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Comment by budu3 | Hacker News Reader

Reading to your kids in not good for them? Can you please elaborate?

Your question and tone is falling into exactly the trap that OP is talking about. The point is not that these specific ideas are _wrong_, the point is that it's a lot more complicated than whether some specific thing is "right" or "wrong." Your intuition will generally make you feel good if you just let it completely dominate your belief system with the "easy" answer, like "of course reading to your kids is good for them." It's hard to challenge your intuition, but it's necessary to base it on real data/evidence if you want to develop your intuition to a point where it actually has utility in evaluating _new_ scenarios based on past experience.

This is why I respect psychologists who test ideas most people consider common sense, even if the results confirm the common sense.

It's like RSVPing to your sister's wedding: it seems obvious, but making it official helps the rest of the planning.

The point of the comment you’re responding to is that we don’t have very much evidence even for things that make intuitive sense to us.

Parent is not saying reading to your kids isn’t good, he’s listing things that many people find intuitive even though they might only have a few (if any) data points on which to base their conclusion.

the "reading to your kids is good" statement is problematic because what is "good"? Basically, if reading to your kids isn't harming them, and they enjoy it, it's "good". Perhaps people are assuming that by "good" they mean, your kid will have superior intelligence or emotional development or something, but that's a lot more specific than "good". By challenging the phrase, "reading to your kids is good" so vaguely, the only alternative would be that reading to your kids is bad. And I think that particular statement is one that hits the "intuitive" spot a lot more broadly. I'm going to guess if I googled "reading to your kids is harmful" I'm going to not find much. (googles) yup, all the hits are about research finding positive benefits of reading to kids.

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