Why do you let your kids watch Youtube? I never understood this. You as a parent have sole responsibility for what your kids consume.
The problem is these content farms and ultimately the low payouts. Listen up YouTube: I would happily pay for better quality kids content. I'm about to trial Amazon FreeTime...
Personally, I don’t let mine near YouTube unless we’re looking something up together. They’re allowed kids Netflix but even that has plenty of content I don’t let them watch. Annoyingly, there’s no way to remove a show from Netflix. I’ve been meaning to make a chrome extension so I can blast the likes of Horseland into another dimension.
The American Association of Pediatrics recommends no screen time under 18 months except for video chatting, and only 1 hour a day for children 2-5 [0]
Most of us are engineers here, but as soon as parenting comes up people become so superstitious and irrational.
[0] https://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages...
I have a fair amount of experience with this system. Not due to those phone calls but due to other things I did, foster care being one.
I cared for kids, who got placed with us. Some of those people earned that. Not good. Obvious.
On those, my wife and I did a good public service. It is hard.
But, I saw many cases where a disgruntled person ruined families too. Those kids should never have been with us at all. Yet they were, and worse, we had to hold a terrible line or it gets worse for the kids and potentially us!
A few samples:
Baby sitter feels she can do better, phones the father in. Boom. He spends 6 months being psych evaluated, his wife does not know what to think, and part of his struggle is having his johnson in a clamp while being shown suggestive kiddie pictures. That family got past it. We helped once we were free of the system. Labor of love and justice there.
They left the State the moment they could. Cannot blame them.
Ex wife hated step mom. Similar thing, both parents end up in some program. Never did get right. Just a mess, kids with relatives.
Dad loses his mind in the store. Brats got under his skin. Delivered a quick swat, lets go home. Ended up in all sorts of trouble for essentially getting a toddlers attention. Concerned people trump up abuse case. Never did see that one conclude.
People lose their kids these days. It does not take much. You should also know all public servants, teachers, many coaches are obligated to report or face charges in many places. The report bar is very, very low. An angry kid can get another kids family in the system. I saw that happen.
Having frank conversations about parenting carries grave implications these days. It was once not like this, but it is now. Among a trusted peer group it still happens as it always has.
Out in public? Internet? People are crazy to mention specifics. Just don't do it. Ever.
I do not have answers. I wish I did given what I saw.
I can help share hard won understanding. So I have.
Just know the touchy parent convo is systemic, not so much people being snowflakes or something.
It was an answer to the question of why bad parenting discussions often are met with angst.
People get questioned on parenting, and suddenly they are in the middle of a mess and they are there because other people said, "bad parent" essentially.
Understanding how that can happen is germane.
Here is all it would take in many States:
Those parents just leave their kids with an iPad, and do not watch their kids. Follow that with just about any scary scenario and it is likely to trigger people at your door asking questions.
What I did here was share a little from the other side of some of those events gone bad. None of those should have happened. They all were rooted in literally, "bad parent" allegations created out of thin air with basis as thin as "screen time."
Parents here should be aware of what can happen. Comments to the effect of, "WTF is it with parenting discussions?" These potential events are part of WTF.
Frankly, I only shared difficulty to underscore complete disapproval, and I should have shared we quit due to how out of control and abused it can be, and is regularly. Some if those families were of non trivial means too.
"It won't happen to me." Know I have seen otherwise, and that is all.
I rarely downvote myself, preferring to promote signal out of the noise instead. But that's just my preference. What I appreciate is knowing why, that's some understanding right there. I can use it, it's got value. I wish more of us would understand that.
I don't have kids so I'm curious, why youtube? I assume most families don't have the time for a full time parental distraction but is there really no other alternative? I'd imagine Disney or some other media giant would have figured something out by now. Is youtube content just so practically endless and passive enough that no one can compete? Or is it just that they don't like gaming or TV shows that much (or you dont allow it)?
It’s not hard to “distract toddlers”, my daughter is three and LOVES to help cook. She fries eggs pretty well and I figure the worst that’ll happen is she’ll burn herself (which she hasn’t). Given the right opportunities and structure children can actually be much more helpful than we give them credit for, especially in the USA we’re just sort of taught that children are useless ingrates that are wholly incapable of the most rudimentary tasks (I mean I was certainly treated that way).
It’s a self fulfilling prophecy, the more constantly stimulated the kid is, the more difficult it is for them to pay attention when it’s important.
I think this is true for all humans in general. I actually think it is worse for teenagers who have more unsupervised time and don't know any better. --
FYI.. there was a program on about kids in Costa Rica or maybe Honduras where they all had chores. Even the 3 year olds. I thought it was interesting as the kids themselves were very well behaved.
[0] https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/09/01/6412662... [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/daily-dish/archive/2010/10/weste...
Maybe I'm over protective, but hot oil around a 3 year old sounds like a bad idea. I get it that they can do it, but it only takes 1 accident to scar them for life and 3 year olds are super uncoordinated. I have been called a helicopter parent before though, so maybe it's me being a bit weird.
I get some judgy looks on the playground for studiously ignoring my kid and letting her play for three hours and everyone else stays for maybe 15 minutes being super engaged with their kids before they get super bored and leave, so I guess I’m not really normal. I consider one of my goals to get my daughter to walk to the park alone at five, since that was the age I had agency to go wherever I wanted. I’m not super optimistic, I may end up moving to a small town to make that possible, if I can get a good remote position eventually.
Are you maybe misremembering your age at the time? I have a 4.5 year old at home and there is no way that I think he will be ready to go the park a couple of streets away on his own. By not ready I mean, in no way capable of judging when to cross a street safely and may get lost on the way, especially if he gets distracted and absentmindedly wanders in an unfamiliar direction.
There was a recent study [1] that showed that kids have a highly elevated risk of accident when crossing the road right up to the age of 14 (!! was surprised to read this). Some points from the research:
- simulating traffic showed accident rates as high as eight per cent with six-year-olds
- Even those aged 12 were hit by vehicles two per cent of the time
- It was not until early adolescence that children crossed the road safely
Just thought I'd point this out in case you were not aware of the research.
Kudos for promoting self-reliance and independence though. I am a long way in the other direction where I do way too much to try and ensure my kid's safety. I know I need to ease up so that he can start to make his own mistakes.
[1] https://now.uiowa.edu/2017/04/why-children-struggle-cross-bu...
Would you cross the road if you were hit by a car for every 12 times you crossed?
> kids are very fast learners and learn to be independent fairly easily if pushed or directed in that direction..
An acceptable level of risk awareness can't be taught to kids under a certain age because their brain development is not yet at the level where they are capable of learning certain things. For example: do you think there is any level of training that you could give a 5 year old to safely handle a loaded gun? Do you think there is a level of training you could give a 5 year old to then leave them unsupervised with a gun? Crossing a street is no different. It's life and death.
If you've ever spent any time around kids 6 and younger you will know that they have very intense tunnel vision and very poor situation awareness. It's not their fault. They literally don't yet have the brain development necessary for accurately predicting future events and predicting the consequences of their actions.
> “Perhaps the most persuasive evidence regarding the attitude of adults toward children acquiring culture through play – without the need for adult guidance – comes from widespread reports of parents’ indifference and even encouragement of toddlers playing with machetes and other sharp and dangerous tools (Howard 1970: 35). For example, from the Kwoma of Papua New Guinea: “I once saw Suw with the blade of a twelve-inch bush knife in his mouth and the adults present paid no attention to him” (Whiting 1941: 25). Aka mothers regret it when their infants cut themselves while playing with “knives but they don’t want to restrain their exploration and learning (Hewlett 2013: 65–66). The Aka provide scaled versions of items in their tool inventory to their very young children and enjoy observing (and, occasionally correcting) their practice strikes (Hewlett et al. 2011: 1175). Four-and-a-half-year-old Okinawan children readily peel the outer skin off a length of sugar cane with a sharp sickle. When a mother was asked how the child acquired this skill she was at a loss for a reply. “‘I don’t know! He must have watched us and learned himself by trying it out!’ she said” (Maretzki and Maretzki 1963: 511)”
They're not stupid and I didn't say they are. They lack experience and do not have the skills (brain development) that are necessary to cross a road without significant risk.
Read: https://now.uiowa.edu/2017/04/why-children-struggle-cross-bu...
From the research:
> "The researchers found 6-year-olds were struck by vehicles 8 percent of the time; 8-year-olds were struck 6 percent; 10-year-olds were struck 5 percent; and 12-year-olds were struck 2 percent. Those age 14 and older had no accidents.
Children contend with two main variables when deciding whether it’s safe to cross a street, according to the research. The first involves their perceptual ability, or how they judge the gap between a passing car and an oncoming vehicle, taking into account the oncoming car’s speed and distance from the crossing. Younger children, the study found, had more difficulty making consistently accurate perceptual decisions.
The second variable was their motor skills: How quickly do children time their step from the curb into the street after a car just passed? Younger children were incapable of timing that first step as precisely as adults, which in effect gave them less time to cross the street before the next car arrived."
Your quote from David F. Lancy’s Anthropology of Childhood is an anecdote. Was there a study done to measure child mortality and injury in this community? Would it be acceptable by modern standards?
My dad was raised in an eastern European village in the 1950s. From his stories child supervision was non existent. He has many stories of children who died due to accidents, e.g. children who misjudged the thickness of a frozen lake, fell through and drowned. Of course most survived into adulthood, but by modern standards child mortality rates were completely unacceptable.
I haven’t read the article you quote and I won’t because the conclusions you’re drawing from it are insane. Maybe the internal validity is good and if the experiment was replicated the same results would be obtained. The external validity is obviously not there. They are attempting to measure how traffic mortality from independent road crossing and they get numbers so high that it’s obvious their experiment doesn’t generalise to the question they’re actually interested in.
If we pretend that children do not cross the road until age 12 and assume 0.99 chance of surviving one crossing a day, after 100 days 63% will be dead.
Or I could just examine my own experience. My father and I both grew up within 100m of a main road with heavy traffic and we survived unscathed. The paper does not support your conclusion.
There may be a sensible conversation to be had on child supervision but my father grew up in the 50s too and it was not the hellscape you depict. If you look at deaths per 100,000 young children 5-14 they’re at worst three times current levels. By the 80s they’ve dropped to less than double current levels and people weren’t going insane wrapping their children in cotton wool and depriving them of all contact with the real world then. Deaths in childhood are so low that accidents are a minority of childhood deaths.
You’re advocating depriving children of freedom under a model of the world where childhood is so dangerous no one would survive when the trends in death rates are pretty much the same across industrialised countries while the insane helicopter parenting isn’t.
www.freerangeparenting.com
They're not my conclusions, I quoted a summary the researchers provided.
>Or I could just examine my own experience
Since when do personal anecdotes trump research?
If you are watching your child for three hours on the playground then it is obvious you either do not have a regular job or only doing this on the weekends.
Check your privilege before you lecture others on how to parent. Also the hot cooking with 3 year olds is idiotic and dangerous even if it’s “just with butter” (??).
Problem being ?
Frying eggs doesn't require hot oil, just a non stick pan and maybe a dab of butter.
You're _going_ to burn yourself cooking from time to time. Should you then never cook? :)
Good luck!
risk vs reward. Have you spent any time around a 3 year old? They are super uncoordinated at this age and can't take off a sock without falling on their butt. GP clarified that it was supervised cooking with low heat and without oil, so that sounds safe to me, but certainly wouldn't have any other pots with for example, water boiling around since they don't have the experience to avoid it and the results can end up catastrophic.
A 2 year old in my wife's mother's group got 3rd degree burns from tipping a hot cup of tea on himself. Luckily it missed his face, but his neck and chest are now permanently scarred (and disfigured). The child required 6 months of physical therapy because the burn was down the neck and under the arm so movement was affected due to scar tissue. Any liquid over about 60 degrees C is a very real hazard for small child.
It really depends on context. A closely supervised 3 year old "cooking" using very low heat without oil and without a boiling pot around? Yup that sounds ok.
I don't doubt that it is, yet this is a problem that humans have been solving literally since the dawn of time. I doubt very much that YouTube is necessary.
We have two under three so I understand the exhausting routine
He would be very rough with my laptop, even pulling out keys and trying to throw it but be very careful with ipad. I'm not sure why.
Are you trying to say that this is a good thing? Do we expect our children to be able, say, to speak English?
What did you think kids did before youtube?
They have legos btw.
Kernel Time?
I understand it is one of the easiest pacification mechanisms for parents at the moment, but there is a cost.
Don't defer your parental responsibilities to Google's algorithms,designed to increase engagement, not "learning".
Does anybody read books to their children?
For example: What about a single mom who puts on youtube for her child while she does the home chores and cooks because she does not have the money to pay for anything else (youtube is free)? Should she force her kid to sit there without any stimuli while she works? I'd argue that is far worse.
My sister has a 10 year old son and has absolutely no interest in even talking about parental controls. He spends all his time watching Logan Paul and who knows what else. I know how I was as a boy coming of age with unrestricted internet, and I worry about him.
did you turn out ok?
when I was a kid in the early 80's kids would bring torn out pages from dad's dirty magazines, we'd sneak in to watch adult movies etc, and as far as I can tell we all turned out just fine.
On the other hand there is liveleak now and I'm not sure what effect that would have on a 10 year old's psyche. I guess we'll find out in the next decade or two.
I really didn’t turn out ok. I don’t really want to go into details, but I turned out very far from ok. Maybe I wouldn’t have turned out different without internet, I can’t really know. I do know that I’m going to be really zealous in keeping the unrestricted internet away from my sons. And my girls, but for different reasons.
> Parenting choices can be a way of harming people.
Sure, but the clarity of the information on which choices are likely harmful outside of fairly direct, physical harm is often far less than the shakers would like to pretend; it wasn't long ago (in fact it still happens even though the recommendation of the AAP has since caught up with the science) people were being shamed for providing early exposure to various nuts (the evidence note suggests the old advice that shaving was based on produced a huge surge in nut allergy prevalence, rather than mitigating risk.)
> People who harm people should be shamed.
And shaming, anyway, isn't all that effective (and certainly not a harm free) method of correction even when based on correct premises; when based on faulty premises it's an unmitigated harm.
So shamers generally deserve, by that standard, to be shamed; by a reasonable harm minimization standard they need to be corrected.
Until you've tried it you don't know how terrible it is. And by that time it's normally too late.