their parent, intentionally causing them pain. Even if your punishments are consistent, there's no chance they will mistake you for a force of nature.
I imagine that some corporal punishment is better for a kid than letting them run wild, but that's a straw man; simply teaching them non-violently (i.e., through example) how to interact with others has a better result overall than using pain to control them. This makes sense intuitively and is well-supported by research.
For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse. For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness. Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated. Is everyone who was born before 1950 irretrievably fucked up? How many of them got spankings?
Well, you are trying to add unearned emphasis with "every single aspect". It's not about "every single aspect", although it is moralizing about compulsion and pain.
> For the record, spanking is not necessarily abuse.
depends of the definition.
> For you to cite unequivocably that it is is pure unthinking political correctness.
You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness.
> Parenting is complicated, psychology is complicated
...
> Is everyone who was born before 1950 irretrievably fucked up?
I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.
No, it's fully earned. I am a parent. I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.
You don't know how much though I have put into the subject and calling it political correctness is incorrect...
Fair enough, you may have put substantial thought into how parenting should work from a theoretical perspective.
...unless careing about whether or not people use pain and fear to shape children is just political correctness
Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.
I don't know if "irretrievably", but I think almost everyone is psychologically damaged in some way or another.
Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?
If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life. Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?
I don't doubt you are an intelligent person, but it's not showing. I hope you consider it as a possible description and not an insult.
Let's go by parts:
> No, it's fully earned
it is objectively unearned. To earn the complaint of "moralizing about every single aspect" I need first to moralize about every single aspect. I moralized about one aspect.
> I have witnessed first hand the moralizing, judgement and mutually contradictory universal expectations that random people have about how childrearing should be done.
From me? please justify.
> Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.
Please justify how is it that hitting causing pain is not using hitting and pain to shape children.
> Which raises the question, is your duty as a parent to prevent any and all psychological damage to your child?
you changed the subject from causing pain as a value in parenting to preventing psychological damage.
> If the goal is to minimize suffering, then is it better to indulge your child and raise an entitled spoiled individual that will never be satisfied for the rest of their life.
What? you are so far from being able to think about this subject.
> Or is it better to "use fear" (the fear of consequences, whatever they may be) to raise a child that has some notion of negative cause and effect?
I'm done. You could tell yourself I'm quitting because I don't have an answer. I just realize this subject turns brains off for very good reasons.
Condescension aside, perhaps bobbin is simply familiar with some of the scientific literature on the subject, such as: http://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2002/06/spanking.aspx
> Reframing the debate in terms so negative that anyone would appear insane to disagree with them is classic political correctness.
This is only true if the attempt at reframing is disingenuous. What else is corporal punishment but the application of pain in order to elicit fear?
> is it better to indulge your child...Or is it better to "use fear"
Not hitting a kid is not the same as indulging them. One can be among the strictest of parents without laying a hand on a child.
While I grant that there are lots of people who are against corporal punishment as a matter of political correctness, there are also very good reasons not to use corporal punishment that have absolutely nothing to do with political correctness.
The first, and simplest, is that children model their behavior on ours. If you hit your kid, your kid will try hitting other kids. And, according to statistics, they are also more likely to hit other people in their lives, including spouses and their own kids. If you don't want to encourage that behavior, you need to not model it.
The second is that children who experience corporal punishment become more focused on avoiding the punishment than on internalizing the lesson they were supposed to learn. The classic example is the kid running out on a street looking around to be sure that mom isn't watching, and not looking for the car that is coming. Other forms of discipline have much less of this problem.
Corporal punishment also toughens the child's response to punishment. This makes them much less likely to respect alternate forms of punishment. Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.
Now you can try to solve problem 3 by supplementing others' punishment with your own corporal punishment. But only at the cost of worsening problems 1 and 2.
All of this wouldn't matter much if it weren't for the fact that other forms of discipline have been observed to be just as effective in altering children's behavior, and do not have the same drawbacks. Luckily those forms of discipline (and in many cases alternatives to discipline!) exist. And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.
Your kid will almost certainly hit other kids no matter what you do. (At least if your kid is a boy, I'm not so sure about girls.) Of course you should punish it when it happens, but you shouldn't be surprised, and you certainly shouldn't despair that now your kid is going to grow up to be a wife-beater.
Which makes them less likely to respect attempts at discipline in other child care settings, such as detentions at school.
As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?
And therefore there is no good reason to use corporal punishment.
Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids? Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use? One so powerful that the mere threat is enough to get 'em to behave?
I am aware of that, and don't despair. But I'm still going to make common sense steps that reduce the odds of that.
As it turns out, by the time I went to school I was well-behaved enough that I never got detention. I can't give all the credit to corporal punishment for that one... or can I?
According to the statistics, you cannot give credit to corporal punishment for that. There is a great deal of variability in kids, but _on average_ corporal punishment doesn't result in better behavior. (No matter how many people personally believe otherwise for themselves.)
Out of curiosity, what punishments do you give to your kids?
Diversion. Talking to. Counting. Time outs.
Do you have a "reserve" punishment saved up that you've never had to use?
Skipping the regular Friday treat.
The reason this is important is that attempting to elide the parent's choice in how and when to punish is an attempt to avoid responsibility for being an authority, with all the questions of legitimacy, responsibility, transparency, appropriateness & fairness that that entails. Saying your actions are natural consequences like gravity means you are making yourself into a tyrant who cannot be questioned. This failure to accept the responsibility of being an authority is also a mark of the permissive parent, who refuses to set any limits at all. Even though they seem like opposites, they have something in common.
But giving a 2-year old the "mother of all whoopings" certainly is.
Would a kid be more likely to understand your arguments than your colleague? If no, why would he be more likely to respond to spanking?
Ultimately, how can it really be justified to spank a kid???
Beating their ass when they deserve it should be a last resort -- a clear signal that they have gone too far this time. And the fewer of those you have to hand out, the better. If your kid actually listens to reason all the time, great! But for most of them, sometimes this is necessary, and assuming your kid has a normal response to stimuli, it should work a hell of a lot better than a "timeout" (how is that a punishment anyway?).
I don't think the name "timeout" is good, though. It makes it sound too much like part of a game.
I agree, though, that the "timeout" shouldn't be the worst threat in a parent's disciplinary arsenal. Spankings should be given out rarely and threatened far more often.
When I had tantrums, my parents sent me to my room. Not because having a tantrum is wrong and I needed to be punished, but because I wasn't in control of myself and needed to let my anger play out without bothering anyone. And you know what? They stopped. They got boring. They taught me that I couldn't get what I wanted that way. (Some parents give in and teach children that tantrums are an appropriate way to get what you want. I don't advocate for this at all.)
Misbehavior was "punished" by the natural consequence of the action. Being rude in a social situation = being removed from it. This how they taught me that you follow society's rules or you don't get to appreciate it. (Intentionally) breaking my stuff = losing it. I don't break things.
The spoiled kids aren't necessarily the ones whose parents never coerced them to behave; the spoiled kids are the ones whose parents hid them from the real consequences of their actions.
Saying "Mommy doesn't like it when you do that" and then driving them to the Zoo anyways is completely different from "Mommy doesn't like it when you do that and I've asked you to stop three times. I don't want to take you to the Zoo anymore; we're going home." The latter option sends the message without also making you an enemy worth rebelling against. Spanking does.
"Teaching" someone that bad behavior leads to a spanking doesn't make them understand why it's bad. It's not true of everyone, but some children (myself included) would not think "when I do this, there is pain, so I shouldn't do this.", as with touching a hot stove or an electrical outlet. They would think "when I do this, my parents hit me, and because they hit me, I don't like them, so let's think of some good ways to make them angry... hmm..." and so the arms race begins.
After reading this article I'm afraid my experience is much different. My wife and I love being parents, and life with our 8 year old son and 6 year old daughter is peaceful and full of laughter most of the time.
It wasn't always this way for me. I grew up in a home that screamed a lot, and most of my family and relatives still live with too much manufactured drama and bad life choices. After I converted to Christianity at the age of 20, I spent the next decade "working out my salvation" before I met and married my wife. We're celebrating our 10th anniversary next week, and I can honestly say my life is fantastic.
I credit a lot of why I've managed to pull off what I have to this book http://amzn.to/9zILXE
I have a 3.3 year old and a 3.5 week old. The trick to not being too pissed off at a 3 year old is to remember that he is just fucking three years old. He isn't going to listen to everything you say. Most things you tell your kid are about long term socialization that he is certain to learn, so don't stress about it.
You don't stress about it, but you do enforce it. You need to get good at not caring about crying. Crying is the sound of weakness leaving their bodies :)
Having a kid is extremely satisfying. I can't imagine I'd be happier without mine. If you average out these opinions across most of society, the amount of information relevant to me approaches nil. So don't not have kids because of some statistic with happiness research.
“I have to get it to the part and then pause it,” says the boy.
“No,” says his mother. “You do that after you do your homework.”
Not that I haven’t been guilty of the same misparenting myself, but.... If you expect that you can ever get an eight-year-old to walk away from a video and do his homework by persuading him, you’re setting yourself up for unhappiness.
So you let your kids walk all over you?
A child with the TV in front of him, being asked to do his homework, is not interested in a reasonable discussion of the house rules; he’s interested in stalling. (Also, if he sees this as a power struggle with Mom, he will not want to surrender.) If his stalling tactic is effective, then you not only extend the period of pointless and frustrating argument in this one instance, but you reinforce, in the kid’s mind, the idea that “turn off the TV” is just background noise that can be ignored with no serious consequences.
I have two kids, 3 and 6. My 3 year old is at a stage where she throws epic tantrums, mostly when she is tired but this heat wave we are in on the east coast doesn't help. When she is in full flail I look at her and smile and say "you can do better than that if you try". I don't feel bad as a parent that she is having a tantrum, she doesn't have the emotional control yet. She will - my 6 year old went through the same thing and when the 3 year old starts up my 6 year old now rolls her eyes and smiles.
I have a friend who has 2 girls, he did this sort of playful taunting with them and it had similar effects to yours.
This sort of thing has not worked at all with my eldest (and we're just entering the tantrum zone with the youngest, hold tight!) who would simply do worse, smashing, hitting, kicking, biting in response. When they are damaging property and hurting people then IMO intervention is required.
Yes, standing back and letting him blow off some steam has helped on occasions but has not been half as effective as for my friend's girls.
Not all kids are the same.
My lad brought me to tears once because he was hurting himself having a tantrum and couldn't be calmed. I don't consider my response childish, but I'm not an objective observer.
Presumably it is kind of the job of kids to test their parents' limits...
Maybe there's hope for modern rich societies. I've read that in the French culture decisions that are made as much or more for the benefit of the parents. The family goes on vacations that the parents are interested in, enjoying art museums, sophisticated cities, etc, instead of what the kids want: a theme park in the suburbs. Maybe this derives from an attitude that children are born barbarians, that their natural tastes and desires are stupid, and they need to have civilization pounded into them in order. Whereas we in the Anglo-Saxon derived culture put more value on the natural impulses of children.
I think the situation can be improved.
Is Hacker News turning into Reddit (minus the convenience of subreddits)? I visit both because HN was always just solid tech links and news, but several completely non-hacker stories (outside of the fact that we are humans, might have families, may see someone possibly drown, and might be a white ninja) have made the top in the past couple of days.
The HN mission is diluting.
HN has always only intended to fulfill one aspect of a Hacker's life. It never purported to offer cooking advice, car buying information, or lifestyle tips. It was about NoSQL versus SQL, language trends, Lisp, functional programming, and on and on. If it generalizes it becomes reddit, and soon a "Real Hacker News" will take over on the tech side while this place features pictures of cats and fictitious Facebook exchanges.
But yes, maybe "Young Working White Collar Adult" would be a good site.
I wouldn't want to see this every day / week / month, but I'm happy to have seen it this time.
HN hurtles towards becoming Reddit.
http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
"If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. (It's a common semi-noob illusion.)"
Reddit started as a HN. It became a general site. The programming subreddit has become a grunty joke. Slashdot started as a differently managed HN. It has become a joke. Digg....okay, forget about Digg.
HN is becoming Reddit. As short as 6 months ago I could say that every day I visited HN I learned something new and interesting in this industry. I can't remember a single thing new or interesting over the past two weeks, and increasingly it is becoming a place for people to avoid work.
In the end you may be able to develop the skill of redefining happiness to suit the state you find yourself in, which everyone can benefit from.
When we talk about the difficulties of parenthood, we normally talk about sleepless nights and tantrums and expense. We do this, I think, because these are safe topics. They allow us to have ritualized conversations about parenthood. We know what we are supposed to say and we say those things, even though we often don't think they're true or important.
But the real crisis isn't something we talk about. Raising children requires a huge commitment of time and energy--time and energy we can no longer give to ourselves or our spouse. And while almost all new parents try to keep their pre-baby lives intact for some period of time, eventually the futility becomes so obvious that they relent and cull many activities out of their lives to make space for the baby. The real crisis is one of identity. We fear that by cutting so many of the things we care(d) about out of our lives, we risk not being ourselves anymore. Am I the same person now? Is my wife the same? We don't talk about these questions because many of us don't like the answers.
For me personally, any such fears were unwarranted. I love my new life. Having children improved an already wonderful marriage--my wife and I are now an unstoppable team. My toddler has become one of my best friends. The infant just looks like a new buddy in waiting. But I'm a fundamentally happy person. I suspect it's like winning the lottery. If you're happy beforehand, you'll be happy afterward; if you're unhappy beforehand, you'll be unhappy afterward.
The author even notes with surprise that "housework" ranked above parenting on the list of things that made women happy in a Texan study several years ago. I bet video games are more fun, too.
But nowhere do I see a comparison between how it feels to look back on your life after raising a kid for 18 years, and how it feels to look back on your life after playing Xbox for 18 years.
We're all hedonists; the only difference is who has the patience to do what makes them joyful tomorrow instead of what gives them chuckles today.
The problems are many: for me the two main problems was about 17 years of independent life and good times funded by good wages. Travelling, sports, parties, all-night coding sessions. All of these have been put into the too-hard basket.
The second main problem is the idealised view of parenting fed to us through movies, TV shows and advertising. You're meant to enjoy the bonding times, but running the bath for the 800th time to bathe a wriggling toddler is tedium no matter which way you slice it, and cleaning up poo for the thousandth time is horrid work you wouldn't wish on anyone.
The keys to success I think are a rock-solid partnership going into the child raising, family support available, and lack of other stresses like housing or income or illness. When your tired you just can't handle things in the same way, and with young children in the house, you're going to be tired as you battle to maintain your adult habits of staying up late while children take up your waking hours.
Once you've done it, there's no going back, so you have to work on finding a new level of happiness and honestly say goodbye to your old lifestyle for a while. Friends will slip away, interests will be put on hold, careers might slide for a few years, your house will be messy and ruined. That's the choice you've made, might as well find new ways of getting joy.