Hacker News Reader

> That doesn't seem like a good parenting lesson

Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you "do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life skill.

View on HN

To be clear: the bad parenting lesson is that the child learns that their actions don't matter. Rolling the dice gives the illusion of agency, but of course the child does not actually get to make any decisions. Their actions do not map to any recognizable outcomes; they may as well act completely randomly. This strikes me as a bad thing to learn.

> Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you "do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life skill.

That is also true.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com