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Comment by uuilly | Hacker News Reader

The most depressing people I know were the results of either laissez fair parenting or overbearing parenting. If you let a kid do what he wants, he'll eat coco-puffs, watch TV and eventually turn to drugs and booze. If you're constantly on top of him, and if he doesn't burn out, he'll work incredibly hard for a goal that means nothing to him.

I know 30 year olds who can't put a month of work together. I also know 30 year olds who have no idea why they became bankers and they ask their mom permission to switch jobs. Each one is depressing and there is a balance.

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I respectfully disagree in that I don't think the laissez fair approach necessarily leads to doing nothing but watching TV, etc. I was given tremendous freedom to explore and learn about what I wanted from a very young age on (and I was pretty much 100% in control of my educational priorities from about 12 on). My love of video games led to a love of programming and a general love of tech, which has led to entrepreneurship.

His claim was that "The most depressing people [I] know were the results of either laissez fair parenting or overbearing parenting", not that "laissez fair parenting and overbearing parenting lead to the most depressing people [I] know".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

That was his first sentence, but this is his second sentence:

If you let a kid do what he wants, he'll eat coco-puffs, watch TV and eventually turn to drugs and booze.

Fair enough.

I was more responding to the "there is a balance" comment, which I took to mean that uuilly thinks it's better on the whole if children are given some amount of freedom but are still forced to do certain things. That's the idea I was really trying to challenge, though that's admittedly not what I wrote in my first sentence. My comment was too hasty.

That's exactly what I was trying to say. It's true, some people come out of the womb requiring very little discipline. My sister, for example, would yell from her car seat, "Quiz me!" And we had her doing multiplication tables before she could read. She was her HS valedictorian, went to Harvard, played two varsity sports and is a VP at a major Investment bank and she's still in her 20's. She never needed any discipline and probably could have been given her own apartment at age 13.

I on the other hand, was a dreamer who seldom knew which day it was and frequently left for school 30 minutes late with only one shoe on. I hesitate to think where I'd be without my parent's prodding.

If the kid doesn't need prodding, then life just got easier for you. But to allow a kid to rot in the hope that one day he'll sprout wings is bad parenting. From my experience, kids who require no prodding are outliers.

The absence of force doesn't mean neglect. When I say children should be free to explore and learn what they want, I don't mean that parents have no role to play in their children's education, or that every (or any) child would flourish if left alone on an island. Parents have roles to play as facilitators, mentors, etc. I think parents should introduce their children to lots of things, but I think they should force them to do little or nothing. Depending on your definition of "prodding," we might be in agreement here.

I agree different things work for different people, and there's probably a spectrum of how "naturally" disciplined people are.

That said, I think people are naturally curious and don't, at least at the beginning of their lives, gravitate towards sitting around and doing nothing. Toddlers are naturally motivated to learn to walk and talk and are almost endlessly inquisitive.

Over time, this curiosity seems to diminish. I think formal schooling, which emphasizes external motivation over internal motivation, is largely to blame.

I might be more naturally disciplined than most, but I think a big part of that comes from not having the first decades of my life mapped out for me.

Over time, this curiosity seems to diminish.

I really don't think it does. But I think what is valued becomes more narrow. Being curious about listening to different music bands at age 16 isn't valued as much as being curious about math. Being curious about girls isn't valued as much as being curious about programming. Being curious about knowing the stats of every baseball player isn't valued as much as being curious about Shakeaspeare.

People who are curious about certain things are valued, while people are curious about other things are valued less (or rather their curiosity is valued less).

There is a difference between giving your child the freedom to follow their own will and ignoring them. I'm guessing that the latter leads to coco-puffs, drugs & booze.

+1. Just being "interested" in your own kids (all they really need is your time, agreed that it might be your scarcest resource -- but hey I have assumed it was a conscious decision to have kids) helps.

In particular, I am rather disappointed with generalization of the art of parenting done by Amy in her article. Sometimes, some things become instant hits by being controversial.

I sort of disagree. I agree that many kids will spend more time doing things that are immediately satisfying, but I think the values they absorb at an early age have a bigger influence; When I was really young my Mom would take me to museums and sciencey type things; Places established to celebrate achievements that take people entire lifetimes to complete. I suspect that this influenced me to later ignore her advice of playing outside/going to bed on time/finishing homework since I knew those weren't the sort of things that would turn into stories to tell grandkids. I instead spent late nights discovering PCs and the web and dove in and fine-honed my skills with the opposite of praise or recognition (building web apps in Idaho middle/high schools just gets you called a nerd). I am now employed building enterprise-level web apps.

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