Ask HN: What's your approach to raising kids?
Worth saying up front: This isn't for a startup idea or anything like that, just keen to learn from the more-stable-than-Reddit minds of HN so I can get ideas for myself.
We have twin girls who are ~6mo old, and we're finally getting out of the "survival" stage and getting to the "parenting" stage. I'm finding that there are so many different schools of thought about absolutely everything, from pregnancy/birth to sleep training to Montessori to gentle parenting.
Specific things I'm curious about:
- Did you think about what sort of parent you'd like to be and work backwards?
- Did you think about what makes a good kid and work backwards?
- Did you align with a "style" of parenting?
- How did you use technology to help you?
- Did you keep your kids away from technology (like watching TV) for the first couple of years or just go for it?
- What would you do differently if you had your time again?
105 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadAnd that, your hono[u]r is the justification for my parenting style!
[1] Blueprint, Robert Plomin, 2018
My advice will be that every child is different. You'll get given 101 bits of advice & most of it will be useless in your context. When you do find something that works for you, great - stick with it. Even if it looks crazy to other people, if it works for you then that's all that matters.
Don't try to hard. There's no perfect parent or perfect child. Do what you think is best & the children will turn out just fine.
(Parent of a 10yr girl who just didn't sleep & a 6yr boy who thankfully did)
Good parenthood is about being present and giving them attention, helping them understand the world and so on.
Preventing them to completely use technology is BS. Let them use them, but going back to what I've said before, you need to be present in their lives. This means if they are spending too much time with it, it's up to you to enforce limits.
But don't be a rude or too invasive parent, as they'll grow old and in around 12 years or so, they will start to judge you a lot and will become much more independent, you want them to have good childhood memories and remember that they have a supportive parent, not live full of resentment because their parents were so anal about following a trendy parenting method.
Help them to build relationship with friends and live in a safe community. Avoid having high expectations of them and just let them live peacefully their lives and make their own choices.
Let them from early on to make their own calls, even if you dislike it. This is where parents usually fail, they don't let their kids do what they want. And of course, if those calls don't work well, make sure they feel responsible for it.
Don't get them into 10 different activities, like music, swimming, football and so on, so they find their "gift" or some kind of BS. Let them do what they want and help them follow their interests.
In the end, you have much less control than you think you do.
Also, as you added 2 new human beings to the world, make sure you invest time on them. If you'll pay for a nanny, have them most of the day at school and so on and excuse yourself for doing those things to "put money at the table" or whatever excuse... start by changing yourself and finding a career that enables you to give them time.
Your time is the most precious resource you can give them.
I love how you articulated this.
It really sums up how I feel them times I get too strict on things "because it will be good for their future". Not saying it is not necessary sometimes, but don't expect things will work as planned regardless how much you enforce it.
Specifically this one - spend time with your kids is the most valuable thing you can do. To understand my own character and how my parents affected it, I liked Jesper Juul (e.g. "Your Competent Child"). Its well thought through and reflecting, starting with yourself instead of the child.
Sure, you cannot prevent it forever, but that's not the goal, just to postpone it until they are well-equipped to handle it.
The same really with alcohol or smoking. You cannot prevent your children forever from trying it, but it is a huge difference whether they are exposed to it at 12 or 18. Nobody argues "let children drink and smoke and decide for themselves whether it is good or not".
EDIT: one important aspect is credibility and example. Kids will of course pick up on it if you are addicted to the phone, while you don't let them use it. "Do, don't tell", etc.
Just let them use it, but if they use too much, you need to give a good example of what would be an alternative, also what are their responsibilities. If they are getting good grades and keep their room organized, why can't they do whatever they like? This smells like abuse.
Is it really different if a kid is exposed to cigars at 12 or 18? I don't think so. I just wouldn't give them cigars and would make sure that they know how bad this is for their health, as well live in a community that would lessen the likelihood of such thing happening. You don't have control of whether this will happen though.
But in the end, they'll fulfil their own destiny, if their ultimate destiny is to smoke cigarettes or do heroine when they grow up, let it be.
Try to conquer them with your example, and they will want to follow your footsteps. But if you are boring adult with a shitty life and sad, be sure they'll find another example to aspire to.
Would a nomad from 2000 years ago prefer your jar of honey or roaming for 3 hours to find a few berries and a squirrel ?
You should look at "formative years", how habits are formed and picked by young kids, &c. they are sponges, much more than adults are
Apps are designed to keep you engaged and kids, just like adults, need time to get bored. Being bored and having nothing to do is when imagination and creativity grows
IMO, part of parenting is making choices for kids because their brains aren't developed enough to understand the consequences. As a 7 year old, I want cake now, I don't care that I will be obese later.
Pretty much. Modern tablets and apps are hopelessly strong eyeball magnets for kids. You have to pry them away, sometimes physically, and everything else will seem boring in comparison.
I'm sure it varies from kid to kid, but my (now) 15 year-old always preferred visiting friends over generally unrestricted access to XBox or other electronic entertainments. It wasn't even close. Hell, even a bike ride or "adventure" with mom or dad was preferable, possibly because there would be a playground, treat, or other fun along the way.
Now that they're older, mom and dad don't have as much say, but most online time is spent with friends, but getting together IRL still trumps being online. Again, we try to encourage this by always saying "yes" to any remotely reasonable request to drive them somewhere, have some cash to hang out downtown, etc.
A kid who doesn't spend 4-6 hours a day on a phone, and has some real-world stuff to stay busy with, is going to be miles ahead of everyone else in 10 years.
Amen.
You need to compromise. What I do:
- No TV at all (except on holidays then they can watch as long as they want), without TV it is easier
- When coming home we all, parents included, don't use technology for 10 minutes, this is like a time-out, sometimes the children started to play and don't need technology
- Sometimes don't use technology the whole time, for example when going away, the parents also leave their cell phones at home
- Sometimes let the children be bored, boredom is sometimes a great source of creativity
- Sometimes let them use technology as long as they want so that they learn to feel what this means
- Friendly ask them what they are doing
- One-click buy or similar things are a way to lose money
- Try to create incentives, like: you can stay at home alone, but today nobody is using any technology, you can read books or go with us
- Be sincere, open and friendly and admit that you yourself are fallible, alway try to discuss and find a common understanding
- Try to influence, like gaming is better than watching Youtube, some Youtube channels are better than others, and so on
The idea is: Sooner or later your children will have contact with the manipulative virtual world outside. You can't avoid it. Try to steer somewhat, but you will sometimes fail. Accept your failings. Stay relaxed. Be authentic.
Good luck!
My spawn is 15 years old, and this has always been my #1 goal. In fact, it led my family to sell our house in the burbs and move downtown to a city. I worked in the city and my better half outside the city. As a result of the move, we were both about 20 minutes away from home and, unlike my previous 1 hour commute, I could be available to coach afterschool sports or do AM dropoff.
- Kids learn from your behavior, not from what you say. So if you tell them to clean but you don't, it won't work.
- If you want them to do something, you can spend hours arguing and pushing them with no success. But if you offer to help (even if you don't do anything really), they'll gladly do it together with you.
- Kids do not need expensive toys, I've thrown away tons of costly buys, while they choose to play with some paper packaging or a wooden stick found outside.
- Read stories every evening before you put them to bed. They will want to read later.
- Just be yourself, they don't judge.
- Also, sometimes they're just too young for what you expect them to be able to do. Until 3-4, they operate mostly on emotions.
This so much. I have a 3-yearold, it's enough to see a behavior once and they will repeat it at one point. They don't understand the reasoning behind actions, they notice patterns and learn by adopting those patterns. Eg, I marked her height with a pen on the door frame, and she used it as an excuse a few days later to draw on the wall, because daddy did it. But don't be afraid to share feelings, they sense it, so it's nice to explain when dad or mum are stressed, angry, etc, meaning try to explain feelings rather than loose your temper, shout or argue (seems self evident doesn't it, but they can push you over the edge). They will pick up on how you handle emotions...and their emotions are big, like really big, so they need to learn healthy coping mechanisms.
Completely agree with this point. It's the bulky plastic toys that are the most wasteful. One exception for us was good quality roller blades and a good balance bike. We wanted to help our kid with her motor skills and to spend more time outside. She started riding the bicycle before the age of 2 and we go hiking as well, learning to ice skate & roller blade before age 3. A lot of other parents in our circle seem to be more protective and think it's too early for outside activities like this.
Let them explore stuff. Get their feet into a few puddles. Encourage experimentation. Tech is just a part of things, and although I thing it is too addictive these days by design, allowing curated access is fine, as long as stopping using it becomes part of the routine (any kids will nearly always prefer to be with you than watch TV if you're doing something interesting).
As for general advice, kids are just really different. What works for some people is a combination of parent and child. There is no one size fits all approach.
As for TV/youtube, one of our kids can get quite obsessive about things. So we had to tell him the TV is broken and it is too expensive to fix. Because he had to learn to entertain himself more.
Regardles screen time should be very limited and a reward for good behavior.
Try to talk to parents of older children and ask for their advice, try to also talk to parents that are outwith your own friends/culture circle too. Even if they've raised their kids in a wildly different way to how you have, their knowledge helps you decide how you want to parent, even if its the opposite of them.
I disagree. Imperfection is a feature. Kids can't just deal with perfect people all the time, they need to deal with the world as it is. That's not to say anything goes, but if the outcome of parenting is supposed to be a well adjusted adult some imperfection is good.
My general approach is to try and remember that you're bringing up a future (hopefully) functioning adult.
Sometimes it can get annoying when they keep asking why, but if you keep the above in mind it helps keep it rewarding for both of you.
Only tech for mine is a bit of TV before bed. BBC so no ads. The eldest has started school so he's doing a bit of computing. I'll keep them away from YouTube as long as I can.
As for YouTube... There's some really high quality content, for adults. For children, it is basically all garbage. There are a few harmless channels, but the YouTube algorithm will quickly steer the child toward the loud obnoxious content. Yeah, YouTube requires a high level of monitoring if you let your kids watch.
Others have made some great points, so I'll just address this one.
I would not necessarily recommend doing this, unless you're able to have a high degree of confidence in the causality of your parents' approach/behaviours/ to raising you. Otherwise it leads a lot to the "my parents beat me and I turned out fine"-type thinking which is -- IMHO -- flawed and illogical.
I'd like to think I turned out mostly fine, but my current life circumstances are so wildly different from my childhood that it's basically impossible to isolate confounding factors, and therefore use that as any sort of sound basis on which to raise my kid.
Edit: I just realised I answered the question "Did you think about what makes [YOU] a good kid and work backwards?" instead of what you actually asked. My apologies for misreading, but I'll leave my soapbox up!
Of course, these concepts are very difficult to teach in the very early years, but it is the very first years that are very formative for all the schemas that will haunt your child throughout the rest of their lives.
But again, I don’t have children and I’m no expert on this so please don’t follow my advice.
My approach is basically “don’t repeat the mistakes of my parents, but don’t oversteer in the other direction either”.
Goals: - foster curiosity while providing stability - don’t shove down my understanding as absolute truth, but discover conclusions together with them to a) align (which I think is very critical) and b) set them on a path of robust autonomy. I don’t want my kids to become dogmatic, because I don’t believe in dogmatic people.
I don’t think of technology as an important tool wrt parenting. Parenting, to me, is about trust and alignment, while technology is an extension of the self. Accordingly, kids should only have access to tech as a means to help them grow.
When the time comes, I would read into the topic of dopamine and make sure not to be irresponsible wrt fast media exposure for early-stage developing brains.
I would not subscribe to predefined styles of parenting. Advice of the past has rarely proven useful in environments subject to immense change, and I think that parenting is such an environment.
> How did you use technology to help you?
Brushing teeth at first didn't work at all. My daughter just screamed all the time, every day. TV with some pop music sort of hypnotized her and finally brushing was possible. That was one early success with technology.
> Did you keep your kids away from technology (like watching TV) for the first couple of years or just go for it?
Our 3-year-old is allowed to watch TV in the evening. A big thing was to define the specific time - she knows she can watch only in the evening, so she doesn't nag us at other times. Before defining this time for watching, she kept nagging all day long, in a way it was a torture for both us and her.
She prefers youtube (on a tablet), but it's sort of like TikTok for kids. A lot of short, stupid dopamine spikes. So we try to limit that and play actual cartoons with stories on Netflix.
We also try to introduce her into some games on the tablet so that the entertainment isn't passive watching only.
One perhaps controversial things I try to teach my daughter is to make sure she knows that we parents are the decision makers and what we say is also what will happen. That doesn't mean a lack of empathy, we try to explain our decisions as much as possible and we do yield sometimes when the situation warrants it.
The result is pretty interesting, she's eats a lot less than any other child I know, almost never nags about candy and never over-eats. When we see friends it's pretty clear that they child have an unhealthy relationship to snacks. It is a constant nagging and if they the parents finally cave in, the kids will eat as much as possible as quickly as possible.
- Learn how to think, talk and act with empathy. To your kids, yourself and your partner. I use the Non Violent Communication Framework by Rosenberg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonviolent_Communication
- Understand that outspoken and non-outspoken family rules must suit the situation, be flexible, based on empathy and revisited when situations change. A.k.a. you get wiser, your kids gets older or when sh#it happens. I recommend the approach from Virginia Satir https://www.amazon.com/New-Peoplemaking-Virginia-Satir/dp/08... the inventor of familiy therapy
- If you want to be good enough parents, go on vacations (at least weekends) without your kids - from time to time, at least every half year. Your adult couple relationship is the RAM your adult parent-family-relationship needs to function. If your RAM runs out, then there is a high risk of a crash.
Note: Totally subjective nerd thoughts.
It's a joke, yes, obviously, but at the end a long, torturous day when you're really not sure if that was a success or not, it can be the best, and simplest, consolation.
Enforcing boundaries and limits is (in my opinion) one of the key aspects of parenthood, combined with clear explanations on why those boundaries exist. Careful moderation of boundaries leads to kids that aren't prone to outbursts (since those have no effect on you) and grounds them to reality.
Telling kids about how the world works or giving them information about history or science is a blast and careful insertion of total bullshit leads to them being critical of what they are told, and to question information handed to them. Obviously, you need to be overt with the bullshit at the beginning, and work your way into more subtle bullshit as they age to keep them on their toes. :-)
So far so good!
My wife stayed home with my son, so we didn’t need to get childcare- she didn’t have a high paying job nor a career, so it worked for us. It did mean going without for somethings, but we didn’t feel the need to buy stuff for him to make up missing time.
He went to a Montessori preschool (kindergarten) from about 3 years old. It matched my philosophy, in the sense of treating him like a mini adult rather than a toddler.
Primary school is a smaller (1.5-2 form years) which suited his personality.
Sports wise, a bit of swimming and some running occasionally.
We didn’t allow him to watch any screens for the 1st year, but now are a lot more relaxed.
Much like training dogs, where it’s the owner that requires the changing - I have changed a fair bit. My dad travelled a lot when I was a kid, so I didn’t see much of him when growing up - and when I did see him, he’d be drinking. So, I decided to be a positive role model - stopped drinking alcohol, regularly running/going to the gym and giving my son as much time as I can.
There isn’t much I’d change tbh - he seems content and confident in himself. Kind, shares well (this took a few years, ofc - it isn’t natural to share your favourite toy!).
Just being around them, talking to them, letting them "help" cook and clean, and providing some board books that you also read to them (they might not sit still and listen until age 2 or so, don't worry) will set them up for learning the rest in due time.
Personally, I kept my 2.5-year-old kid away from video until he was nearly two, then started letting him watch a carefully curated list of downloaded non-violent nature videos on an old laptop when I need him distracted (like when I'm dealing with stuff in the oven). Neither of us watched much TV before he came along, so leaving it off wasn't a sacrifice. We ended up wall-mounting it over the piano we got due to some serious scope-creep on "how high to mount TV the kid is about to pull over on himself". Result? My husband got back into playing the piano, and the kid has gotten mostly past the banging random keys phase into picking one and sticking with it for a few seconds.
If he acts up when I stop the video, the laptop gets put away and doesn't come out again for a few days.
I do not intentionally let him handle my phone or tablet, and despite that, he knows how to swipe and tap, so I'm not worried about him not being able to use a tablet once/if it's required by the time he starts school.
From how he acted the few times he's been exposed to modern child-targeted media (the constant stream of Disney Jr. at his American cousins' house), I will continue to keep that sort of content to being a "not at home" thing. I don't care if he sees it at someone else's house, and I'll probably start bringing him to the movies when I think he can sit still for an hour or so, because he needs to know something about the culture his peers are marinating in.
The most important thing is to listen to your children and understand their needs, interests and ideas, and use them as the basis for learning and exploration. It is so much easier to foster them when you focus on their interests.
Recognize real accomplishments, document them and reflect on them with the children. Sometimes we just look at their first steps together.
We also have tried to create an environment where they can fail until they learn. As we say in the business "Fail fast" and encourage their independence by providing opportunities for them to make choices, solve problems, and take initiative. Even if the choice is "Do you want to eat carrots or broccoli with your dinner today?".
One thing that I need to improve on is to create opportunities our kids to interact with others (mostly due to Covid/the pandemic). Now that they are in preschool we see that they learn so much faster from others in their own age.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggio_Emilia_approach