How to Raise a Creative Child. Step One: Back Off
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
Today's kids are oversaturated with distractions and their lives are fully planned around activities. So they live according to templates, but not according to their own motivators.
Then again, having a child myself (10 months old) I have noticed many parents have so many activities and things planned themselves that they distract their children (read consume content on iPads) in order to pacify them. It's a circle.
As a side note, one other thing I think this has done is make me comfortable with silence. During the summer break when I would do long camping trips, sometimes I could go days without speaking, and I enjoyed it. Now I see people all around who seem to need and want something going on at all times. Since I no longer live in the mountains, meditation outside helps assuage my need for silence and solitude, but I am considering building an isolation tank.
On subject, I agree that freedom begets creativity. I love that I could mark a place on the forest service map, list my supplies, and say "if Im not back by sundown on day 3, then call the forest service". Thats a level of independence and freedom that was encouraged in my family that has served me well in many areas since.
I think boredom and unstructured time without any parents around was one of the most important parts of my own childhood.
Kids are so good at entertaining themselves with basically nothing! Its uncomfortable for kids to be bored but they quickly learn the entertain themselves, especially when around other kids. Its actually kind of amazing.
They never learn this skill if they aren't given the chance.
Scott Adams (Dilbert guy) says that boredom is what gave him his creativity.
I'd love to know if anyone has seen research, books, or articles on this (pm me).
Now, at age 3, she can be in the back seat for a 1-1.5 hour car trip WITHOUT ANY ENTERTAINMENT WHATSOEVER. Just looking out the window thinking, asking questions about stuff she sees, maybe singing something. No DVD player, books, game consoles, phones or anything.
Just eight have won Nobel Prizes? What a bunch of dunces. But wait, only 870 people have ever won a Nobel Prize. So these numbskulls have only managed to win 1% of all Nobel Prizes ever.
If your parenting standard is "Nobel Prize or the gutter" there's a serious problem.
They mention just 1% have won Nobel Prizes, and then in the next sentence say "For every Lisa Randall who revolutionizes theoretical physics, there are many dozens who fall far short of their potential."
Lisa Randall didn't win a Nobel Prize in physics (yet), though she is in he National Academy of Sciences. So I guess you must have one or the other honour to be judged a success.
Meanwhile her collaborator Raman Sundrum (of the Randall-Sundrum model, which Lisa Randall is most famous for) is neither a Nobel laureate nor on the National Academy of Sciences.
But one day if he does win the Nobel, his Success status changes overnight?
So having fewer rules supposedly leads to more creative children, but do those kids do well later in life? Article doesn't say.
I'm basically sympathetic to the more "hands off" parenting style being discussed. But the article really doesn't make its case.
Is having no rules a steadfast rule? Chew on that one for a while :)
And while you're thinking about that, realize that most children growing up in poor environments don't have many rules to follow. Few people would consider poor communities as bastions of creativity (not to say there isn't creative things happening in these communities, just they are not perceived that way).
The problem with this article and others like it is the subjects - children - are not one thing in a vacuum. Some children will thrive in a structureless home life. But most won't. Some children will thrive with rigid structure. But most won't. So what's the answer? It depends on the kid. From my experience, most children need some sort of structure in their lives. They simply don't have the faculties to deal with the complexity of how life is today. That's what the parent is for. But to go overboard with rules generally doesn't work very well either.
Children are complicated things. Just as adults are complicated things.
"Nobel prize or the gutter" is merely a logical conclusion in a world where only the very best at anything are valued.
That's meritocracy.
I see it all the time with people trying to start businesses. They see the success stories and want a rich and profitable company in less than a year.
I believe it's the result of perceived instant gratification on the Internet and from the idea that started in the early 90s that 'everyone needs a trophy', which I saw first-hand.
I’ve met so many college graduates that either want a six-figure income right out of school, a management position within 6 months, or a flex schedule at every job. It's not just a want, they feel entitled to it.
It's why Bernie Sanders is so popular among the youth: he's promising many rewards without any of the work.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/aug/19/baby-bo...
They "won the lottery" with me in that I had an innate interest in technology and got into computers and networks in the mid 1980s. I ended up at a public land-grant college, but even if I hadn't, I happened to have the right skills at the right time to ride the .com boom and acquire experience despite my lack of pedigree (and 20 years on, it no longer matters what school I went to.) I busted ass and continue to do so, but I'm not blind to my fortune. And yet, I do not and have never had a pension, and I have always spent 2-4x the fraction of my income on housing than my parents did, for worse housing. Most of my generation was not so lucky as me, but at least they were about to get jobs and build a resume.
My kids are young and if they're just as smart and hard-working as me, they're fucked. The ladder has been pulled up, and pedigree is a lot more important starting out now than it was when I was younger. (I know, I've been a hiring manager for years - and in technology which is a MUCH more egalitarian field than most due to demand.) To give my kids an advantage I've moved to a small country in Western Europe so they can grow up multilingual and have cultural exposure that might make them attractive to elite schools in the event that we've "won the lottery" with their natural abilities. And if they don't, if nothing else, they have access to less expensive housing, education and health care, and live in a society that's much more egalitarian than the US - one that might give them a shot at "just a living" without exposure to the worst predatory aspects of American poverty.
All this is to say, no, things aren't the same. Yes, one still has to work very hard to be the best (one also must be very lucky to be the very best.) The difference is, there was once "good enough to make a decent living" and now, not so much. This isn't about meritocracy, this is about the distribution of reward (across the spectrum of "merit" if you like.)
I'll be voting for Bernie Sanders, myself.
Businesses actively look for more work for less reward. I'm not sure why the other side shouldn't counter that.
Yes they will ask for those things and it's your job as a business to tell them no. They can reduce their demands or go someplace else.
I think wages have been flat anyway, so why wouldn't you expect some sort of push back when people start realizing that?
"What's more, after 1985 about 60% of physics, 52% of chemistry, and 49% of medicine prizes were awarded following a post-discovery delay of more than 20 years."
[ source : http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/magazine/physicstoday/n... ]
It would have been much better to cite the SMPY longitudinal results for a meaningful idea of how child prodigies fare.
I scanned it, and it seems to suggest that IQ 'is kind of bunk' - that it's more effective to evaluate mathematical reasoning, alone.
But, what I find more interesting is that not all mathematically precocious achieve, and very many achievers were not mathematically precocious. So, what's going on in the middle?
It's cool to see that 2000 kids out of 400M were high achievers, but how do we get, say, 1M high achievers out of the next 400M?
[1] https://my.vanderbilt.edu/smpy/files/2013/01/Article-PS-Lubi...
I took their achievement percentages (# of individuals in top positions 40 years later), and did some rough calculations.
The SMPY cohorts seemed to perform much better than if one had randomly selected a 'top %1' individual from the total U.S. population. So, either the longitudinal study had an effect on the cohorts, or their original sampling method was biased.
Well that's what schools do today.
Look carefully at a normal curve. If your kid is slightly above average, say C+, then they are doing better than 50% of the poulation. That is already pretty good.
By all means, encourage and assist them to do better than that, but lay off the judgements. A Happy kid who runs a daycare center in the city, is someone that you should be proud of, because believe me, society in general is proud of people like that and does not judge them because they failed to win a Nobel prize.
If your kid can wake up every morning and honestly say, every day in every way I am getting better and better and better, then you are a superlative parent.
1. Statistician Andrew Gelman's batch of math Olympiad campers: http://andrewgelman.com/2015/03/17/1980-math-olympiad-progra...
2. Indian IIT exam toppers: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/nation/where-are-they...
3. Famous Intel talent winners: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Science_Talent_Search
Nobel Prizes are a cherry-picked metric.
Yeah, not all prodigies become adult geniuses. But the article grossly overstates the problem.
"Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, for they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bow from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrow may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable." * - "The Prophet" (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1951) p.17-18.
Most parents that enforce their own ideals and values on their children are narcissistic. They either do not love their children or have so poor an understanding of love itself that they cannot love properly.
I would also add that many beneficial social movements favouring equality among humans have been contested by adults who were brought up to share their parents' values. I hesitate to say that most children do not care about colour or sexuality until they are taught by their parents that differences are bad, or see their parents reactions to people who are 'different'.
> Most parents that enforce their own ideals and values on their children are narcissistic.
Which I took to mean that they don't agree with enforcing rules (which come from values) on children. I think if you have children, you know that this just won't work. Without rules and boundaries, kids will literally kill themselves.
In this case, sure, there's almost certainly some children who should be left to develop their own ideals and values as part of maximizing their own potential and finding their own path. There are a whole lot more children who need to be taught some ideals and values, or they'll grow up to be an adult completely without them, and society will be poorer for it. Determining which group any particular child belongs to is the primary caregiver's job, not yours.
I'm a loving father of two brilliant girls (7 and 9), and while I strive to be a "stable bow", parenting is an ongoing, dynamic and constantly-evolving relationship. And I'll never apologize for trying to instill them with my most deeply-held values and ideals. I try to do so by living and demonstrating these values, and encouraging them to discover their merits for themselves. It's not about merely enforcing rules. But until you find yourself responsible for another human being's very life, making assertions about the nature of parenthood is futile.
1} That we wanted them to become a "good" person...we let them puzzle out what a "good" person was, to the extent possible, tried to model the behavior we hoped for, and pointed out obvious examples of good behavior in everyday life...
2} That we wished them a "happy" life...to that end we encouraged any interests they expressed, and did our best to share in the joys they discovered for themselves...
We exposed them to as many new opportunities and interests as possible, then let them choose which they would like to repeat...this part was by far the most difficult because of varied interests...
When there were disagreements between them--sibling rivalry--we encouraged them to solve problems themselves...can't count the number of times we said things like, "You both want to sit in that chair at the same time, but that's not possible...how can you solve this problem?"
Parenting is likely the most difficult job on the plant...so far everything seems to be on track...
The State: eg "Hey kid, fight this war!"
The Media: eg "Hey kid, hate today's designated weirdos!"
The Corporations: eg "Hey kid, buy this crap!"
The Usurers: eg "Hey kid, enslave yourself in debt!"
None of which have a personal relationship with the child or a vested interest in their well being. You may disagree with another parent's values, but at the very least (on average) that other parent is at least sincere and cares about their own kid.
And the perennial complaint "but what if someone teaches their kids BAD values" will never be solved. Plenty of parents probably think YOU'RE teaching your own kids poisonous lies just as damaging as you perceive them to be doing. That's just life.
Children are more likely to be perceived as an end in themselves to their own parents, and as simply a means to an end by these other entities.
Also: everyone talking about raising their kids with the ideals of critical thinking and of picking their own values: that's still a value that's apparently important enough for you to instill in your child that you went to great lengths to instill it. Something tells me you wouldn't be happy with them embracing an opposing value, like, say, blind adherence to authority figures, and believing everything they read, and letting other people browbeat them and tell them what to do with their lives.
The parent's job is to lay down a solid foundation onto which a person will be constructed. In some cases the parent is a filter. For example, the vast majority of Muslims are good people, no different from anyone else. Good parenting is what made these children immune to the pulls of derranged radical elements in that culture. Good parenting is what ensures the vast majority of those children cannot be swayed away from being good decent human beings.
That's just one example. Many more in history. There's a reason for which all cults try to get to children as early as possible. Parents are the only line of defense.
No, that quote is disgusting.
That's all that is needed from a parent: genuine, and fully embodied empathy.
Backing off is not the answer. Neither is controlling. Engaging empathically is all that we as parents need to do. There are two concepts here: engagement And empathy.
True empathy is easier to achieve in parent->child relationship than any other kind of relationship.
Engage empathically. The child will lead their own growth as a conversation with you, the parent, and their environment. So listening deeply (beneath the words and behavior) to the child is the first order of business, not backing off.
Parengs should spend time being with their kids rather than take time away from their kids to write crappy articles or comment on HN (An advise that I should take, too, obviouslh :)
> True empathy is easier to achieve in parent->child relationship than any other kind of relationship.
I disagree with the above statement. Empathy is easiest when attachments are fewest. This does not describe the typical parent-child relationship. I think parent->child empathy may be easy for many because they are very much like their children and their children are going through very similar experiences to their own. I, on the other hand, have lead a very different life than the life my child is very fortunate to be living. I am fortunate my child is similar to me in many aspects so I do get glimpses of understanding; but my child is also very different from me so it is not always easy.
Not to toot my own horn, but people have praised me for both my empathy towards others and my parenting skills. I work very hard at being a good parent. I am very attentive. I listen. I consult. I read. I think, and I act. But I find empathy to be probably most difficult in this relationship than in any other I've had.
The author assumes many parents intend their children to be pioneers in their field. Despite the memes, many asian parents largely steer their children to conservative paths: work hard, risk little, and grow steady wealth. The child may not become a household name, but they are unlikely to end up bankrupt either and the parents are content for the child to securely occupy the upper-middle class. There's not really a push for the child to be "the next Steve Jobs" so long as they get enough ammo to 1-up the local parents at the next social.
It's also the majority of Asian-Americans, if you add Vietnamese.
"The gifted learn to play magnificent Mozart melodies, but rarely compose their own original scores."
Unlike, er, Mozart himself who had what we might today call a Tiger Father and yet seemed quite capable of creativity.
> Mozart showed interest in music before taking lessons, not the other way around.
I am an underachiever in my career, to be sure. But I have made a lot of art, climbed many mountains, hiked what seems like every trail in Colorado, and learned a few crafts, while also maintaining a marriage and raising a family. I'm happy with my life, no matter what the world thinks of it.
But 0.5% of the Westinghouse pool winning Nobels is still far better than the population average. What this article tells me is something that seems pretty obvious: that raw ability is correlated to being recognized by society for acts of genius, but so are other things, including both the "thinking out of the box"-ness that the author trumpets as well as entirely extrinsic and random factors (ie the Nobel committee likes you, your style of work or area of focus happens to align with or be amplified by a prevailing intellectual trend, etc). Prodigies don't always succeed in pushing the enelope because it's vanishingly unlikely for anyone to do so; they still do a sight better at it than most.
Also 8/2000 got Nobel prizes? Thats some pretty good odds.
this article is just bad science and lazy writing. before we can even entertain his conjecture we need two data sets, easily calculable by anyone with freshman college math:
x% of child prodigies become nobel prize winners or national science foundation award winners. the distribution of other scientific achievements for such prodigies has a median of y and spread of z.
a% of STEM college graduates become nobel prize winners / national academy members. the distribution of other accolades is b with a spread of c.
x,y,z compares how with a,b,c
the results can be interpreted different ways but at least we have a starting point for rational discussion. the rest of his article is mere conjecture with emotional posturing with an agenda.
Additionally, if you were a parent, what would be the practical advice from this finding?
Additionally, why would you do your best, though? As you said, it has zero impact.
Another good question is why smart people have to be slaves. If a smart person wants to spend their life meditating, or serving the poor, or in a religious vocation, the journalists unhappiness about their decision is sad for the journalist, but I'm not really seeing the problem for the person. I'd even double down, and in a culture that's strongly anti-intellectual, a smart dude might very well see that his best course thru life of maximized happiness and love, is a non- or less- intellectual career. Sort of an "Atlas Shrugged" attitude. A "winner takes all" system doesn't motivate everyone, much like the lottery, the winners are those who don't play.
The setup is intriguing - for instance, the notion that micromanaged children will become excellent concert violinists, but may not become ground breaking classical composers (let alone the next Bob Dylan).
The example put forth in the article to support this assertion is... Itzak Perlman. A wonderful violinist and (I don't know him at all, this is what I've read) a generous spirit as well. But aside form a foray into jazz that I thought wasn't especially notable, Perlman's greatness is more or less as a concert violinist. Interesting to hear he was rejected from music school, but this seems a very odd example.
Why not focus on someone like Stefan Grapelli, who started playing at an older age, asked a busker in the paris metro how to play the violin (who laughed the question)? Why not look into the careers and lives of musicians who made their mark through creativity rather than virtuosity? I really like violin, from a lot of angles. I enjoy the amazing precision of the great classical musicians, but I do find myself even more intrigued by musicians like Steve Wickham (who played with U2 and the water boys, among others). I do tend to agree with the article that the micromanagement many young classical musicians go through in their quest to play perfectly may indeed vastly reduce the possibility that the musician will be able to put together an interesting track for "Sunday Bloody Sunday" or collaborate with a rock musician to produce something like Fisherman's Blues. These things may in fact be inversely correlated.
There's a lot here, unfortunately, I just don't think it was explored in interesting directions by the article.
Whereas the muscles that you learn from being independent are the muscles from conceptualizing, taking risks, creating, and learning from the experience. This is a completely different muscle than previous set of muscles.
It's not really about letting go or being too controlling. It's about building the right set of mental models so that someone can guide and create their own lives.
Won't name and shame so don't ask. I think some freedom to experiment is good, as long as one also gets plenty positive role models and strong sense of what's wrong.
This article is silly and evokes an extreme to try to make a point.
Gangs provide a lot of opportunity for creativity, problem solving, strategy and tactics, self management, financial management, and leadership. And, the smart kids usually choose the best gang, in my experience.
The hardest part is transitioning from the gang life to something that's more upper-middle-class acceptable. In my experience, gaining access to education, capital, and social networks is hugely important. And, crossing the cultural gap has been something that I still struggle with 25 years later.
The only way practice traps you in familiar ways of thinking is if you focus practice only on the things that are familiar to you. Letting Anki help schedule your practices is a way to avoid this. Here is what I do.
- Review phase: Do exercises based on whatever is up for review.
- Attack the weakness phase: Spend extra time reteaching yourself the stuff one you feel you did poorly on.
- Project phase: As you work on interesting challenging projects, add new Anki cards as you encounter and learn new things.
It's a good technique which I think could be accessible to a lot of children. Let them choose the area of interest. Just instill in them a sense of discipline in whatever area THEY choose to pursue.
Creativity is a mix of confidence, encouragement, hand holding, and structure.
Restricted, repetitive behavior is the root of all evil.
I do agree with the bit about a wealth of experiences, though.
But, this is equally true of other children as well!
The way I see it, she needs three skills to succeed. First, hold it the right way up and realize this thing is not an eye poker or lollipop. Second, develop a steady hand. The doctor says alcohol is bad for her, so there seems to be no easy way. Third and last but not least, learn resistor markings. I’m praying she didn’t inherit my color blindness.
When we’re there we can playfully discover Ohm’s Laws by letting her gut decide on the right voltage and current applied to her circuits. It’s going to be magic.
So although your suggested milestones are most reasonable, we’re ultimately going to stick with analog for the time being. I’m saying this fully aware that she might not be able to lift her creations the better she gets, but we all have slight scoliosis from carrying too many school books. She will survive.
Once she’s comfortable with the basics and hopefully frustrated with the limitations, she’s going to be ready to embrace digital.
Now, nobody checked out the box of keys - it was boring. Nothing you could build; no clear categories (too many kinds of old keys of too many shades of color). But the teacher noticed him taking them one at a time, dropping them over his shoulder, picking them up again and putting them in a row on the table.
She didn't disturb him - that was a rule of DAP time, nobody gets to interrupt you. But when he was done and had put them away, she asked "What did you find to do with the keys?"
He answered "I was putting them in order by sound". See, he was constructing a scale of sorts, by the sound they made when they hit the floor.
Wasn't another year when we discovered he had perfect pitch. Went on to master the piano and the cello before junior high; played in every school orchestra and event. He was playing professionally in High School (City orchestras; Orchestra Iowa) and competing at the national level.
Anyway, never underestimate the use of simple toys.
It doesn't really matter whether your kid can program at 5 or 15, whether he can read at 4 or 8. Nobody who puts in the effort doesn't get to a stage where they can do either of those things.
From my own observations (a limited set) what mattered is what you got up to when you already learned how to read, and you had vast swathes of time to spend either on reading things that you needed to know, or play video games (which you need to do as well, mind you). It's the kids who dedicated themselves to getting good at something who eventually did so. Academically and sports. And everything else.