Comment by AlanSE | Hacker News Reader

Comment by AlanSE | Hacker News Reader

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I've been reading the 1-2-3 Magic book (expecting my first soon), and the philosophies have extremely stark differences. The 123 approach outright attacks (what it calls) the fallacy of "little adults" - saying that explaining is just frustrating to children who don't have a chance at understanding. The 123 approach probably comes across as more traditional.

The best theory I have is to build rock-solid boundaries, but to do so at a meaningful distance. Humans and animals are good at working with a "duality" of personalities. Children should have plenty of space to explore, be creative, and develop relationships, but going beyond a certain well-established limit brings out the bad cop. A lot of 123 methods looks like, to me, ways to make the kid recognize and respect the bad cop... but still have confidence that bad cop won't show up if they will stay inside of defined bounds.

Constant behavior correction is terrible, and leads to psychological problems. Too much of what I see takes this problem and turns it around to "no correction". That's probably not AS bad for the child, but is inviting disaster on the part of the parents.

I have two teenagers. An important aspect of 123 is that you are in absolute total control of your emotions. Saying "that's 1" and "that's 2" is a way of calming yourself down so you can manage the situation rationally without having to physically intervene.

It's all about controlling your own behavior.

When my spouse and I were expecting, I actually took a class on 123 at the hospital. The instructor gave one piece of advice, which I still remember: Your home environment when you were growing up will determine whether 123 will work for you now. Nothing works for everybody.

I need to get this book. I can feel the veneer of my patience slipping. My daughter is 22 months, and she's definitely in the boundary-pushing stage, and trying to assert control over as much as she can.

One trick I developed: The 123 thing is great for stopping a behavior, but not necessarily for starting one, such as getting into the bathtub. For those things, I used a count-down: 10, 9, 8...

My kids never found out what happened if I got to zero.

I think the method was useful because it distracted them from whatever they actually wanted to do, just long enough to get their minds on what I wanted.

Me and my wife (a highly qualified childcare professional) used to have theories, too. Now that we have kids, we no longer have theories. We just play by ear.

BTW I never heard of 123 but it just sounds like a pretty natural, common sense approach.

I agree. What’s been interesting is getting to know other families with kids. It’s obviously not always the case, but the fathers often have these elaborate theories. They also look really good in public. I know their wives too. The reality is that they do almost no childcare at home, and their wives have to do almost everything.

It sucks, but the reality (to me) is that you deal with the situations as they appear. Hardest part is managing your own exhaustion after little sleep, look after kids for hours a day for years, and trying to hold down a job at the same time.

I suspect that we are strongly influenced by how we were raised ourselves, and possibly even by genetics. The deluge of parenting advice may give a false impression of how much control we actually have.

This is the closest thing to true, imo. I'm not trying to say we know nothing about parenting. Beating your children probably leads to worse outcomes than not, for example. However the rest is vulnerable to a host of selection bias issues, which rarely seem to be addressed. I'm not saying to ignore advice either, but take it with a grain of salt. If it doesn't work for you, maybe you are doing it wrong. Or maybe your kid is just not the type for which it will work.

There is beating and then there is Pavlovian discipline. While really not the best thing to do, sometimes it really is the last resort... (Say when the kid really is attempting something deadly.)

Have to be real careful when forming associations this way, like some other poster tried with his kid potty training and messed it up. The whole situation gets associated not just what you want. And it is real hard to reverse.

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