Ask HN: How far should parents control their children? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How far should parents control their children?

24 pointsokokoktroway40 comments

In order to raise a responsible and a “good” human being, how far should parents control vs give freedom to their children? And how does that change with age?

Here are some examples:

- study : if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?

- religion : would you teach him your religion because that’s what you beleive to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.

- Would you just teach not to visit bad websites or would you put parental control filters, and do you best to “protect” him?

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I have a two-year-old, five-year-old, and seven-year-old. All boys. These are my personal opinions.

I find that treating them like people instead of subservient goes a long way. I.e. a bit of latitude in their own life goes a long way. You want them to be able to think for themselves, and my job as a parent is to 1) steer them clear of black holes, 2) help them up when they make a mistake, but not coddle them, and 3) help them find their own path in life, whatever that may be.

To your examples:

Study: some kids like to study, some don't. The best way to ensure they study is to establish a routine. The best way to create a routine is sitting with them while the routine is established.

Religion: Well you have to start somewhere. If you subscribe to religion, teach them. If they go in another direction, support them. In general, explaining the world as you see it to your children goes a long way in shaping their view.

Internet: Yes on parental controls. This just comes down to protecting them, the same as you might watch them as a park. Younger children are much more likely to stumble onto something bad than seeking it out. Parental controls just help that. As they get older, you have less ability to control external influences, so you better hope you did a good job in instilling morality and a sense of independent thought.

Just remember the most important rule, your kids learn from you. You set the example. Be the best you can be around them and they will come out just fine.

All of this. Don't control, but do guide.

After all, your kids will eventually have all the freedom of adulthood, and the best thing you can do is prepare them for it -- so they don't end up being one of those college freshmen who have to have their stomachs pumped because they never had a chance to learn there was such a thing as moderation before they left home.

> I find that treating them like people ... goes a long way

+1 on this

I treat my kids as equals, because they are. I try and pass on my life skills (with explanations as to how/why I find them valuable) to them in the same way as I try and pass on my dev skills to more junior programmers - an improvised mixture of example, coaching, coaxing, and occasional whip-cracking

Parent-child relationships are more about mentoring and guidance than control. Pure force is almost never an adequate answer to any problems that a child experiences. How on earth can you force someone to study without fundamentally harming him, if he has a bunch of underlying problems that effectively prevent him from learning? No way, it's just a lazy approach and unwillingness to figure out the real problem. Also, there are many things, that you can teach only through personal example and overall context inside a family. Bad websites? If you are spending enough time with your child, teaching by example, family culture and discussion, explaining what is right and wrong, he is very unlikely to develop any interest towards "bad websites". Besides, the idea of blocking all possible sources of negative content is pretty laughable from a certain kid's age. As for the religion example, I have no idea why one should want to teach children any religion apart from maybe some historical and cultural perspective.

I'm interested to know: do you have any children, and if so, what age? Not that that is the end-all-be-all of knowing how to parent, but comments like "explaining what is right and wrong, he is very unlikely to develop any interest towards 'bad websites'" make me think that you don't have much experience trying to raise children. They test boundaries. They misunderstand morals of stories. They have primal urges. They disregard social customs that they see as irrelevant. I'm constantly explaining right and wrong to my children and they are probably slowly getting it, but it's a process.

Sure they do test everything and break nearly every rule you give them. You cited only one part of my sentence, I gave this in a row of other things, that are equally important. Nowhere did I say that this is the only or the primary way to teach them.

Of course it's a process. Please excuse me for using your post as a spring board, but:

When you try to impose rules upon children that don't make any sense for them in the situation they're in, and that they may simply be mentally incapable of following at that point in their life (cf. the primal urges), it is not going to work just like that.

Children need to make up their own mind, and given the limited experience they're coming from, for many years that mind will of course look a little different from what a grown-up opinion would be.

That doesn't mean the grown-up opinion is necessarily right, by the way. It has not seen the world from the perspective of the child. The grown-up mind may very well reach another conclusion if it had seen that world.

> religion : would you teach him your religion because that’s what you beleive to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.

It's a fallacy to even suppose that children can be raised in an ideological vacuum. Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits and more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it were possible? If it were possible, I would be a complete fraud myself, something that I would think would be setting a terrible example to my children.

> Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits and more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it were possible?

This is perhaps the best argument I've heard for raising your child in religion. I suppose it should be obvious, but I had never thought about it like that before.

Why would you need religion when there is modern philosophy? Ancient beliefs, unproven history, inappropriate behaviours (in modern society) are wholly inadequate

This (at least this specific comment thread) isn't a discussion on if belief in a religion is justified, but rather the acknowledgment that if you believe you have found the answer to life, the universe, whatever, you would almost certainly feel obligated to pass it on.

It is extraordinarily difficult to force a wilful child to do anything. My now-12-year-old daughter was very reluctant to learn to read, but we insisted that she read to us every night from her second year in primary school onwards. It was exhausting and emotionally demanding work that myself and my wife dreaded doing every evening, but now she's a good reader, and enjoys it. Would she have become a good reader anyway? I have no way of telling, but wasn't willing to take the risk that she mightn't, reading is too important

As for homework - in our house it absolutely must be done. It's like brushing your teeth - no excuses, ever. I don't care that it's often useless and boring, what I care about is that their teachers stay engaged with my kids, and staying in the loop with homework is essential to that

I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times in the next week. :)

Study:

My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves.

For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished more than forcing me to do homework ever could have.

Religion:

I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true morality.

In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn't see through all the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy.

However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she's getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don't raise her within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path.

I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about telling them what to think.

As for media, I wouldn't dare put parental control on any form of media. Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if anything confuses/scares her.

Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in trouble, she might be scared to tell me.

Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied, or pressured into sexting. And, if she's afraid that I'll get mad because she broke the rules, I'll lose that.

How is growing up outside of religion a more difficult path to freedom of religion than growing up within one?

Wouldn't growing up in one religion be more constraining to her with regard of all other religions?

There is one step from being non-religious to any religion, but to move from one religion to another you have on you the burden of having to leave your current religion.

I'm a sample of one so take this with a giant, highly critical grain of thought, but for me, being raised within a religion gave me the freedom to see that all religions are fundamentally the same.

They have different names for things and in some cases, certain stories resonate better with me. But deep down, the Zen expression 'ten thousand forms, one suchness' absolutely applies.

My phone is about to die, so I'll cut it off, though I suspect that I'll revisit this throughout the day!

By the way, thanks for your perspective and the questions it made me start thinking about. As I mentioned in my original post, I will likely change my mind about everything several times.

I grew up with my parents trying to force me to be religious. Sent me to religious school from K-12 and went to temple a lot (Jewish). As someone who naturally gravitated toward problem solving and logic (engineer), I was always skeptical of religion and the more I learned about it the more I was exposed to things that just made no logical sense and it became pretty obvious to me early on that this is all stuff that some group of people made up a while ago and I don't need to base my life around it. Furthermore, I don't need religious text to teach me how to be a good person. For example on "holy" days where the community spends all day in temple reciting the same prayer 50 times over and over again, I would much rather volunteer at a soup kitchen or maybe plant trees or do community service, that is much more rewarding to me than praying to something that no one even knows exists. That being said, I don't care if anyone else wants to be religious, I am not trying to convert anyone to atheism, as long as their beliefs don't pour over into my life. This is where tension has built up with my mom who continues trying to force me to be religious even as I am into my 30s now. I do not try to convince her to be atheist so I don't understand why she feels she needs to force it upon me. We don't really talk much anymore because of it which is a shame because otherwise we got along. Anyway, I hope you let your child choose whatever path he/she decides is best without forcing anything upon him/her.

Thanks for sharing your story and I'm sorry that your Mom still tries to pressure you. I haven't been a parent for very long so I don't really know what the hell I'm talking about, but based on my experience, it's got to be really hard to let go when your kids become adults. And, I love nobody like I love my daughter, so in all honesty, I don't know what I will be like when she does things that I disagree with.

On the topic of religion, I like to think that I'll be fairly liberal. I hope that I will show her one system while she is young and then back off when she is in her teens to let her find her own way.

But, unfortunately, parenting has shown me one thing. It turns out that, for all that I like to talk about science and to the extent that I consider myself 'rational', I am mostly an ape.

I am fiercely and irrationally protective of her. And I am just as fiercely and irrationally proud of each and every one of her accomplishments. Still though, I have a tremendous amount of respect for her, so I promise you (and her) that I will do my best to let her make her own decisions.

However, seriously, thank you again for sharing your perspective with me. I'm sorry that you are going through this, but I will remember this comment and I promise that I will consider your words any time I want to pressure her to believe what I do. Thank you very much.

Not a parent myself. (But I had a couple.)

Whenever the subject of parenting comes up, I like to throw this cherrybomb into the discussion: Judith Rich Harris

"Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938) is a psychology researcher and the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting evidence which contradicts that belief."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Rich_Harris

To see how this idea may play out in practice, consider the fierce debate over tiger mothering from a few years back.

Here's the HN discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678

My take on Tiger Mom Amy Chua's methodology (at the top of that thread):

"Chua probably believes that its her strictness and strong principles that are leading her children to excel. And these have their role, no doubt. But I would propose, following Harris, it is her oppressive control of their social lives which is the much stronger factor."

That seems to be an example of "parent is important factor in child's development though not in the way the parent intended" rather than "parent is not important factor in child's development".

I'm no expert and my kids are still young (one is just about to start school) but I have a philosophy that guides me here.

I don't think you'll get "good" people if they are unable to evaluate decisions and make them independently of you. This means they need to be comfortable doing this, which means they must have practice, i.e. experience with making free decisions. But you want to guide them to the right way to approach it.

If you imagine the ideal behavior you want to inculcate as a function, and the worst-case behavior you want to absolutely prevent, picture these as two functions. Somewhere in the region between these two functions is the kid's actual behavior. You are implicitly creating a region of allowable behaviors between these two functions. If you are a caricature tiger parent, there is no region, just two overlapping functions, and your kid has no experience of autonomy, they are completely unfree, unhappy, and unequipped to handle real life.

On the other hand, a completely absent parent doesn't define those functions at all. The kid is totally unmoored. Sometimes kids in this situation figure things out on their own and feel like they benefited from not having a parent telling them what to do or not to do. But an awful lot of kids from this circumstance do not make it to a successful, free, or happy life. So this can work (I think it probably works better than caricature tiger parenting) but I don't think the odds are that good.

What you need to do is build up the child's ability to make decisions. To do that, they need to experience making decisions and experiencing the repercussions. When they're a baby, they have no control, the functions overlap. When they become an adult, they are mostly on their own (though you should still intervene to prevent disaster). In between the two, you want the region of autonomy between the two functions to grow as they get older and get better at making decisions. So even when they're pretty young, you want to give them some berth. And make sure they trust you to help them, especially with making decisions, which means, telling you something doesn't trigger an intervention automatically.

That's my philosophy in a nutshell.

> if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?

Homework is almost universally a waste of time[1]. You'd be better off encouraging them to do whatever is interesting, than forcing them to do homework.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-homework....

Interesting. My kid is going into 4th grade and probably 98% of all the homework he's ever brought home has been math. I've been wondering why. I certainly didn't think it was based on rationality :) They have reading goals as well, but it's not required or guided in any way, they can read whatever they want. That seems like a worthwhile task as well.

>>Homework is almost universally a waste of time.

Agreed! I would remark that learning to plow through wasteful tasks is a skill that comes in handy - especially when there's boring stuff to do get to the fun stuff.

You can't control, but you can build respect for your opinions. My parents consistently gave me level headed advice that served me well. When I deviated from their advice and opinions, often I would be unhappy with the outcome, reinforcing the idea that I can trust their advice.

With regards to the homework, my parents set an expected GPA and left me to my devices. I didn't do homework for easy classes, and worked quite a bit on the hard ones.

Father of two boys (10 and 13), French.

Homework : I am behind their back, forcing them to plan ahead (this includes catching up over the weekend). They got used to that and now do their homework on their own, I still check and will continue until high school.

Religion : I am an atheist, the whole family is into science, I am open about my theory that religion is nonsense but that it brings some mental order and peace for some people. I let them choose to think what they want but this is not a big discussion subject anyway.

Internet : my first aim was to make sure they are never exposed to something they are not actively seeking. Which means paternal control, one they will be someday able to avoid if they want to. I put some strict rules : zero personal information published, including their first name. They are putting pressure to show their face in some videos but this is still a "no". I told them that Internet has dark corners and that they can find horrible things if they are not careful. The younger one (more independent type of child) did not listen and watched something about zombies. Still had nightmares but clearly let's a lesson.

As for religion, it depends entirely on how you view it. Most parents have at least a small set of values (whether they be open-mindedness, tolerance, hard work, generosity, etc.) they wish to impress upon their children and they frame those as real virtues, not simply potential virtues. Whether you include religion among them is simply a matter of whether you consider religion among a set of possible virtues, an essential virtue itself, or, in the case of adamant atheists, a vice or weakness.

Yes. Every parent works to transfer their sincerely-held beliefs to their children because every parent wants their child to succeed.

"How do I raise a 'good' person?" implicitly indicates the parent's intention to transfer their own moral and social values, which comprise the core of religion, to the child (and there's nothing wrong with that; that's how it's supposed to work).

This type of ethereal, fundamentally subjective teaching is religious education. A mature mythos around the core is not the element that causes people to value religion, and discarding that mythos cannot automatically make a religious sentiment non-religious.

As a parent of a 3 year old, I haven't yet had to deal with this, but I have thought about it. My view is that a parent is supposed to protect and guide a child to prepare them for adulthood and being self-sufficient once they are of age. To that end, I plan to take the general viewpoint that on the major stuff I will force requirements from my child. On everything else that is far less important, I will let my child make decisions so that they can learn cause and effect and the consequences of those actions. Doing this I hope to shield them from terrible decisions that affect their lives in a major or permanent way and let them experience the good and bad of the decisions which have less impact. So...

study - this is in the "major" category. I will push them to do well and have expectations that are challenging and in line with their ability.

religion - my wife cares about this so she is going to raise them as Roman Catholic (which both of our families are). I actually am not a fan of organized religion but I don't see the big harm since no one in our family lives their life around it at all (hell, we don't even go to church), and it can help teach some core values which I do approve of. I plan to encourage my daughter as she gets older to think critically about the role, if any, she wants religion to play in her life and press the fact that she should seriously evaluate it again as an adult.

online controls - i'm not going to filter her internet or anything but I will strongly stress the dangers of communications with random strangers on the internet. the COPPA law helps here, since children aren't supposed to be able to have accounts until a certain age (12 or 13 I think?), which is an age where they are fully capable of understanding what is being explained to them regarding the dangers. of course, anyone can fill out any age they want when signing up, so there is still a concern that has to be monitored. Also, youtube kids is pretty good at filtering out the inappropriate content. some stuff slips through, but overall it's pretty solid.

I'm a parent of 2 teens and a pre-teen. As such, it's still too early to tell whether our approach has worked but fingers crossed.

With regard to how much you make them do things like homework. Our view has been that they don't necessarily act in their own self interest.

Sometimes what they want to do and their self-interest match and it's all good. Our eldest has generally been like that.

Sometimes they need a bit of a nudge: our youngest has needed help building up her confidence. For a while she didn't want to do certain activities because she didn't feel she was good enough. We made her continue some but not all (we had them try lots of things when they were young) even though she wouldn't have chosen to continue. It was definitely the right thing to do and she'll be the first to say so.

Sometimes they're obdurate little sods but you love them anyway. We have one of those too. Everyone in the family agrees he's a lot like me at the same age so there's not much hope for him (only kidding).

Religion is interesting. Both my spouse and I were fairly religious as teenagers in different traditions and before we met. Neither was observant by the time we had children. We've encouraged them to find out about religions and take part where they've expressed an interest; school friends for all of them have been from all the major faiths (just how it turned out). I'd characterise 2 of them as being fairly liberal/open-minded about religion. The other one has been a strong atheist from a very young age.

For parental controls, the approach I've taken has been to not restrict access particularly. However, I've said that I reserve the right to look at their devices whenever I want and, if I find something unacceptable then all hell breaks loose. I haven't defined unacceptable particularly clearly but they're not stupid. So far so good although I am assuming that I'm still better at this techy stuff than they are which may be rash.

All in, it's been interesting to say the least. The 3 of them are quite different and we've had to explore different approaches with each. Having said that, they have lived relatively sheltered lives (good schools, stable home life etc) so it's not like we've had major external challenges as a family.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The answer to these questions, like most other important questions, is "it depends". Each parent and each child is different. The dynamic of the parent-child relationship, including the relevant hard-baked personality factors, is very important. Kids come more pre-developed than people want to think.

From what I know, if you want to rise a responsible and 'good' human being you should allow it to be good and responsible in the first place. It means not controlling. Controlling someone is taking over someones responsibilities. Controlling someone is making him (not, ir)responsible.

It depends on the child. Children are mini-people, and they all have different personalities and temperaments. Some will do really well with a very independent approach, some will need more guidance. What they all need is love and respect.

guide, not control.

The "guide not control" recommendation needs to account for both the severity of the potential consequences of an action (e.g., playing in traffic on a busy street) and the maturity of the child (e.g., a two-year-old will not be given the option of choosing his own bedtime whereas a 17-year-old may be better able to handle the consequences of less sleep due to staying up late).

The stuff with serious consequences shouldn't come up often if at all if you've started guiding far enough in advance.

By the time they're in high-school they should know the reason you don't cheat on exams, drive drunk and do weed (varies by state) isn't because you can't do those things but that on the off chance it turns out badly you're gonna get screwed hard enough that the risk isn't worth taking in the first place. Nobody should have to tell them to wear hearing protection around power tools and not get drunk three nights a week because by the time that those things are an issue (high-school/college) they should be familiar enough with the concept of long term wear and tear to draw their own conclusions about what's appropriate.

It's an annoyingly circular definition but good enough guidance removes the need for control.

> they should be familiar enough with the concept of long term wear and tear to draw their own conclusions about what's appropriate.

From ages ~15-22, I averaged less than 6 hours of sleep a night, ate north of 4000 calories of junk food a day yet had visible ab muscles with minimal exercise, could stay up ~36hrs before I'd have to crash if I needed to, all but the worst cuts, scrapes, and bruises healed completely and disappeared without leaving a mark in 12-48hrs, I simply did not get hangovers ever, could push myself to run a pretty damn fast mile despite not being a runner and not feel it at all the next day, and so on.

I don't think I had a very good handle on what long-term wear and tear was like except in a very abstract way.

People write books in attempts to answer these questions and it's pretty hard to provide detailed answers here but I'll chime in a bit...

All children are people, and all people are different in how they learn and react, and what intrigues and inspires them.

My advice is to first understand your child is a person and to treat them like one, as opposed to a piece of personal property or a "dog" you can command to do tricks.

Study: Yes, you have to "make them do things" they don't want to do, like take a bath, clean their room, do their homework, and help with household chores because they'd rather not.

When our youngest was 17 he was failing his Senior year in High School and I pulled him aside and explained that if he had visions of sitting in his bedroom playing video games all day after he got out of school what he'd find was me putting all his stuff on the curb and turning his bedroom into my home office and he could go find someone else to house and feed his lazy ass. He bucked up, graduated, and is now a manager at the company he works for.

Religion: We live in the "Bible Belt" where a lot of what is preached comes from "Ministers" who are more interested in what's in the "collection plate" than teaching the lessons Jesus laid out. I stopped attending "Church" when I was a teen because I realized this but since most all of my children's friends went to church they wanted to go as well and my wife and I let them and gave them rides so they could attend and then we'd discuss what they were told and taught afterwards. It wasn't long before they started seen contradictions between the sermons they heard and what Jesus said and taught and my wife and I would go over these with them.

A good example is "gay marriage". Jesus said "there is no marriage in heaven" and to "love one another", and they all grew up around a few gay couples that are close friends of ours and knew they were loving and kind and caring people who were hurt by the huge anti-gay stance of the evangelicals we're surrounded by. By the end of "High School" they didn't want to go to church anymore because of the hate and vitriol they saw promoted there, but they also studied the Bible on their own to better understand the teachings of Christ and to defend themselves and their beliefs and by the end of High School they knew and understood scripture better than many of the adults that were "teaching" it to them.

Life Lessons: We gave each of our kids their first car and told them they'd be buying their 2nd one themselves. They all hated their first car because it wasn't a brand new sporty car their friends would be envious of, and they all smashed that first car up while being stupid and then whined when we didn't buy them another. And then they all worked hard, bought their own 2nd car, and not one of them has crashed their cars up since, or complained their car wasn't "cool" enough to be seen in.

Internet: I've been making web sites and web software since the mid-1990s so they all grew up with it. I explained that there's a lot crap on the internet and they'd be wise to not waste their time on the crap they could find there. And I told them I could, and would, track the sites they visited and pull the plug if they got stupid on it. And I explained that even if I was not tracking them, the access providers they use and sites they visit are tracking them so they needed to aware that others might find out what they do there and expose them and they'd better keep that in mind because they'd have to deal with that all on their own. But I never put any restrictions on what they could find there because they'd have none as adults and could find it somewhere else anyway.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Yeah, you have to deal with that too. Our approach was to teach them that it's fine to party but don't make a career out of it. Don't aspire to be the most drunk or do the most drugs at the party, and that doing hard drugs is always a stupid choice. All our children grew up seeing friends, family, and acquaintances do stupid shit to get high and when high and the consequences that ensued as a result and we didn't shield them from that. We were very up front about it: "Uncle Joe is in jail again because he's a dumbass who's spent his life chasing drugs and that's why we're not bailing him out, and we won't bail you out either if that's the path you take, so don't expect or ask us to.

None of them wanted to be like "Uncle Joe" and none of them went that route.

The short of it is, raise your kids to be adults from the get go.

As long as your child isn't irritating me or my child in a public space I do not care.

These are largely false dichotomies.

1. Study - Starting at the beginning, be involved with your kids and their schoolwork. A big part of this is being with them while they do their homework. First, this helps you solidify points that they may not have understood from class. Second, this gives the parent opportunities to share various sorts of life skills -- time management, problem solving, learning strategies, etc. Obviously the parent needs to have restraint so that the child still has ownership of the homework, but that's not terribly difficult if the parent is aware of that parameter. If the parent thinks that the kid has too much homework, then I suggest having a talk with the teacher(s). Hands down, the number one predictor of student success is parental involvement with a child's education.

2. Religion - Typically, when young, just tell them what you believe. They are children and will largely accept it in its entirety. Once they start asking questions, explain to them that other people believe different ways, and when the child is ready, they can decide what approach they want to take with religion. Make sure to explain to them any potential repercussions of not toeing the party line (e.g., a born Muslim openly revoking the religion of Islam in the KSA). Note that they will make this choice whether the parent "permits" them to or not. The real question is the attitude the child takes towards the parent after they have decided. In the example of a parent believing that their child will go to hell in the even that the same religion is not followed, then I think the problem there lies with the parent -- either they need to accept this possibility and the fact that the child will choose no matter what, or they need to embrace or more tolerant religion.

3. Internet use - This is actually a tough one. I strongly suggest controls on any computer that is not the child's -- mainly to avoid malware. Tell the kid you are doing so and why. Ideally, as your child is growing up, you have been able to teach them at least a modicum of internet/tech literacy, but that still won't guarantee the safety of your computer. As for the child's own device, I suggest teaching them best practices from the time they start using computers. Once they are teenagers (or even earlier), they will be able to access any sites they want, whether your want them to or not. If you are concerned about a certain type of website (e.g., porn), then have a discussion about these topics before or right as they and/or their peers become curious about such subjects (usu. around the early onset of puberty around 10). Explain to them your thoughts and feelings about these sites, and (perhaps most importantly) tell them that they will have to make up their own minds about these types of sites. As said before, they will do so whether they are "permitted to" or not.

These questions seem to be oriented towards control. This "works" only as long as the child's ability to think independently is suppressed. This may last a lifetime, but it usually doesn't. It also leads to parent-child conflict once the door to independent thinking has been opened.

Modeling desired behaviors is usually the easiest way to get a child to exhibit those behaviors. This works both for "good" behaviors as well as "bad" ones. That said, most people who are regarded as "good" parents, even with the curtains are pulled back, are ones that model the behaviors/values they want their kids to have, explain those behaviors/values to their kids, mentor their kids within the child's context, and support the child's decisions, even if they differ from the path the parent would have taken.

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