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Comment by seunosewa | Hacker News Reader

I think the answer is to let them try different things. There's going to be something that they like better than the others. If they keep begging you to stop making them do a thing, that's a clue that it's not the right one.

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I think I'd like to say to my son when he gets older, "You have to have at least one skill you're actively developing that takes several years to master. It can be piano or chess or language or baseball or StarCraft or juggling, but it has to be something that takes time to master, and you have to spend at least a few hours every week in deliberate practice."

I also plan on modeling that behavior by having skills I continue to develop for the rest of my life.

Framing this a requirement with specific criteria that must be met feels a bit strange to me. I'm assuming you get into more of the nuance as to why you are telling him that he must do these things...

This sounds like a good supportive parent thing to do.

Teaching by example and giving creative freedom sounds like really good idea.

In the beginning giving up early seems like no big deal to the parent. At some point they might get a little uneasy. Are you maybe inadvertently teaching your child that giving up is okay by giving in too early and often? On the flip side, being increasingly heavy handed about finally sticking with the current thing because you are also battling with your own sense of time getting short to teach persistence seems problematic.

Tricky.

When your 8yr old kid says they want to stop going go school and just stay at home and play video games to you let them? Or do you make them go to school? (most parents would make them go to school and many of the same parents that would force their kids to go to school are the same parents who say "don't force your kids to do stuff".

I don't know where to draw the line but the fact that many parents are doing both suggests they really haven't applied any actual thought to why one is okay to force and the other is not.

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