Parenting: Who is it really for? (2017)
sivers.org
sivers.org
Being a parent is tough. It’s hard work — you are thrown into this huge responsibility with no experience what-so-ever. It’s easy to feel completely abandoned in this task, it’s easy to feel that you’re not enough, that you could, or should, be doing more, better or what have you.
I believe what we need, as parenting advice, is that what kids really need is love and care. It is ok to be tired as a parent, it is ok to not be able to sit and play with your kid for hours straight, it’s ok to have the kids watch the iPad, even though it’s “not stimulating their intellect” so that you have the time to shower or get something to eat. And most important, it is ok to not be the best parent in the world.
I think the internet needs more messages like that instead of further increasing our insecurities as parents. Being a parent is damn though as is.
I agree with this.
it’s ok to have the kids watch the iPad, even though it’s “not stimulating their intellect”
Not criticizing: Why this? Why not encourage the child to do something like use Swift Playgrounds (an iPad app made for young children), or play a game, or read a book?
And most important, it is ok to not be the best parent in the world.
Shouldn't that be the aim of everyone, even if they miss it?
Yes. If you have something more stimulating to throw at the kid, that’s great, but the point is to not beat oneself up if you don’t.
The thing is, I believe, that all this trying to be the best parent in the world is contra-productive. Because being the best parent in the world, if you read online, seem to be based on completely the wrong criterias.
But that’s an opinion and maybe I am just holding on to that opinion in order to protect my own parent-self-esteem. Telling myself that it is ok for me to not constantly come up with new stimulating things to do.
By the way. Having a three year old sit through an entire opera seems strange. Children at that age don’t have that kind of attention span for biological reasons. That’s why you don’t diagnose things like ADHD at that age, because everyone would have it.
This seems wrong? I remember watching every Lord of the Rings movie (9 hours) at once around that age. It's five, not three, by the way.
The thing is, I believe, that all this trying to be the best parent in the world is contra-productive. Because being the best parent in the world, if you read online, seem to be based on completely the wrong criterias.
Why would the internet be the only place to get an idea on how to do parenting correctly?
Telling myself that it is ok for me to not constantly come up with new stimulating things to do.
This seems correct! Most children will come up with stimulating things to do on their own. The important thing for you to do is probably just teach them how to get the items they need to stimulate themselves, which is a small time-investment. It would be pretty harmful to always be picking every action they do.
You're probably doing fine, given the amount of thought you've put into it.
citation please. my kids could watch tv for hours at 3 years, much to my dismay. i'd actually love it if they got bored from it.
however, that is exactly the point. sivers managed to instill an attention span in his child that i find admirable. good on him, and also good on him for recognizing how much he benefits himself from that.
I agree. Good on him, good for him.
the teachers mainly observe and will focus on one child at a time, when they need guidance or are ready to learn something new.
My ten year old enjoyed it.
My eight year old coped but squirmed a lot and complained of it being boring afterwards. I think he has a slightly shorter attention span and likes theater performances less-- but also was just particularly impatient that day.
Not very long ago, parents used to routinely beat up their kids, and this was considered socially acceptable. In that case, it’s a good thing we had some judgmental know-it-alls around to tell everyone it wasn’t such a good idea.
Most of us all capable of reproduction, and most of us are capable of raising children.
It's the loud minority of people on the sidelines, who sow doubt on this topic, with stories of CEOs who don't have time for their kids, druggy parents neglecting their children or absent mothers/fathers.
Go forth and multiply.
Most of the stories I hear from friends about their parents are nightmares. And that's talking into account that the people I surround myself with are much more well adjusted than the general population.
If anything, I'd say that most people fail at parenting miserably.
Are you sure you are cultivating his attention span, or were you both just born like that, and he is getting older and more mature?
The hours you spend with your children (5 hours a day would be really difficult with 3 kids) during a couple of years in their childhood is not that important to their adult personality. It’s a combination of traits from birth, which class mates they get, the teachers, if they get sick, infections, siblings, grand parents, media, culture...
Personally I enjoy spending time with my kids, so both me and my wife work shorter hours, but it’s to do stuff we all enjoy right now, not to cultivate this or that personality trait.
Don’t be a terrible parent, and your kids will turn out whoever they were meant to be. And do the things you and your kids enjoy.
That think really works, I encountered the idea first time when I read about Montessory system. I dont know effects in long term, but in short term. If you make it strategy to not break kids attention, kids attention span goes up.
If you think about it, the same thing actually works with adults. When you are interrupted every few moments (for example by management, colleges or kid) you have harder time to focus for long spans. Once the interruptions stop, your attention span goes up.
Ah, nature vs. nurture-- perhaps not the most novel take.
> The hours you spend with your children (5 hours a day would be really difficult with 3 kids) during a couple of years in their childhood is not that important to their adult personality. It’s a combination of traits from birth, which class mates they get, the teachers, if they get sick, infections, siblings, grand parents, media, culture...
It sure looks like activities during age 0-5 have a huge impact on overall trajectory. Yes, the genetic starting point matters, as does everything else afterwards.
> not to cultivate this or that personality trait.
IMO this is the biggest problem. I think being excessively intentional has significant potential downsides.
> By cultivating his long attention span, I’m cultivating my own.
> By entering his world, I’m letting go of my own, like meditation.
> By broadening his inputs, I’m broadening my own.
My younger brother was like this. The downside is that he was growing up without friends. He would be interested in many things other kids of his age were finding boring.
I'm on my third parenting blog. I was a full-time wife and mom for a lot of years. I've really struggled to get any traction with anything I've done.
I think I have really excellent credentials. I homeschooled. I was Director of Community Life for The TAG Project for a time, which was pro bono professional work for a voluntary health and welfare organization dealing with the educational, emotional and social needs of gifted kids.
But that doesn't really translate to a resume, so to speak. I get a lot of flak for trying to say "I know something useful and I have special credentials." People mostly think I am making that up.
We look to famous actors and the like for stuff like parenting advice in part because we have some sense of knowing them and being able to trust what they say. Maybe someday I can address the "parenting information" space better than Sivers, but it takes more than just being a good parent to do that.
You also need to know how to write extremely well, navigate protecting family privacy while sharing inherently private stories and cultivate an audience. There may be more to it than that, but that's a plenty tall order to begin with right there.
If people think it is awful that some rich guy who can afford to spend a lot of time with his kid is talking about that, then maybe go spend time on parenting blogs written by full-time moms or people with less vaunted financial circumstances.
Of course, one of the problems is that people working 9-5 who have children probably can't manage to turn out a quality blog while doing all that. Good writing takes time and effort.
There is no perfect solution here. I was trying to develop a parenting blog when my kids were still minors and people on email lists were interested in what I had to say and I didn't know how to deal with a lot of the pieces of that. I couldn't monetize it effectively or get much in the way of traffic, etc.
So when I got divorced, no, my blogs didn't support me. I got a corporate job instead and continued to fail as a blog writer. I got some success as a blogger while homeless.
This is partly me -- I didn't know what I was doing -- and partly the world. The world didn't really want to help me succeed.
If you want a certain kind of information to exist, then be a good audience. Go give attention, feedback and financial support to people doing that kind of writing. Help them develop their craft.
Sivers is so rich, he can afford to not really care what anyone thinks about him anymore. And he isn't giving parenting advice per se here.
Right. It is quite similar, isn't it? In more then one way, that is exactly what he does and thinks about. None of what he write about is super exceptional. It is also about him and about what we should do, not about us, he is not telling us that we must do it his way.
But also, I guess there is some gender equality in angry responses from people who are not in that situation. He is getting the same "shut up don't talk about what you do" and bad faith reading that chilesspeople and working fathers react with at mommy discussion forums (in my personal experience - moms with one exception either ignored it or read it, but did not seemed to be offended by its existence as much nor as consistently).
I grew up and was a full-time wife and mom for a long time. I always knew what was in the fridge. My husband and sons would ask me "What's in the fridge?" It looked like crappy gendered behavior.
I got divorced and got a corporate job and got my sons to take over "the women's work." Once I stopped doing all the grocery shopping and cooking and my son took it over, I began asking him "What's in the fridge?"
As a general rule of thumb, people usually aren't giving an intentionally bad faith reading. They are just talking about how it looks to them from their position in life.
Humans tend to suffer tunnel vision, in some sense. It can be very challenging to get outside ourselves and take on a broader perspective. This is compounded by the fact that most people are raised with either a shame model or guilt model, so they are quick to feel accused, even if that's not what's happening.
Trust me, what I am referring to is bad faith reading. Reactions completely disproportionate to content, very apparently hostile reactions from people who did not read it, looking for reasons to mock. Reading attention seeking (or external validation) in literally everything. Treating mild disagreement between members as something horrible (no insults or personal attacks, literally just disagreement).
Side note: I never start these discussions, for some reason people actively used that as conversation starters. Along with dumb supposed funny remarks about women. I know how to stop it now, but it was puzzling and frustrating and shocking after I came back to work. Why are you conversation starting by insulting people like me?
The most apparent public hostility was when said forum was looking for programmer. The Facebook thread under it had people who were neither programmers nor moms talking about supposed super crazy women there. Like "take this job and you will be working for oversensitive anti vaccines crazies". Meanwhile actual forums were like any other and prevalent sentiment was not anti-vacine at all. It wasn't even big topic, trading used baby cloth, craft, cooking and child raising issues were dominant topics.
And meanwhile ani vaccine male collegues gets no pushback whatsoever nor is ever used as example of anti vacine person. Does not fit profile I guess.
We should all remember that how people present themselves online, whether it's beautiful photos on Instagram or enlightened blog posts, is not reality.
Being a parent is fucking hard. I love it, it may be hard to see it sometimes but it's worth it, and I don't pretend for a minute that I don't fuck it up every other moment or that it isn't the most challenging role I've taken on. I also don't preach to other parents how they should raise their kids. I do my best, though I fail, to not judge how other people parent. I certainly don't blab about it if I do. I guess except in this miserable instance.
Most importantly, he has time in a way most working parents do not.
Maybe that changes your perspective of how applicable his views are to your situation.
Sivers legally forced himself to give nearly the entire value of his company (~$22,000,000 - (5% per year of living)) that he had worked years to build to charity, and that can be verified pretty easily.
It's safe to say he's a better person than most, and this article isn't really advice in the sense you seem to be implying. Using a holier-than-thou tone probably doesn't help your case, very much.
Better than most who make millions, not than general population. Who knows, maybe the millionaires are "worse" than the average in this regard.
I know D Sivers visits HN and we can be civil and polite about analyzing his text separately from his intentions. If you read some of the other HN replies in this thread, DS's wording has clearly rubbed some (not all) the wrong way. Imo, here are some example sentences that some readers may not like:
>Other families come to the playground for twenty or thirty minutes, but we stay there for hours.
>Nobody else can play with us like this. Everyone else gets so bored.
Regardless of DS's charities and wholesome intentions, that type of text above will always be percieved by some as humblebrag and condescension toward other parents. Some will roll their eyes and think of the Willy Wonka meme: https://www.google.com/search?q=condescending+wonka&source=l...
For a subset of irritated readers, it's DS written text that seems to have the "holier-than-thou" vibe.
That said, most of DS blog posts have that similar tone so some readers will always smile and nod along while others will find it a turnoff. One can't please everyone.
Raising a child looks like it's a game of, "How few orders of consequences can I reach before I see how my child's behavior is my responsibility?" to some parents.
Some parents take this to a negative place by blaming themselves for their kids negative traits, especially so if their kid is dominated by those traits. Other parents claim credit for the wonderful things about their kid, again especially so when the kid is defined by those positive traits.
It takes a wholly different kind of parent to be proud of how they're effecting their kid before they even know how the kid ends up turning out, setting aside the reality that parents are only one part of the vast swirl of influence a child experiences.
The pushback to this article might come from Sivers pre-supposing his kid is better off for having his father treat him as he does.
That is a very common tax shelter rich people use to avoid paying capital gains tax, called a CRUT. It hardly makes him a saint.
People are born with an innate ability to parent equally as well as anybody else. All parents are fantastic at it.
The real funny thing is that he's not even telling you what to do. He just spends a lot of time with his kid and wrote about why it makes him happy.
Is he not supposed to give advice because of the age of his offspring? What age children and how many ought one to have before giving parenting advice?
It seemed like good advice to me, and I liked the point that in the end he's doing it all for himself.
This guys is a freshman parent, but he does have a few good points.
He is in for a surprise when he has more kids and simply cannot put as much time into each kid.
But, at the same time I would raise my expectations. I did this for the later kids and it's made them harder workers and more responsible.
I would spend more time teaching them to enjoy work instead of play. Find the joy of accomplishment.
I would never ever (ever again) overlook disrespectful, rude or nasty behavior in any way. Because a 3 year old making nasty faces is cute, but a 16 year old making the exact same face she has made for years is hurtful, insulting and simply aggravating.
I would recognize that almost all the bad behaviors a child has is the same I have, but without any adult filters to hide it properly.
I would be so much more vigilant about knowing what my kid is dealing with at school. We had a few really bad teachers that really affected my kids poorly and it broke my heart to only learn about it after the fact.
I would teach my child to be strong, brave and have real courage. Give her opportunities to have courage and really demonstrate how to stand up to others.
But I would do all of these things patiently. I would let her fail and not be angry. Failure is fine, as long as they know what is right and good to do, they will try again. But I was harsh on failure and it drove a wedge between my oldest daughter and me, that I had to work hard to repair after she had left home.
There are about a dozen moments in my kids lives over many years where I really wanted to not have to do something or face something. And the failure I had with my oldest gave me the resolve to not fail at it again. Things like making excuses not to spend time on something, or justifying not correcting bad behavior.
Which brings up another minor issue about behavior, I learned that you just have to tell a child what you expect them to do for almost all problems to be solved. I can often refer to my own behavior and say "do what I do".
I corrected mass family issues by simply fixing my own personal problems as well. Instead of trying to correct everyone else's, they came around to see I didn't tolerate or engage in the behavior I wanted to change in the family.
I could go on and on with this stuff, but ultimately, things changed and I dealt with my kids better when I made everything my own personal responsibility to resolve and doing so in a way I wanted to be treated. I know this sounds almost trite, but when you do it for real at first you don't get results, but if you permanently change, everyone around you can't help but see it.
I found that being kind and loving to my kids over all things, and taking full responsibility openly in front of the family (meaning I would gather everyone together to apologize for something I had done in front of the whole family) gives me a permanent solution to all future problems. You just can't foresee what each kid is going to be dealing with or what problems they will bring to the table, so I needed the ultimate answer to give me a strong base to solve issues from.
Last, I grew up in an abusive home, no details needed, but it was damn near a nightmare most of my childhood. And I thought (with my first kid) that suffer made a kid stronger and able to deal with the harsh realities of life. But this is not true at all. Kids who have a hard life can barely get up in the morning let alone face yet another struggle. So, after seeing this massive failure (I learned this from my mother, she said it plainly so I am not assuming this theory from her) I started to build my kids up. Tell them that hard work, doing your best and encouraging them to not give up and to face hardship head on made happier and more solid kids. Now when the younger kids face something hard, they take it in stride, where my oldest still struggles with somethings that I regret so badly for not helping her learn to face.
Sorry this got so long. You are raising adults, not children. The goal of parenting is a solid, happy, humble, brave, wise adult... (fill in your own here of course, these are only a few I could think of)