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Comment by mbrumlow | Hacker News Reader

I have a child. I love him very much. I can not fathom why any parents would not have free time as priority.

Free time is amazing. Here is why.

  - I get a break. 
  - My child gets to learn how to learn on his own. 
  - My child builds independence. 
  - My child learns to manage his time on his own.

I see this playing out in the work force too. Far too many people I have worked with that are younger need to be told exactly what to do or they are lost and helpless.

Free time is a win win win.

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What I've observed: they don't want any type of failure for their kids.

I'm a Scoutmaster, and I have one parent who lashed out at me because I asked him not to interfere when the Scouts were trying to do something for themselves.

I didn't let that affect me, I just thanked him for his feedback. Thankfully, I have the support of everyone else in the troop.

What saddens me, is seeing first-hand how bad these parents are for their kids. I feel bad for them. Those kids are going to grow up broken.

This parent's kid only has fun when his parent isn't there. I've never seen him with a smile when his parent is around.

Newton's father died when he was 3 months old and his mother ditched him as a kid and when she returned years later made him quit school to take care of the pigs. The reason he went on to become the Isaac Newton everyone knows, was because of the role all the other Adults around him played, not his parents.

Don't write off that kid.

I teach part time and see this a lot. Especially from fellow teachers. Oh this kid has an alcoholic abusive dad, that kid has a mom with cancer, those 2 have family members in jail etc etc, followed by go easy on the struggling kid or this kid has no hope etc. If the kid flunks a test or skips class let it slide etc.

All this compounds the issue. What is required is the opposite of just sympathy.

Help them find their strengths and interests. Show them how to focus on positives and tune out negatives. Encourage whatever small steps you see them taking. Sensitize the other kids around them to be supportive. Show them examples of resilience and what it takes to be resilient. All these small things add up. Basically don't focus on the parent, focus on things you can do for the kid.

It's very hard to reprogram dysfunctional adults and get them to change, but kids are very different story. And there are few things more beautiful and satisfying, than watching a kid who has struggled for years and years, overcome and kick ass.

Who are you referring to? I hope not public school teachers. They have 25-30 kids per class, little freedom to change curriculum and pressure from both administrators and parents to achieve high grades above all else.

You can preach personal sacrifice until the cows come home - capitalist societies are incompatible with having or raising children - they get in the way of the one true God, quarterly profits.

They're referring most directly to the person they're replying to, Scoutmaster, who is a scoutmaster: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scouting

Thank you for your support. Rest easy, I'm not writing off anyone. Perhaps it was because I wrote, "They are going to grow up broken." In reality, we all grow up broken. Nothing will ever be perfect for anyone - not the rich kids, not the kids with loving parents, etc. The best I can do is teach them and give them the tools to be able to handle adversity and find success anyway.

When I was a kid, my situation was different, and it would have been easy for others to write-off me, but they didn't.

I agree with everything you're saying. I'm in Scouting for the kids, not for the adults. I don't know and will never know any of the kids' complete stories, so I hold them all equal and give them the same opportunities to become better people.

Today's kids are tomorrow's leaders.

To me, this issue is one of the biggies. I understand where that feeling comes from, we are constantly told that everything is a competition or a race.

My wife and my sister are both teachers (languages and physics respectively), and they often encounter parents like that, who insist that their kid can do no wrong, or cannot be allowed to fail (or that any failure is someone elses fault), and it breaks the kids. Some of the kids understand what's going on and do well in spite of their parents, but others become convinced that either they don't have to take responsibility for anything, or insist on doing courses they are simply not going to do well in (like if you have solid Ds in Maths and the sciences, don't insist on doing A-level Physics, and no you are not going to medical school).

My wife's school had a family where all the kids were hard-working, conciencious and all-round lovely, but everyone dreaded dealing with the parents. Any time a kid got a bad mark in anything they would be on the phone demanding an explanation. The kids were always fine about it and knew when they had not worked on something. They sounded permentantly embarressed by their parents.

I have observed this too.

One of the most popular arguments right now against grammar schools in my country is that the kids who don't pass the entrance test will experience failure.

Plain and clear, the parents do not want their 11 year old kids experiencing failure.

If an 11 year old cannot cope with failure, imagine what will happen when they are older and fail an exam at university, or are rejected when applying to jobs.

> I'm a Scoutmaster, and I have one parent who lashed out at me because I asked him not to interfere when the Scouts were trying to do something for themselves.

Anecdotally, there are entire Troops built around that type of parent. Tried BSA for a few years as a teenager, ended up in a group with a revolving door of Scoutmaster, as every time a child gained Eagle they and their parent would disappear. If you didn't have a parent actively pushing you through the badges and ranks, you were SOL.

That won't be my troop. I'm setting clear expectations to parents from the beginning that they are only there for safety, driving kids, etc. I will make sure every Assistant Scoutmaster and Committee Member knows this. I will do my best to make sure that whomever succeeds me, will do the same including letting their eventual replacement know as well.

My goal is to make the Troop self-reliant, not reliant on me. I need to protect it from the Bus Factor.

Are you in a newish troop then? Growing up, all the troops I heard of were pretty established, some going beack nearly to the BSA founding. Typically they were associated with another organization like a church or an Elk's Lodge type thingy.

That said, I hear you on the 'paper eagles'. I saw a lot of kids with their mom just trying to get the rank for college applications and then get out. It was semi-effective. Strangely, the Mormon troops were eagle mills too, but the guys tended to stick around afterwards all the same.

As you're on HN, I'm sure you are aware of the importance of culture in a start-up. I'd say that a troop also has culture and it is very important too. Maybe read up on some of that stuff too.

Also, as I may have your ear, what's your take on girls being full integrated?

My troop is 80+ years old, however I just took over a few months ago. The troop was doing very poorly when I took over: only 7 registered youth, rarely camping, no summer camp in several years, previous Scoutmaster didn't even want to be the Scoutmaster, no Patrol spirit/identity, both the adults and youth had no idea how the program was supposed to work (no Patrol Method, no training, etc).

This was a troop that had a strong program and 30+ youth 15 years ago, chartered by a large-ish church.

I don't think the troop produced any paper-Eagles in those 15 years (I kept in touch), but when I took over, the head of the church asked for better Eagle Projects.

As for girls, I'm fine with that. Character-building isn't only for boys. There is Girl Scouts of the USA (GSA) troops that have good outdoor programs but they are very few and far in-between. They are more known for "glamping" and selling cookies. Gold Award doesn't have the same recognition as Eagle Scout. Something that I found out: GSA troops are not always sponsered by an organization, and those that are sponsered, are not owned by the sponsering organization. In contrast, all BSA troops have a sponsering(chartering) organization and the sponser owns the troop. So, GSA and BSA have different programs and fulfil different needs. It's good that more youth now have more options for personal growth.

If I had a daughter and BSA wasn't available, I would look into American Heritage Girls (a scout-like organization, sometimes called Heritage Scouts) or another program like that. The BSA has had co-ed programs for 14-21 year olds since the 1970s though: Venturing, Varsity, and Explorers. However I think it's just Venturing now, IDK.

FYI, in Cub Scouts, boys and girls are seperated by dens (patrols). In Scouts BSA (renamed from Boy Scouts where youth can earn Eagle), boys and girls are seperated by troops (but can have same number, same chartering org, etc... just separate youth structure).

> no summer camp in several years

Good God! Why even bother at that point? Camp is one of the highlights of the scouting year. It would be like skipping Christmas.

Glad to hear you are reviving things. It's a tough road and a lot of lonely work. That said, it'll be worth it a thousand times over for the kiddos.

A lot of older school BSA folks aren't that keen on the girls comming in, which is a bit funny. What with Venture Crews, girls have been a part of BSA Scouting in the US for a while now.

I remember the international jamboreesm and international troops during my time in the scouts. Nearly all other countries have just scouting and do not break it up by sex. As such, they kinda looked at us US scouts a bit askance. Everyone else was just fine with girls/boys around and had little problems (that we knew of at least). It was a new way to look at the world that we hadn't been exposed too. Neckerchief trading with the girls from other countries was a great icebreaker too :)

This saddens me too. Recently, I traveled with my 19 year old nephew to Thailand. This guy had been so coddled by his parents all through that he had no experience of doing things by himself. Once when he wanted to go to our resort room from the beach (about 500m walk) in the daytime, he refused to do so alone. He asked me to accompany him. This was a straight line walk and I said he could ask anyone if he couldn't figure it out :-/

I worry about young kids whose parents give them an iPad at all times, to the point that they're not even without it during a meal at a restaurant or other occasions. And how that may affect their ability to develop resiliency and creativity.

"During a meal at a restaurant" is the time parents are most likely to get them out. Don't assume that generalizes to when they're at home and have lots of options of what to do while waiting for dinner. Keeping kids quiet and happy while they're hungry and waiting is the hardest part of going out to eat with young kids. We use crayons and paper, but I don't think that's so intrinsically better than an iPad.

That's fine, when it never becomes the all-purpose go-to pacifier.

I remember being at an NHL game where a kid was immersed in his device the entire night, despite being in a $148 seat to (IMHO) the most attention-maintaining of all sports. Having never been taken to a major league sporting event for my entire childhood, seeing this saddened me.

It could be a stress reaction. He might be so overstimulated he needs something close to focus on.

> I remember being at an NHL game where a kid was immersed in his device the entire night, despite being in a $148 seat to (IMHO) the most attention-maintaining of all sports. Having never been taken to a major league sporting event for my entire childhood, seeing this saddened me.

Having been taken to professional and high-level college sports many times in my childhood, starting with an NFL game as a toddler, I'm not saddened by it: until I was a teenager, most of the games were either overwhelmingly far out tediously slow, and in either case only weakly engaging. But my being there meant my parents could be there and I could be with them; I invariably had something else to engage me; I never regretted it and I don't think my parents did either.

My parents took me to sports events and I despised it. When I was able to persuade them to leave me home to play on the computer I was much happier. As an adult, I don't attend sports events either.

I have nothing against people who enjoy watching sports, but it seems strange to me to consider sports viewing as inherently virtuous. You could be doing anything with a computer and a network connection. Even watching sports.

NHL is horribly boring for small children, as are most professional sports. The rules don’t make much sense, the games last way too long, the seats are not child friendly, etc.

And many adults too!

In my view there is no qualitative difference between those two activities. Both are just different modes of consumption. Actually playing the sport would be something different, though.

Some people, like me, just don't like to watch sports, even I do a lot of sport by myself. I almost never ever watch on TV, I almost never went to watch a live event. The only reason to watch was if I knew somebody in a amateur event.

You fool, you mentioned sports! The one example guaranteed to make the Hacker News crowd rush in and defend the child watching Youtube!

Try this simple modification to get them on your side of the argument:

> I remember being at a TED Talk where a kid was immersed in his device the entire night, despite being in a $148 seat to (IMHO) the most attention-maintaining of all events. Having never been taken to a major thought leader event for my entire childhood, seeing this saddened me.

> We use crayons and paper, but I don't think that's so intrinsically better than an iPad.

Maybe not intrinsically, but what I see kids doing handheld computers at restaurants (and sitting in a cart at the grocery store, and getting pushed around town in a stroller, and on public transit, and sitting in their car seats, and at the playground, and at the airport, and on the plane, and at the doctor’s office, and waiting at government offices, ... and I can only assume at home too, though I have a smaller sample of kids I can see at their homes) is playing computer games or watching videos.

I don’t think computer games and videos are inherently evil or anything, but they can be extremely distracting and addictive, and some very small kids are dramatically overexposed to them. For many kids these have crowded out a great deal of social interaction, reading, self-directed free play, ...

Paper and crayons have none of the problems of videos or computer games, in my opinion. Especially if they are being used in a social way with multiple people interacting.

I have found that usually my 3-year-old doesn’t have any problem at restaurants unless the adults are talking to each-other and ignoring him, in which case he gets bored and starts running all around, etc. If we are talking to him, playing little games, drawing with crayons together, reading a book aloud, etc. then he is just fine. YMMV.

>and I can only assume at home too

This is the whole thing. Don't assume that. When my kids are at home they're inventing elaborate games to play with eachother. When we're in public somewhere where they don't want to be, they're doing whatever gets us through peacefully.

I should be clearer. My point in that sentence was that what I observe kids doing with iPads is not drawing or writing or coding or making music or reading books or ..., which might be meaningfully comparable to drawing with crayons. Almost everything I see is games and videos, and I am not an expert or super careful observer but it seems like the tendency is toward games and videos that require little thinking and are designed to be maximally addictive.

I don’t mean that every kid who is sitting on the subway with an iPad also spends every moment at home doing the same.

But some of them unfortunately do spend lots of time at home glued to screens. I have multiple friends whose older kids have serious problems with TV, video game, social media, etc. habits, which start crowding out many other activities, with the parents not really knowing what to do about it because they don’t want to have a fight every day.

And some young kids who might not be on their video / game machine at home are doing it a lot in contexts where kids would have in the past either been engaged with the world or entertaining themselves. There is a vast difference between a 3-year-old riding around in a stroller looking at a smartphone vs. a 3-year-old walking around on their own feet looking at the world and talking to the adults walking with them.

These devices seem fine to break out occasionally when the parent desperately needs a break from demands on their attention. But there are kids using these devices for extended periods every day.

P.S. The same goes for adults: people should trade their smartphones for a book or a conversation with the person next to them or just some daydreaming from time to time.

Our son (4) was diagnosed with ASD. He struggles to sit still and that makes eating at restaurants really difficult because he just wants to run all around the room, climb the tables and chairs, take things off other tables etc.

Putting his headphones on with his Fire tablet helps keep him calm so we can enjoy our food (and so can everyone else). And we get plenty of sideways glances, like we're doing parenting wrong.

People don't see how many hours he spends running around the park, drawing, reading books, playing with toys etc.

During the meal at restaurant is the exact time where you bring up iPad even if you normally dont. It is so that a.) other people in restaurant eat at peace b.) parents can talk to each other about adult topics (work, family etc).

What you're missing is many people in modern society have decided that kids are solely the responsibility of their parents and no one should ever suffer any inconvenience or displeasure as a result of them. However slight it might be. This means anytime your kid decides to act out in any way in public, including occasionally make a sound above speaking level, you are disrupting other people's experiences and get dirty looks by these people.

Also, don't think to do anything when there are fewer crowds, because this is when these types of people tend to congregate the most - they like their empty, quiet, orderly spaces and your kids' presence is most definitely not welcome at this time.

This is also a very US centric thing. In mainland Europe, there is not nearly as much animosity towards children.

But children here are generally expected to behave well when in company or public. At least they are where I live in Norway. Children here are generally self reliant but also quiet and well behaved so one rarely sees animosity to children, partly I suspect because the trigger rarely happens.

>I worry about young kids whose parents give them an iPad at all times, to the point that they're not even without it during a meal at a restaurant or other occasions.

I mean, as a child in the 80's and 90's when we went out to eat my first question was "can I have crayons and a maze" and once I had a Gameboy...

With my kids, being boring is the best gift I can give them in a day. They invariably do something awesome. But only after a brief spell of wanting direct guidance. Sometimes not so brief.

Sometimes, my kids will say they're bored. My response to them is that my job is not to entertain them. They totally get it, though sometimes they're still bored...

Why not plan an activity or build something together?

Or let the kid plan an activity. Sesame Street literally has a song about this.

Because it’s not your job as a parent to entertain your children.

Because that would solve that particular situation, but wouldn't be good for the kid overall. Situations like these are where kids learn introspection (what is it I actually would like to do now?) and emotional autonomy (I can create a good experience by myself), resulting in the idea of self-efficacy, which, beside the cognitive abilities, is the skill to have to successfully navigate the stressfull and anxious situations of adult life.

Think about you adult life: When are the moments you have some kind of epiphany about something that currently bothers you? For many people this happens when out for a walk, under the shower or a similar situation when the own mind is free to wander.

Cognitive development is important, but school, discourse with parents etc. is usually enough for the healthy development of most kids. For a successful life as an adult, the emotional development is just as important, though.

And that's okay. You're job isn't to be their friend either.

A parent's job is to give their kids opportunity to learn and grow. You can't always force it on them, and they won't always be interested.

You can give them them the opportunity to do something that will help them grow (learn, build character, etc) or they can be bored, but if they choose to be bored, they need to be told that they have options, and they are the ones choosing to be bored.

And the opportunities you give them don't always have to be something that costs you time or money, sometimes it's just giving them the opportunity to go outside and play.

That's exactly why I have so many hobbies today.

When I was a kid, I used to just watch TV and wait for friends to come at home to play.

In one particular afternoon, there was nothing good showing on TV and my friends are away. I complained to my mom that I was bored(implying that she should solve this "problem" for me).

My mom basically said just what you posted above. That it was my responsibility to find my own fun.

That was an epiphany that had a tremendous impact in my life.

I'm the same. I consider myself very, very privileged.

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