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Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Both my parents will tell you that you only get to live once, so you might as well be the very, very best that you can be at whatever you choose. Which I don’t necessarily agree with, because if everyone lived that way, there would be nothing but a whole bunch of unhappy people in the world. But that’s how they brought us up. They taught me to be competitive. They taught me not to falsely believe I had done well when I hadn’t.

As a parent this is something I struggle with. How much should I push a 7 year old child to be their very best? How important is it really to be your very best? Is it more important to push yourself to be happy while maximizing happiness around you? Yet, I'm not really sure what that means outside of trying to be your best at something you enjoy.

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As a parent I am very conscious of actually not pushing the idea that you got to be best. I think that easily causes the opposite. If you are preoccupied with being the best you will never dear try something you are not good at. How can you become good at something if you don't try it out?

But I do try to emphasize that to become good at something you have to practice. I tell my kids when they fail, that that is good, because it means you are learning. If they don't make mistakes it means they aren't pushing themselves enough.

Also my philosophy is that it is better to be average at something which pays well and there is a lot of demand for, than to be a super talent at something you can't make money on and nobody is interested in.

I think that is very important, because I see so many people give up on hard subjects like math and physics because they can do better at easier subjects and they are so preoccupied with high grade averages. I say, screw that and instead be average at something useful.

You should of course try to follow you heart but if study something you really enjoy but never get a job afterwards in a related field, you will reap a lot of misery for years just so you could enjoy a couple of years in college.

Plus, you don't want to give your child a complex.

FWIW I agree with Neil deGrasse Tyson, just let their curiosity take over. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIEJjpVlZu0

I'm not a parent, but for me the scary thing is not how important is it to be your very best. Rather, it is the question - can any (otherwise healthy) child really become an olympian, nobel prize winning scientist, grammy winning musician, or great political leader, if only his or her parents raised them right?

Depending on how you answer, if you don't push your child, you could be ruining his or her chances. That is something I would struggle with as a parent.

Is raising right necessarily pushing?

I decided that I don't have the energy to force my kids to overachieve at things they don't want. But... If they are interested in anything, I will help them find the best instruction. For one this is foreign languages, the other it's chess and programming. But if they weren't interested, I wouldn't make it my mission to push. It's their life, and achieving "potential" is ultimately on them.

The answer is probably a qualified yes. But at what cost. What's the point of being a Grammy award winner of you don't love your work?

As a parent of two grown children, I can tell you that the answer is a big NO.

Make sure your kids have fun and are happy, and develop into compassionate people.

Children naturally absorb an understanding of what things are important in life, and yours will undoubtedly feel that achievement is near the top. From that point, you just want to help them succeed at the things that are important to them. Most of the "push" will come from themselves, but once in a while you will need to encourage them when they're down, give them a reality check when they're complacent, or rev them up when they need to put in a special effort.

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