Play deprivation is a major cause of the teen mental health crisis
jonathanhaidt.substack.com
jonathanhaidt.substack.com
"they're not playing. 'Play' is a misleading term. They're testing the world. They're learning how things work. How gravity works. How friction holds lego together. How actions cause reactions. How friends and strangers behave when you do things. How to use language with make believe. How to comfortably and safely explore new ideas out loud with their action figures. How to discover what feels good and what doesn't. They're not playing. They're growing."
My kids are young. But I'm confident this is generally true for teenagers, too. One quick example: I played WoW and looking back... I learned a ton about how to work in a team. How to be social. What social behaviours work and don't work. How to deal with people you don't like. How to delay gratification. How to plan. And it was all in a low-stakes environment.
The parents realize that their children will be screwed if they don't get into a good college, and the poorer parents need scholarships too! The principal's philosophical musings won't pay the bills.
People who are homeless or starving are mainly mentally ill, or simply have no skills to offer any employer and no desire to do any better.
basic woodworking skills are things that they can start picking up in HS shop classes; I spent summers working in a furniture factory framing chairs as a kid.
got a neighbour who does asphalt paving -- just driveways. Dude is booked solid through the Fall and into December, and does alright. Not Palo Alto FAANG money but he's got a nice truck and a fishing boat and a nice garden that we bonded over / share tips about. point is: plenty of options for doing alright; the rest of the world ain't SF or NYC
As someone who never ever even remotely had the grades to get into an engineering program and has spent his entire career as a robotics engineer, experiencing a lot of terrible engineers with advanced degrees (among a ton of incredibly brilliant ones!), I'm just not sold on it being that big a deal. I think the larger harm is a parent applying that kind of pressure.
All that being said, everything in moderation. I don't think it means, "hey let your kid do whatever." But it also doesn't mean, "force your child to study the violin and load them up with an entire childhood of structured programs until they hate you."
Parents generally have a strong instinct to try to make things easier for their kids than they were for themselves growing up. We know the food is hot, so we blow on the kid's food or let it cool before giving it to them. We know the toy will break if it's repeatedly thrown down the stairs, so we impose a rule that "we don't do that in our house". We know X, Y, or Z, so we sit down with them and explain it to them.
I don't think that these explanations and rules have no place (I don't want a child learning what heat is by falling onto a wood-burning stove!), but we need to recognize that it's a strictly inferior way of learning something when compared to experience. And as you point out, unstructured play is where kids get that experience in a low-stakes environment.
Play serves a valuable purpose, but as soon as parents get involved to try to assist the purpose evaporates.
I've had this instinct whenever my kids are on the jungle gym to say, "slow down!" "That's too high!" etc. but I usually catch myself and think, "if they fall is it a cry or a hospital visit?"
It occurred to me at that moment that this kind of hovering and scolding teaches children to externalize the responsibility of understanding their environment and their place within it. They will literally never learn the lessons this father wants to impart because he will always be there to act for them, until the children's brains lose the plasticity necessary to properly internalize those things. Perhaps they will always struggle with a psychological complex they can never fully understand.
I know this because I had a doting mother who always defined my priorities for me. I learned to nearly fully externalize the maintenance of those priorities to her expectations (which were transitively pinned to those of the formal academic and "professional" systems).
Because of this I'm currently going through something of an existential crisis -- I really don't know what I want to do. My career has been unfulfilling and trying to develop lasting hobbies and interests have not borne out the deep kinds of satisfaction others seem to be able to achieve. I still hold out hope I can find something that "gets the ball rolling" but learning patience while watching myself continue to orient myself toward goals that have definitive, quantifiable, socially-acceptable ends has been unsettling. I want to feel comfortable in my day-to-day, or at least confident that the processes I enact encourage the development of a more whole being.
A father or mother admonishing their kids to behave in public is not really anything new either.
People are terrified of saying anything because of the likely reaction of the kids' parents. The "it takes a village" mindset is gone. If someone's kid runs into you and you so much as say "excuse me" to them, you risk the parents getting in your face, holding up their cellphone camera, yelling "You don't talk to my kids. Go mind your damn business, Karen!" Not worth it--so bad behavior in public goes uncorrected.
Even when kids aren't involved, people's reaction more and more to public criticism/correction is to get belligerent and tell you to mind your business.
I was at a park concert once, the kind where everyone is sitting, and there was a large family in front of me. One of the kids (around 12 I would guess, old enough in any case) kept standing up, roaming around, and generally blocking the view of the people behind him, even though he wasn't watching the show (he was literally munching on snacks and facing back in the crowd). I wouldn't have cared if he was excited, dancing, enjoying the show, but that was just not the case.
I asked him if he could sit down so I could see. His dad immediately got in my face and demanded that I apologize to his son. He didn't leave until the police got involved.
But fundamentally, keeping control Iverson a kid is on parent and I don't think about bumping kids enough to form a sentence. I just expect parents to tell them cause it is their job and in this story, the parent in fact intervened.
You mention this happened on a sidewalk. Cars drive next to sidewalks. The American culture of cars is the number one cause of anxiety in my life as a parent to young children. I do not want to feel this anxiety, I do not like how it makes me react towards my children, who just want to play and have fun and explore the world and try to understand it. But cars exist. And today they are a much bigger problem than they were when I was their age, for a whole variety of reasons that are very well understood and articulated by people far more intelligent and capable than I am. And my children are, practically every single day, within 4-6 feet of cars that are a) much larger than they have any right to be, and b) driving much faster than they have any reason to, to the point that if they are careless about where they are, or what they are doing, they run a very serious risk of being killed.
That is why I sometimes respond to my children the way that I do, in line with what you've observed here. I don't like it, either, but it is what it is.
Now, I go out of my way to get my kids into big, wide, safe open spaces on a daily basis, and I will deliberately ignore them (within reason -- I keep tabs on where they are, etc.) so that they can go off and find interesting ways to play, hurt themselves, whatever. But I still have to engage with the automobile problem multiple times almost every single day of our lives.
This is 99% of it (other 1% is fear of other parents scolding you). There's a beach bike path near us with only one street crossing in 5 miles. My 6 and 7 year old are free to explore the whole thing unattended provided they avoid that crossing. It has playgrounds and all kinds of stuff they can stop their bikes at.
But I won't let them cross the street we live on because none of these drivers are thinking about pedestrians and even if they were I doubt any of the lifted trucks could even see a 4ft tall kid.
I never had nightmares at all until I had kids. Now nightmares consist of cars, Amazon trucks, parking lots and the occasional lake or pool drowning.
Anyway, without full context of what was going on in that family's life you saw, I'm not sure if anyone is able to make a fair judgement on what was more considerate, even handed, or whatever. Five minutes before you saw them they could have almost been hit by a car or something.
IMO situations that require yelling should be extremely rare, but anything involving death or getting maimed is a definite candidate.
Theoretical explanation is not effective. Letting them experience it first hand might be too destructive, because of the nature of the addiction.
Can any parent chime in what worked and what didn't?
/s
In all reality the most effective drug and vice talks I ever got were in High School.
The first was from our school's substance counselor who was a former crack addict, and mother of one of our fellow students. She just told her story, and talked about all the horrible shit she saw, but never once told us drug war lies.
The other was from my English teacher a few weeks before graduation. The gist of it was: "there's nothing I can say that will stop you from experimenting with drugs. A little bit of drugs probably won't ruin your lives, and might be fun, but pay attention to the people who don't moderate, and the people who do. The results speak for themselves."
What it came down to was it was the two people that were honest with us who got heard. Some DARE cop lecturing us from a DEA handout about how marijuana addiction would ruin our lives didn't work, because kids aren't stupid, and they know BS when they hear it.
Coke wasn't a big deal as an occasional party drug, but now we hear stories of tainted coke and overdosing. Gotta teach kids about testing all their drugs now.
Calm down, Satan.
In my experience there is nothing what would stop a kid from doing the stupid things. What somewhat mattered is trying to explaing, honestly, the consequences. Sadly, this doesn't work good enough, but sometimes it helps when instead of panicking they panic but remember what to do in the case of emergency.
Not sure how feasible it is, but I think with all the photo and video data we now have on hand what sort of longitudinal studies we can produce from imagery alone with the occasional detail and context self professed by the individuals involved.
> where these bad choices
drugs = bad choice, always? There can be good sides too.
there are only two options: kids learn about drugs by others telling them about it, or they learn by trying them. the latter is dangerous, so the former is the only option. everything else is the environment.
my parents never talked to me about drugs or alcohol. we did talk about it in school though. i simply grew up in a family where alcohol or drugs did not exist, in an environment where kids didn't have easy access to alcohol and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff. so noone did drugs or got drunk at school. maybe a few kids were drinking outside of school but it was never a big thing. i remember a classmate from middleschool saying that he refused to get cigarettes or beer for his dad because it's unhealthy. that's the kind of environment i grew up in. tell me how does that make me drug-naive and put me at risk? later as a student many of my peers frequently drank alcohol with meals, etc, i never did, and was never interested, because that's how i grew up.
of course if that is not your environment then you have to be more proactive about making sure your kids are aware of the dangers, but in general, what has the most value is the example you give as parents. if you drink, you will have a much harder time to convince your kids to not drink.
and for drugs it is my understanding that those who have experience with alcohol are more likely to try harder drugs too. (even just a small percentage) but more important the reverse, those that do not drink alcohol also are unlikely to try harder drugs. my interpretation of that is that if i want my kids to avoid drugs i can do that by not drinking alcohol and showing them that they need not join their peers when they drink.
this is not to say that anyone drinking is putting their kids at risk, but that not drinking is very helpful to reduce that risk.
The largest assumption that seems to be behind your position is that society should not have recreational drugs. Is this correct? I disagree, I think recreational drugs used appropriately can improve life. Obviously if abused they may wreck it.
> there are only two options: kids learn about drugs by others telling them about it, or they learn by trying them. the latter is dangerous, so the former is the only option. everything else is the environment.
Without being trite, everything is dangerous in degree. A famous UK government drug researcher published a paper, details here https://www.drugscience.org.uk/societys-inconsistent-moral-j... that compared the risks of horseriding with MDMA and found that MDMA was safer (he was sacked for this).
> my parents never talked to me about drugs or alcohol. we did talk about it in school though. i simply grew up in a family where alcohol or drugs did not exist, in an environment where kids didn't have easy access to alcohol
I think we have had very different backgrounds. For a large part of my life we were living in council estates under a lot of stress. A lot. There's a lot of drinking and smoking from the other people there because they were self-medicating against the stress. I think there's a link between heroin use and Vietnam war that is well known in the US? It could be the biggest cause of drug use is stress; people just trying to cope.
> and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff.
I'm uncomfortable because you're trying to make up other people's minds for them. I think that's an infringement on their right to independent thought – does that make sense?
> that's the kind of environment i grew up in. tell me how does that make me drug-naive and put me at risk?
It doesn't automatically do so, and in fact I may be completely wrong in assuming it can do, but at some point if some people have the opportunity to take harder drugs than alcohol, they will. For example, me. And I don't regret it, and having it delayed from my childhood into adulthood was probably a damn good thing – I'm less impulsive and more able to control the risks.
> of course if that is not your environment then you have to be more proactive about making sure your kids are aware of the dangers,
And benefits? Do you allow there could be benefits to recreational drugs used appropriately and in moderation?
> but in general, what has the most value is the example you give as parents. if you drink, you will have a much harder time to convince your kids to not drink.
Completely agree.
> and for drugs it is my understanding that those who have experience with alcohol are more likely to try harder drugs too. (even just a small percentage) but more important the reverse, those that do not drink alcohol also are unlikely to try harder drugs. my interpretation of that is that if i want my kids to avoid drugs i can do that by not drinking alcohol and showing them that they need not join their peers when they drink.
These links agree with you
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/is-alcohol-a-gatew... https://www.therecoveryvillage.com/alcohol-abuse/alcohol-gat... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22712674/
But they also say "Addiction is a complex disease – prior use of alcohol is simply another risk factor among many, and there is no single explanation for why someone becomes addicted. The interrelationships between the gateway drugs (tobacco, alcohol and cannabis) are complex"
If you grew up in a different environment, under a lot more stress than it sounds you suffered, it may be the stress that is triggering use of alcohol and any other drugs you can lay your hands on. Found the heroine/Vietnam war link https://jamesclear.com/heroin-habits The soldiers got addicted due to stress and other factors, unexpectedly when they returned home a lot of them just stopped using it because the stress was, presumably "In other words, approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight"
> this is not to say that anyone drinking is putting their kids at risk, but that not drinking is very helpful to reduce that risk.
Agreed.
I'm not actually pro drugs, if there's one drug I would really like to make illegal it's cigarettes, and I would very, very much like to see the end of all and any advertising of alcohol.
Hope you find this interesting
i don't have the time to write a detailed replay right now, but i hope to do so later. you are welcome to contact me at the address in my profile in case i get distracted and forget.
The largest assumption that seems to be behind your position is that society should not have recreational drugs. Is this correct?
not necessarily. as alcohol was/is still very common where i grew up, it doesn't mean that the mere availability is a problem in itself. it was more the attitude about it. but i also suspect that most kids there still had mostly intact families and reasonable role models. all of which can be significant risk factors when missing. effectively the thing is that being a good role model as a parent is something i can influence. maybe with a healthy family responsible use is fine, but for a stressed single parent, the same use becomes a problem, and avoiding drugs or alcohol becomes important to counter the other negative effects from the childrens experience. it's relative, how much risk do we see, and how much do we as parents need to do to reduce that risk.
compared the risks of horseriding with MDMA and found that MDMA was safer
safer for whom? the issue here is that apart from personal injury, horseriding has no side-effects or longterm consequences. it's like flying. on average flying is safe. but if something happens it is usually fatal, therefore we need very strict rules on flight safety. if drug use goes out of hand, like it can become an addiction, the consequences can affect a lot of people. horseriding just doesn't go out of hand, or become addictive. like skiing or some other sports. you just can hurt yourself, that's all.
It could be the biggest cause of drug use is stress; people just trying to cope.
absolutely. i think stress is a huge risk factor. and that's where avoiding drugs and alcohol completely brings its benefits. i am in a stressful situation now, and i find my ways to cope, but because i grew up without alcohol and never tried it before i am not at all tempted to try it now.
the same goes for any potentially addictive behavior like gambling. but since it was mentioned in the initial question, i'd like to talk about phone/internet addiction a bit.
first of all, like horseriding, the side effects are minimal. it becomes more dangerous if you start spending money. i work in IT, so i may have a hard time to distinguish between working hard and being addicted to the internet. maybe i should evaluate how much i participate on hacker news ;-)
now when it comes to educating kids about it, it gets difficult. not using the internet in order to be a positive non-internet using rolemodel becomes practically impossible. more so for me since i work at home. now during school holidays kids see me on the computer all day. i don't know yet how i can teach them to not spend so much time on the computer when i am spending even more time on it.
on the other hand i don't use social media and i can keep my kids from it as well. so that at least reduces the dangers coming from that direction. i also don't let the kids spend money on games. by never even enabling payment options the risk that kids spend money out of control is practically eliminated.
but i don't know what they will do when they get old enough and are able to spend their own money.
> and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff.
I'm uncomfortable because you're trying to make up other people's minds for them.
i want to give kids good rolemodels, and show them that drugs or alcohol are not needed to have a good time. i am not making up their mind, but i am giving them additional information so that they can make up their own mind.
if as a society we want to reduce the number of people affected by alcohol or drug abuse, we need to educate our children to that effect. that's the schools job. to educate according to social consensus. when there is a tendency for abuse to grow if unchecked, then education needs to counteract that. more so if we want to reduce it. of course doing this right also requires relying on facts and true statistics and not allow hardliners to push their agenda by fearmongering and exaggerating the actual damage.
also, you wouldn't jump on a horse or do any other risky sport without proper training. what would be comparable training for alcohol and drug use if not education in school?
Do you allow there could be benefits to recreational drugs used appropriately and in moderation?
i do, but i still believe the risks outweigh the benefits. unlike horseriding where the benefits outweigh the risks, even though statistically there is a higher risk of injury.
approximately nine out of ten soldiers who used heroin in Vietnam eliminated their addiction nearly overnight
i think the key here is that it is very clear what causes the stress, and that being back home that stressfactor is gone and will never come back with 100% certainty.
most of us do not get this certainty. stressfactors reduce, but they never completely disappear, and they may come back any time. people vow to give up drinking, it works for a while, then something happens, and they are back. veterans know that they are done for good, and that they will never have to make that experience again.
if there's one drug I would really like to make illegal it's cigarettes, and I would very, very much like to see the end of all and any advertising of alcohol.
i am fully with you on that. i am also very happy to see that in the past decades we have made progress in creating a smoke free experience in most public indoor areas. and that i see a lot less smoking in public compared to a few decades ago.
>> The largest assumption that seems to be behind your position is that society should not have recreational drugs. Is this correct?
> not necessarily. as alcohol was/is still very common where i grew up, it doesn't mean that the mere availability is a problem in itself. it was more the attitude about it.
So if the risks were mitigated (can never be eliminated) you would be okay(-ish) with drugs other than alcohol being used? Assuming good role models, etc. it's fine if you say no, we'll disagree but I will at least understand your position and I will respect it.
> but for a stressed single parent,
An aside, I assure you a parent doesn't have to be single to be stressed, in fact it can be more dangerous to have two stressed parents.
>> compared the risks of horseriding with MDMA and found that MDMA was safer
> safer for whom?
Well, for the user of the drug or the equine.
> the issue here is that apart from personal injury, horseriding has no side-effects or longterm consequences.
The whole point is about personal injury! And how that can ripple out to affect others.
> the consequences can affect a lot of people. horseriding just doesn't go out of hand, or become addictive. like skiing or some other sports. you just can hurt yourself, that's all.
With respect I don't think that is anywhere close to reflecting what the paper said:
"The dangers of equasy were revealed to me as a result of a recent clinical referral of a woman in her early 30’s who had suffered permanent brain damage as a result of equasy-induced brain damage. She had undergone severe personality change that made her more irritable and impulsive, with anxiety and loss of the ability to experience pleasure. There was also a degree of hypofrontality and behavioural disinhibition that had lead to many bad decisions in relationships with poor choice of partners and an unwanted pregnancy. She is unable to work and is unlikely ever to do so again [my emphasis], so the social costs of her brain damage are also very high."
further
"I suspect most people will be surprised that riding is such a dangerous activity. The data are quite startling – people die and are permanently damaged from falling – with neck and spine fracture leading to permanent spinal injury. Head injury is four times more com- mon though often less obvious and is the usual cause of death. In the USA, approximately 11,500 cases of traumatic head injury a year are due to riding (Thomas, et al., 2006), and we can presume a proportionate number in the UK."
I also knew a girl many years ago who was a rider, whose horse spooked, reared up and fell backwards onto her, breaking her back. Fortunately this wasn't a wheelchair-forever case, but she was off work for months and would have back problems for the rest of her life.
I know many more eg. MDMA users than horseriders, and I've never seen any injury, never mind something so severe as this.
If you objected to drugs, it has to be on a rational basis of risk, and by that measure the papers point was, we are not measuring and responding to risk proportionately.
> absolutely. i think stress is a huge risk factor. and that's where avoiding drugs and alcohol completely brings its benefits. i am in a stressful situation now, and i find my ways to cope, but because i grew up without alcohol and never tried it before i am not at all tempted to try it now.
That is your decision and it is therefore the correct decision for you, but but do you think it is the correct decision for everybody? If you did, it's possible we might have less adverse outcomes, but you would also take away the ability to make choices for themselves, where it doesn't risk hurting other people. It's not a society want to be in. Also what is right for you may not be workable for others.
> the same goes for any potentially addictive behavior like gambling. but since it was mentioned in the initial question, i'd like to talk about phone/internet addiction a bit...but i don't know what they will do when they get old enough and are able to spend their own money.
I honestly don't know. It's possible giving them a small allowance to buy online stuff might help them manage things, or it might feed a possible addiction. Perhaps you can ask around on parents forums?
>>> and where we were generally educated in school to avoid that stuff.
>> I'm uncomfortable because you're trying to make up other people's minds for them.
> i want to give kids good rolemodels, and show them that drugs or alcohol are not needed to have a good time.
That may be true for you but are you willing to project and enforce that attitude onto other people? Because you certainly don't need them to have a good time, but they can really bloody help! Please also consider that not only people differ, but situations differ and that needs to be accounted for. I have a delightful range of physical and mental health problems, and when I go out, which is sadly not often, I really need to make it count, to stop myself deteriorating further mentally. What an option for you isn't necessarily optional for other people.
> if as a society we want to reduce the number of people affected by alcohol or drug abuse, we need to educate our children to that effect. that's the schools job. to educate according to social consensus.
But what should be the social consensus, your position or mine or something else? That's what I'm trying to understand, it's the absolute crux of why we are discussing this.
> ... also requires relying on facts and true statistics and not allow hardliners to push their agenda by fearmongering and exaggerating the actual damage.
And this is where I have a problem, too many people (not just kids) will simply not recognise the harm drugs do. If you tell them they're not inevitably dangerous, all they hear is that they're safe. Not only that, we have a societal problem that will export the external costs of drugs (specifically alcohol and cigarettes) onto society at the cost of making individual firms richer. Edit: What I'm saying is that as a society we either forbid things or make them legal then go bloody mental in abusing them. My currently rather liberal position on drugs will have to contend with this kind of stupidity if we do legalise.
> also, you wouldn't jump on a horse or do any other risky sport without proper training. what would be comparable training for alcohol and drug use if not education in school?
Agreed, but parents must have some responsibility, I think we both agree with that.
>> Do you allow there could be benefits to recreational drugs used appropriately and in moderation?
> i do, but i still believe the risks outweigh the benefits. unlike horseriding where the benefits outweigh the risks, even though statistically there is a higher risk of injury.
Given what the equasy paper says...
Acute harm to person [MDMA] +1 per 10000 episodes [horse riding] ++1 per 350 episodes
> most of us do not get this certainty. stressfactors reduce, but they never completely disappear, and they may come back any time. people vow to give up drinking, it works for a while, then something happens, and they are back. veterans know that they are done for good, and that they will never have to make that experience again.
agreed, and we both agree ciggies and booze should be treated less indulgently by society.
i am not sure. if there is evidence that the risks are at least as low as those of alcohol, maybe. but, even for alcohol i consider the risks to high still. drunk driving, domestic violence and many other things are potentially caused by drugs or alcohol, and reducing these requires reducing the use of alcohol or drugs. however banning them is not effective, and so i see other measures such as better education as important to address those problems.
> the issue here is that apart from personal injury, horseriding has no side-effects or longterm consequences.
The whole point is about personal injury! And how that can ripple out to affect others.
If you objected to drugs, it has to be on a rational basis of risk, and by that measure the papers point was, we are not measuring and responding to risk proportionately.
but that's the big difference. horse riding accidents seldom have a ripple effect, drug and alcohol use almost always do. my focus in on the latter. i don't care what someone does to themselves, but i do care how it affects others.
your personal freedom ends where it starts to restrict my freedom. if my partner comes home drunk and starts beating me or the kids, and if banning alcohol is the only way to stop that, then by all means, i'd rather ban alcohol than give you the freedom to drink. (that's assuming that such a ban would work, which is questionable in itself)
the risks from drug use have to be minimized. but i also see the need to make some drugs legal in order to better control the quality and steer people away from bad quality drugs that are even worse.
if it was possible, i'd rather eliminate drugs and alcohol (and smoking) completely. since that is not possible i'll settle for whatever solution has the least negative effects on society (not on the individual).
do you think [avoiding alcohol] is the correct decision for everybody?
alcohol and stress do not mix. so yes. if you are stressed (severely and continuously), you should avoid alcohol as a way to seek relief. but the point for me is that never having consumed alcohol is what is protecting me from trying it to relieve stress now. that's not a decision i made, but something i could only learn from my parents, and i have to thank them for that.
I have a delightful range of physical and mental health problems, and when I go out, which is sadly not often, I really need to make it count, to stop myself deteriorating further mentally
i don't want to try to diagnose, or propose how you should deal with your problems, but i wish that there would be more resources available to you than just self-medicating with drugs or alcohol. i do accept that likely there aren't any other options for you though, so i understand your choice here. but that doesn't mean that legalizing drugs is the best answer to these problems, but it's unfortunately probably the cheapest.
are you willing to project and enforce that attitude onto other people?
project and teach people that alcohol and gambling are bad? absolutely. but enforce only when it actually (provably) helps to reduce harm on society.
the problem here generally is that many people want to code their preferred attitude into law, when in many cases that is not useful. instead they should share and teach (without pressure), but allow everyone to make their own choices.
But what should be the social consensus, your position or mine or something else?
social consensus should be whatever has the most benefit and the least harm for society as a whole.
What I'm saying is that as a society we either forbid things or make them legal then go bloody mental in abusing them. My currently rather liberal position on drugs will have to contend with this kind of stupidity if we do legalise.
exactly, that's a problem we are facing. the only way out is better education. i think we are pretty much in agreement here.
What are the benefits of horseriding, if exercise then there are other safer ways of getting that. If it's the responsibility of looking after an animal, get a cat or a dog (and that option is much more widely available than owning a horse – we could never have afforded it). What are those benefits?
as i mentioned before, i am not at all concerned about the risks to the individual partaking in an activity of their choice. i am only concerned about risks to others. that makes horseriding almost risk free. in fact, since my wife was always afraid of dogs due to a childhood incident, to her, dogs are more dangerous than horses. dogs can bite, cats can scratch, horses can throw you off or kick you. etc. different animals have different temperaments, and which animal or activity is right for someone is very individual. you can easily construct a scenario where horseriding is simply the most practical choice, compared to other options a person has available. horseriding is just one of many options on a large spectrum, and does not even stand out in risk for the individual as there are other even riskier activities.
as an aside
"I suspect most people will be surprised that riding is such a dangerous activity"
i am surprised that people are surprised. i haven't learned riding, but i have rode on a horse once or twice. you are so high up and horses are so strong that to me the potential for injuries is no surprise at all.
>> if the risks were mitigated (can never be eliminated) you would be okay(-ish) with drugs other than alcohol being used?
> i am not sure. if there is evidence that the risks are at least as low as those of alcohol, maybe. but, even for alcohol i consider the risks to high still.
You might be surprised that alcohol is not a low-risk drug by some measures. I certainly don't consider it to be. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rational_harm_assessment_...
Note that MDMA and LSD are considered considerably less dangerous than alcohol here. I would tend to agree with that, given my limited experiences with LSD, and fairly long experience with MDMA. Mind, any prat can abuse any drug.
> however banning them is not effective, and so i see other measures such as better education as important to address those problems.
I don't want anyone to feel they should be legalised because banning them won't work; I want them to be considered for legalisation based on relative harm. Again, see the above link.
>> The whole point is about personal injury! And how that can ripple out to affect others.
> but that's the big difference. horse riding accidents seldom have a ripple effect, drug and alcohol use almost always do. my focus in on the latter. i don't care what someone does to themselves, but i do care how it affects others.
First up I completely agree with you "i don't care what someone does to themselves" and "your personal freedom ends where it starts to restrict my freedom" but where I can't find agreement at all is "horse riding accidents seldom have a ripple effect". The example of the woman with brain damage, or my mate with a broken back, these very definitely have a high cost to society and that is the ripple. Motorcycle accidents can be horrible even when they don't kill, and they do. Many other things. I'm afraid we may have to remain apart on this.
(edit: by 'how it affects others' you might mean at a strictly personal level eg. direct violence against another. To me, any cost even on people who've never met the foolish drug user/unlucky horse rider, counts)
> if my partner comes home drunk and starts beating me or the kids, and if banning alcohol is the only way to stop that, then by all means, i'd rather ban alcohol
I don't know if we can ban alcohol on an individual's rather than societal level ("touch the booze again, Fred, and you go to prison"), but that might work. I'd also like to add from experience that violence without alcohol is very doable. And ditto the converse.
> alcohol and stress do not mix.
Alcohol for some can be a very good stress reliever for short-term stress. Not me though, but certainly some.
> so yes. if you are stressed (severely and continuously), you should avoid alcohol as a way to seek relief.
Agreed, but some people don't have that option.
> I have a delightful range of ...
> i don't want to try to diagnose, or propose how you should deal with your problems, but i wish that there would be more resources available to you than just self-medicating with drugs or alcohol.
One takes one's crutches where one can find them, the world isn't perfect. And frankly, I did just plain enjoy them when things weren't so crap.
> but that doesn't mean that legalizing drugs is the best answer to these problems, but it's unfortunately probably the cheapest.
That is not an argument I would support for legalising drugs, you might be surprised to hear.
> project and teach people that alcohol and gambling are bad? absolutely.
I'm not comfortable with that statement, they are not inherently bad. They most certainly can be bad, but they are not automatically bad – well, that's my opinion anyway!
> but enforce only when it actually (provably) helps to reduce harm on society...social consensus should be whatever has the most benefit and the least harm for society as a whole.
Agreed.
> exactly, that's a problem we are facing. the only way out is better education. i think we are pretty much in agreement here.
snap
> as i mentioned before, i am not at all concerned about the risks to the individual partaking in an activity of their choice. i am only concerned about risks to others. that makes horseriding almost risk free. ... and does not even stand out in risk for the individual as there are other even riskier activities.
Again, we're going to have to remain separate on this. The damage caused by MDMA is statistically very low, and could be greatly reduced almost to nothing by education and quality controls. It does feel that you're a little more lenient on one activity because it doesn't involve drugs, and less so for the other because it does. Well that's my impression. And either way, that's your position and I respect it, and maybe it's me seeing it through the wrong end of the telescope.
I'm very happy with this discussion, and I really want to thank you for taking the time and giving me a thoughtful and measured response from the other side. That is what I really want from HN, and don't often get it in this area! That really was excellent and the world feels a tiny bit saner now.
i am aware of that. i am using alcohol simply as a baseline. any other substance must not pose any higher risk. ideally less even.
Note that MDMA and LSD are considered considerably less dangerous than alcohol here
i was not aware of that, but i guess the realization of this is why more and more places are considering making such drugs legal.
I don't want anyone to feel they should be legalised because banning them won't work
i was mainly talking about alcohol here. since alcohol is very easy to make, all that banning gets you is moonshine.
The example of the woman with brain damage, or my mate with a broken back, these very definitely have a high cost to society
i disagree with that. sure, it costs insurance, and taxes, but noone else got hurt. if as a society we can't bear that cost then we'd have to ban almost all outdoor activities because they all carry some risk of injury. the result would be a very oppressive society. the cost that i worry about is the personal tragedy that results from being an innocent victim. horseriding does not cause bystanders to get hurt. motorcycles rarely do, but drugs and alcohol do, as do cars and guns (and gambling).
I don't know if we can ban alcohol on an individual's rather than societal level
that won't work simply because by the time the relevant institutions to make that judgement are able to intervene the damage is already done. we need solutions that prevent the abuse from the beginning. only education and restricting access for anyone can do that.
> but that doesn't mean that legalizing drugs is the best answer to these problems, but it's unfortunately probably the cheapest.
That is not an argument I would support for legalising drugs
neither would i. but the alternative is to increase investment into education and healthcare ten-fold or more even. which is something i would absolutely support and prefer over allowing the use of drugs for self-medication. but that is much harder to achive. i am fighting for that though, whereas i am not fighting for drugs to be legalized. i merely allow that to happen by not fighting against it either.
> project and teach people that alcohol and gambling are bad? absolutely.
I'm not comfortable with that statement, they are not inherently bad. They most certainly can be bad, but they are not automatically bad
well this is another point where we are going disagree, which is fine. basically i believe that using substances to alter your state of mind is a bad idea and should only be done under medical supervision and when necessary. (but again, i don't want to make a law out of this, unless it is necessary to protect innocent victims). but this is a whole topic of its own that i am not quite ready to argue here because i am not familiar enough with the details.
It does feel that you're a little more lenient on one activity because it doesn't involve drugs, and less so for the other because it does.
i am more lenient on some activities because they are supported by the current consensus in society. if it were up to me, i'd eliminate any alcohol, smoking, gambling, private cars and guns from this planet. because they are all dangerous to bystanders and there are better ways to handle the problems they solve.
ultimately, no matter what choice we make, what matters is that as a society we will only make progress if we find consensus on the major issues that we face today. because only through consensus are we able to change direction if we find that some choice was a bad idea.
we are struggling with a lot of issues because we waste energy on fighting each other instead of looking forward.
A big portion of people is going to get addicted anyways. The America has a far higher amount of addicts of all drugs and alcohol compared to the Netherlands. That is mostly policy and some cultural aspects.
- Help them engage in constructive risk taking behavior. Sports are a common example, and there's plenty of research showing that they reduce harmful behavior. Teens, specifically males explore risky behavior. They have these new magnificent bodies and they want to test their limits.
- Be present, available and engaged with them. Some of the time, they'll want you out of their face. That's fine, but try and keep routines like family meals, and talk to them, if they're willing.
- Try to maintain the family. Sometimes a divorce/separation is the right thing, but for the kids, most of the time, keeping the family together in a dual-parent family is very important.
I can't speak to device addiction, but I from ages 4-12, we raised our child in a major US city. In that environment, one comes across the direct results of drug addiction occasionally.
While we do talk about addiction and related things, but ultimately it's his experiences that shape his views more than words from dad. One of those was taking a trip to the park for a play dare and being late because we stopped to check on (and call 911 for) a man along the way who was passed out with a needle still stuck in his arm.
Just kidding. I was an addict just like almost all other classmates of mine. I'm currently curing my myopia which is 4+ diopters in one eye thanks to using my iPhone 5 cms away my eyes, laying in bed countless nights. I was ~155 IQ (can't remember because of poor memory), now down to 150. My memory was the best I know among people, I used to never forget anything which I can classify as 'timelessly relevant info', so I would remember everything in a science book I read once three years ago (but not the yesterday's lunch). People would frequently comment about my memory and comprehension. Not so much, I wasn't able to remember things from the textbook the teacher is going to ask in late high school. Now my brain is still foggy, but I'm recovering. I'm very unfit, confirmed by a doctor, again recovering from that. I was in %0.5 in my country's university exam alhamdulillah, and I wonder how would it be if I have ever stopped looking at my phone and actually studied.
After many years, what saved me was that I made some custom software that can block my iPhone all by myself, using the Odyseus' trick [1], using your present self's willpower on your future self[2]. Because my parents refused to put a password for Screen Time and said that good ol' phrase: "Can't you stop yourself? Just stop looking it, it's that easy!"
I firmly believe no one person can fight trillion dollar corporations spending tens of millions of man-hours reverse engineering biological reward circuits in your brain. Everyone I see around me is as addicted as their rest of lives allows them to be, except grandpas who still have those dumb phones. I saw the transformation of my beloved relatives after they got their first smartphone, for the worse. They're not the same person anymore.
My life goal for this world is to put and end to this shit. I'll inshaAllah sell that phone that is restricted, make that Linux distro, browser, applications and all things that restricts you from harming your wellbeing and wasting your life, all while being fully functional for things one really need (think messaging, finance apps, government service websites etc.). Thankfully Transformer models came just in time.
Human brains are not designed nor meant to be able to handle current smartphone technology, the current smartphone technology is designed to exploit human brain for profit.
See the entire catalogue of research at: https://jonathanhaidt.substack.com/
1: https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/Odysseus-and-the-S...
I also like to protect my shit from harm. Kids can be quite destructive in their play.
Another way to phrase this:
Your job as a parent is to expose your children to the maximum amount of love that is healthy and the maximum amount of pain that is healthy.
Too little or too much of either is possible and damaging.
Famously, the Dusun in Borneo teach their children to respect knives by allowing them to play with them (and cut themselves) as toddlers.
The bison example, I would think any child would be very wary of walking up to a bison. On top of that, if a child were to approach a bison I highly doubt the bison would come out with full offensive. They'd probably assume a defensive posture to scare the kid away. If the kid kept coming you should keep in mind that mammals recognize babies of other mammals. It would be pretty extraordinary for the bison to consider a human child as a threat and attack them.
The cars though, yeah. I don't even want to get into that.
Famously, lions kills lion babies, that is babies of own species when they encounter babies of another lion group.
The point is that you are at their mercy and that it takes training and education to understand and predict that danger ahead of time. Even adults are ignorant along these lines. Everything is a spectrum, but there is a threshold, in my opinion, in which the probabilities of disaster become 100% out of your control for certain activities.
For example, you can watch this guy on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dV1fzwfJpmQ who appears to be calm and an "expert" on interacting with bears. However, you can also watch this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqwYUkJYRQc in which a grizzly shows absolutely insane stamina and strength, covering huge distances of rough terrain and water. It means that the guy in the previous video is 100% at complete mercy of the bear, no matter what he says. (As an aside, I'm actually surprised that guy hasn't had more trouble, as he clearly seeks out bear encounters.)
I think my larger point is that part of the education of both children and adults is teaching to understand and ultimately respect the reality in which we live in. Animals, physics, biology, etc. all exist and we must live within those rules and understand the consequences of pushing them. I can't go jump into the sun just to try it out. And a project manager stating a schedule as if it dictates reality doesn't mean it does. Lol. This scene from The Counselor is getting at these lines of thought: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIn7y4ejIFM.
Unless your kids are interested in and want to learn free running and parkour, at which point this is how you learn. Of course there is reason to be careful, but fear often plays a large role in that.
I guess my point is that anyone who needs to train safety totally understands how important it is for someone to understand the specific danger intimately
montessori teaches 3 year olds how to properly handle sharp knives by letting them cut the fruits for snack breaks. they also don't use safety scissors but learn how to use real scissors.
a lot of danger is removed by teaching kids how to properly use tools. when they feel how the knife cuts through the fruit, they learn that a knife has a sharp edge, and can cut things.
my son learned to cook at age 8 or 9. yes, he gets burned sometimes, but he knows how to properly use a gas stove and he has learned to be careful with it because he had the opportunity to use it frequently and become familiar with it. he can cook a meal unsupervised, and i guess that will boost his confidence as he tries more complex recipes.
> a theory in education which posits that individuals or learners do not acquire knowledge and understanding by passively perceiving it within a direct process of knowledge transmission, rather they construct new understandings and knowledge through experience and social discourse, integrating new information with what they already know (prior knowledge).
A bunch of the big One Laptop Per Child people were strong constructivists. It didnt seem super successful, but the OS really did a lot to build a more open sandbox for compute that kids could more directly be involved with, see & manipulate. I wish that effort had gone a bit better, had developed more compelling learning software & been given a shot at a much bigger scale, where more could have been learned/tried.
For many parents, the toy is expensive enough that it warrants a rule (like the stove.)
I got lots of warnings from lots of people. Don't let her out or she'll cry all the time to go out. Keep her away from the door or she'll run out and you won't see her again. It sounded very difficult.
However I didn't follow this advice and let my cat out in my backyard. And I found out that people were right and she does cry to go out all the time.
At the start. So I ignored her. I didn't even tell her to be quiet. I let her whine and cry as much as she wanted. She was 100% fine and had everything she needed except the ability to go outside.
She started to scratch the screen to voice her displeasure. I'm the boss and so she lost screen door privileges. She tried to negotiate but failed horribly because, again, I am the boss. She is a cat. The next weekend she got screen door privileges back and scratched the screen on day 2. She lost them again because I'm the boss and I don't want her to scratch my screen. When she got her screen privileges back again she never scratched the screen again.
The door thing, same. She snuck out once. Then I started locking her in a safe room with everything she needed. It's still her room to this day and she can trash it as much as she wants, just like she could as a kitten. That's the only room she can do that and seems to understand that. She doesn't really come near the door if I'm leaving now, and if she's close she will not try sneaking out.
She just turned two this past month, and while she was a nightmare as a kitten, she is a complete angel now.
I'm not totally perfect and for example I can't keep her off my desk if it's in the sitting position. So I've learned to deal with it. If I don't want her on my desk I need to either keep her out of my office or use it standing. I can't seem to win this battle and I tried everything. I'll say that not buying a kid a new iPad seems like a much easier thing to do.
I'm sure children are a lot different but the "I can't teach children philosophy" excuse sounds pretty weak. I don't understand how children can have that much power over an adult.
They are.
Beating them into submission because you are the boss and they are just a child is not a long term solution.
They are a lot more complex than cats.
> I don't understand how children can have that much power over an adult.
Oh I can easily just lock my son in his room, make him dance to get fed, anything really. It'd be abuse and wouldn't result in him growing into a well rounded child and adult and he'd hate me, but I could force him to behave in basic ways like you're describing.
I set ground rules and gave her safe ways to be upset. If she misbehaved she lost privileges she enjoys.
I never neglected her if that's what you're trying to get at. That's a pretty low-blow to accuse me of based on what I wrote. Be better.
Obviously locking children in rooms isn't right. How about this, instead of locking kids in a room, you could try making a toy room and locking them OUT if they're misbehaving. Is that inhumane torture? That's basically what I did with my cat.
> I never neglected her if that's what you're trying to get at.
If you did that to a child it would be neglect, that is the point. Children aren't cats.
It is more complex with a child. It's easier when they're a baby, but increasingly more subtle as they get older. Nobody is saying you can't take things away from them or set boundaries, but you're talking about very simple things that may work with very young children but aren't enough as they get older.
"Do as I say because I am the boss" is just not good enough. Maybe you'll get compliance but that's not enough if you want a healthy relationship with your child as they grow.
I would never do that to a child. Even if they had a bowl of food and water and a toilet in the room I wouldn't expect them to be able to take care of themselves. That sounds like something a psychopath would do. Stop straw-manning me, it's incredibly rude, and against the rules. You bring down the discourse of this site when you quote 5 words from a paragraph and leave the rest of the context out. Plus you are not even quoting me directly yet you're using quotes. Stop doing that as well please.
> "Do as I say because I am the boss" is just not good enough.
When did I make that argument?
For the record, I don't believe you should tell children that. I don't understand the difficulty in telling them "The iPad broke and you are not getting another one because you can't take care of it properly. Perhaps you'll get a new one at Christmas." when they break their iPad.
That's what I consider being a boss. Saying those words does not seem difficult to me.
A story of our young kid.
We had twins when she was 3. And she really liked them. Until they started moving and getting into her stuff. Then she really hated them. So much so that she would go out of her way to hurt them. When going to the bathroom, she would go the long way so she could step on their fingers. When we weren't looking, she would push them over. When one of them knocked over one of her toys, she picked him up and bodyslammed him.
It made life a living hell. We tried everything we could think of. Time outs, losing stuff, whatever. Right afterwards, 10 minutes later, she would be on them again.
Then one day, about 3 months after it started, it just stopped. Like magic. No clue why.
On the other hand, if you don't buy them a new 3DS right away, there's a valuable lesson here somewhere.
It seemed to register. But I think one of these days some sacrificial tech will really teach them this. And I wonder if that will make all the difference for respecting cell phones.
I mentor a highschool robotics team and 90% of the kids phones have cracked screens.
Just the part and tools, mind you. Not labor. They do the labor themselves. It’s really not that hard. (Even in the so-called unrepairable phones! I did an iPhone 12 battery last year. iFixit has those guides down to a science).
Might work miracles at showing teens they can fix problems (even those that even their parents are scared of!), that repairing stuff isn’t that scary, and that $40ish can go quite a long way.
Note: I have no children nor do I plan to. Exactly because I have no idea how to deal with them nor do I want them to suffer being with me lol
You mean parents can't seem to tolerate even a single dead child. And that's true, especially when most parents only ever have one or two children.
Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can rationalize away.
If every parents react the same way then that is effectively the whole society no? Imagine the reaction of a modern day town if a child had broke their neck from the playground, what would the reaction? I wouldn't put demolishing the playground outside of the realm of possibility.
> Obviously they don't want them to die. To parents, their children aren't an abstract idea or a number that they can rationalize away.
Yea and this is why this is quite interesting to think about for me. In a way, perhaps it is better that failures to happen in small numbers many times, instead of 1 big societal level failure that only need to happen once. I think part of the problem is that people have access to global news today. Even 1 children choking on some candy or whatever from the other side of the globe would mean that every children would be stripped of this experience.
This is extremely locale-dependent. In the US? There would be lawsuits, fences, height restrictions, and so on.
In the Netherlands? They’d put up a sign, maybe.
Are you saying that parents don't care when their children are killed in a school shooting?
That I believe is part of it. My parents were children before WWII and both came from large families—there were seven siblings on each side. On the other hand my generation had typically two kids.
It would be ludicrous to suggest that my grandparents didn't love their kids or care as much about them given their numbers but the fact is—put brutally—there was considerable solace in having 'spares'.
Today, it is very easy to forget that prewar many more kids per capita never reached adulthood. Most people alive today have never known a time without penicillin or the pre-polio-vaccine days. People in those days were much more fatalistic about life and the lives of their kids as life back then was considerably more 'fragile'. Today, we expect our kids to reach adulthood and outlive us, back then most hoped that would happen but they were more circumspect about it. When a kid died of course parents would be terribly upset but when it happened they always knew there was more chance of it happening than just a remote possability.
I noticed this fatalism in my grandparents, especially my grandmother, she came from a big family and she had a big family and in both cases some kids died before reaching adulthood.
He stressed the importance of spontaneous, unstructured play. As you note it leads to important social development, it improves creativity and could lead to much better academic performance into the teens according to the studies he showed me.
When he designed a playground it wasn't "here they can do A and there they can do B", but he strived to provide spaces that facilitated spontaneous play. He wanted the kids to do their own thing, and provided as many options as possible. An important factor here is that kids enjoy different kinds of play. Not everyone wants to kick a ball, some want more social play so might need a space that allows for that, perhaps a secluded sitting group.
However as you note safety is a big issue. He had a guiding principle of two kinds of safety. There's subjective saftey, if you're high up you know falling might hurt. This is what kids should learn, and it's important they get to do that without permanent injury.
The second kind is objective safety, which relates to the environment and equipment, which facilitates this learning of subjective safety. There shouldn't be rocks near by equipment which could cause permanent injury if a kid fell of the equipment. There shouldn't be gaps in the swing attachment where a kid could lose a finger, and so on.
I think if I had kids my gut feeling would be to prevent harm and unpleasant experiences, because I wouldn't want to experience those things myself, much less those in my charge who may not be equipped to handle it as well. If I allow myself to be driven by that instinct however, they'll never be well equipped which does not make for a well rounded adult. It hurts to see immediate family hurting even in trivial capacities, but a parent must seemingly be able to endure that if the children are to come to be able to stand on their own.
And one day he just had to try it and feel what all these stories were about. He started crying immediately. We went to the hospital and came back rather quick. It wasn't so bad, just had to have a bandage for a couple of days.
Some weeks later he does it again. On purpuse.
!!??
I tell my brother and he answers: "I kind of understand him. Sometimes I want to do it too."
Similar story: I have a good friend who, as a kid, regularly had to have poison control called for him. It didn't matter what his parents did to hide the stuff he shouldn't drink, he would still try to get to it and drink it. Despite having to have his stomach pumped multiple times.
What children perhaps need is a different amount of parenting in different stages. Someone wrote that first you are the authority figure and the lighthouse for love and safety, then you become more of a mentor as they grow up.
Again, the best you can hope for is that they learn good enough values and let them live their lives, it’s THEIR LIVES, not yours and maybe they will come to you for help. And when that happens, go to town!
I disagree. It's best done with adult supervision, by adults who either at least allow play, if not are still playful themselves.
Yes teens do need some time without adults for a sliver of contexts, but the vast majority of learning is optimized when having the availability of at least 2 responsible adults who aid when called on but do not impose.
Lots of our ideas about teenagers, what kids can and cannot do etc are very recent and very contrary to history's proof that they absolutely can
I suppose the question is whether the “learning density” is high or low, and diverse, in video games. I spent a lot of time on single player games as a kid and am open to the idea that MMOs give you more learning (particularly social, of course), but I do wonder how they compare with, say, team sports or running around the woods with your friends.
The way I'm approaching it is simply: all things in moderation. Did you go outside today? Do a bit of tidying? Spend some time at the craft table? Go nuts with Super Mario after dinner. Did you wake up and play Mario for a few hours and get cranky when your brother asked you to play outside? Might be time to press the parental finger on the scale.
Seems really hard to tell, and perhaps we should just be skeptical of "easy" / "dopamine hooks" things like games, and perhaps unskeptical of hard things like science, art, etc. -- if a child wants to spend lots of time on a hard thing that's probably a good sign, if they want to spend lots of time on an easy thing that may or may not be good.
When you screw up team play on the playground you can make enemies, rivals that will follow you through school for years to come, a reputation (for better or worse). You may have to look another kid in the eye and tell them, "No".
I don't doubt you can acquire some skills from online play, but if you think you're leveling up in self-esteem, social skills, I imagine that will get really put to the test when you find yourself alone at a party, or in an interview for a job.
Like flight simulators, they can be educational but I suspect it's a whole 'nother level of learning and experience when you could die if you screw up.
To be clear, im not saying it has to come from their parents. Just that it’s usually the dad powerbombing the kid on the bed and advocating for contact sports. This dynamic illustrated: https://imgur.io/8RZn2YF
In psychology, the rest of your post is what "play" means. It's basically anything done as practice, or with low stakes, or without other purpose.
They’re very keenly tuned in to social feedback, far more so than we may realize as adults.
IMO this is also why it’s so important as an adult to be very intentional and unambiguous when appropriate. Flat statements like “that’s rude” or “that was very kind” can be very powerful.
Also worth considering how online interactions change the game- they’re trying all the same gambits, but the kinds of feedback they get are very very different than in person.
Labels without understanding is kinda pointless. My friend's 5 year old has translated 'rude' to mean 'something I don't like'. Whenever he gets a timeout he calls his parents rude. It's actually pretty hilarious.
What I’m really getting at is that we don’t always point out to other adults when they’re being rude, and when we do, our goal isn’t to teach them that they’re being an ass. With kids and teens, it’s worth taking a conscious effort to reframe these kinds of interactions.
Specific language choices are also very important - eg always “that’s rude” and never “you’re rude”.
I like this a lot. That is so true. Personal anecdote:
When I got my first car as a teenager (a cheap, used, beat-up sedan), I would often take it out to 'play', ehm, 'test the world'. I lived in a rural area and would drive random, remote backroads for hours with no maps (and no cell phones at the time). I would try to see if I could get lost. I never succeeded. I was always able to eventually find my way, while I was simultaneously building spatial awareness and a general sense of direction that accompanies me to this day. The winter time gave me the best 'testing' environment. I would drive these backroads when they were icey and very slick. When I had certainty there was no traffic anywhere near, I would see how I handled my car when I lost control. A few rotations later, after spinning uncontrollably, I was able to regain steering and was able to navigate out of the problem.
Risky? Sure. Useful skills? Yes. Would my parents have stressed out knowing what I was doing, definitely. I'd like to think I'm a much better driver today because of it and have gotten myself out of some potentially consequential accidents because of my awareness of how a vehicle handles when out of control.
Many people learn from doing - many kids especially. Being raised in proverbial padded rooms may mask very beneficial learning that corresponds to the real consequences of life that we will inevitably face in adulthood. There will always be risk by letting our kids loose a bit more, and thats probably the scariest of things for many parents..
That’s been the big challenge. So then there are these magical days where they all don’t have any activities and those invariably happen to be the days ALL kids look forward to. Cuz at the end of the day, they just want to play with their friends.
But that has taken planning in the past where we coordinate with parents for those free play days.
But those days are the exception. I wish they were the rule.
We’ve actually noticed how amazing his mood is after a day full of unorganized play hanging out with friends.
Full scheduling of random stuff doesn't mean it would always help the children. It's the children's version of appearing busy.
In this age of extreme abundance, we have lost the ability to just daydream, people watch, etc. I’m not glamorizing being bored. I used to hate waiting for 30 mins for the bus.
Sorry this is something I lecture my kids about a lot! :-)
- don’t focus on GPA, focus on actually gaining knowledge and understanding how the world works. good grades are a measure of how you understand things. they should never be the goal. I was a C student and I am more curious about things than many of my peers with fancy degrees.
- forge your own path, there is always a thousand different paths out there. College is just one.
- no replacement for hard work. don’t expect anything in life. anything worth getting, you’ll have to compete with many others to get it so learn to be a good competitor.
- college should be approached with all the tradeoffs and as any other investment. We’ve told them we will not pay for their college. so they will have to make choices about getting the best bang for your buck. We’re the only parents in our whole social circle that aren’t saving for their college. it feels weird and isolating when that topic comes up.
- first think about the kind of life you want and then make choices to get you that life.
they’re already sick if my lectures. and they’re 10 and 5. :-)
There’s no exemption for “I want to teach my kids financial responsibility”. If you’re high income your children will be ineligible for any financial aid and have few options for funding their own education.
The FAFSA is such a crappy measuring stick for college affordability. I ended up having to make up the difference with loans, now it wouldn't be feasible.
They can choose to go to very good public universities with in state tuition (often around $10-12k per year). We can sit down and discuss the tradeoffs of the degree they are getting vs the earning power of that degree. And the tradeoffs between being a commuter student and one that lives on campus. Or saving money by attending community college the first two years.
NONE of those conversations will happen if I struggle to save 200k per kid and they simply don’t understand the concept of having to pay that back somewhere. Or ever think about whether a particular degree has any real value.
This is part of the problem with just going along with the high fees and running that rat race.
I certainly did not have a “very good public university” with $10k tuition. My state flagship (Rutgers) was over $20k per year. Other states public universities were often even more expensive, Berkeley would have cost more than any private university I was accepted to.
If you live somewhere like CA, Texas, or Michigan then more power to you, your kids should have great options. But it’s not advice that transfers. And again, the government is of the position that that 40-60k is your responsibility. I don’t agree with the way higher education is managed either but you’re not opting out of it, your just passing the costs to your kids.
- University of Maryland, College Park ~ $10k a year [1]
- University of California, Los Angeles ~ $15k a year [2]
- University of Pennsylvania, WOW $56k ... that's .... CRAZY for a public University.
Obviously this is not at all a good sample size but I picked public universities in populous areas in states that cover a lot of the population. And I'm picking better known ones. Someone else probably has a lot of good, statistical data on this, like the US Gov Department of Education.
1: https://academiccatalog.umd.edu/undergraduate/fees-expenses-...
2: https://admission.ucla.edu/tuition-aid/tuition-fees
3: https://srfs.upenn.edu/costs-budgeting/undergraduate-cost-at...
In college I didn't care about grades. Still graduated.
At work I don't care about promotions. I still get raises well above inflation and am doing great.
I have many friends without the same opportunities and I would be struggling just as much as them if it weren't for the tech bits (and a little bit of being in the right place at the right time)
I guess what I'm saying is you can throw a child into extracurriculars and just sort of hope the extra work makes the difference between comfort and struggling. Or you can encourage them to find hobbies and reinforce the ones that will lead to comfort and stability as my parents did.
I've read this before from Americans, and I don't get it. In my culture if parents can pay for their kids' education, they do it. There's a time and a place to teach them financial responsability, I feel distracting them with financial concerns during their most challenging years of schooling is not it.
When I went to college (paid for by my parents), I had friends who had to work on the side to pay for rent and groceries. They barely hung by, very few had great grades since they had to split their time between work and study. One of my close friends ended up dropping out because he was burned out.
Of course this doesn't mean you should pay 50k for a degree in feminist dance therapy, you make sure you only pay for something with ROI (That's another thing I don't understand about Americans. In a country with tuition so high, how can so many pursue degrees with such awful job prospects?)
We’ve actually discussed that a bit. We will never let them get to the point where they have to worry about eating meals, or worry that their academics have to suffer to make ends meet.
We even considered for example giving them a living allowance so they have more flexibility in picking jobs, but aren’t desperate. But it’s important to me that they understand and intelligently approach the first large financial decision of their lives.
It’s also important (to me) that my kids work during college, whether it’s waiting tables in a restaurant, or a retail job, and understand the value of money and the value of serving lots of customers (including angry customers). Those experiences never leave you. You have more empathy for someone waiting tables or taking longer or making mistakes when you’ve done it yourself.
We are pretty well off right now and our kids have a very nice life. It’s important that they learn that it isn’t the default, and that it is a result of working hard. They’re already good kids. You’re right, our job parents is not to let them hit a point of desperation. But at the same time we also want them to learn the value of hard work, juggling priorities, and having the pride of having paid your own way through college.
These are all the additional lessons outside the classroom.
Gotta say though, this seems to be purely a thing in the english speaking cultures. Apart from sport and maybe an instrument, extracurriculars aren't a thing in most european countries.
Extracurriculars are so peculiar that our ministry of education deems it necessary to make it a mandatory point for teachers to discuss when talking about american childrens typical day in school.
Would love to see updated numbers on it.
That is good for planning/preparing for the future.
Being scheduled to the gills means that the ‘now’ is constantly filled with planning/preparing/doing things for the future though.
And with no time for the present or for being able to think/daydream.
Especially as we get to middle and high school. Many of us had jobs back then. Isn't uncommon for many small businesses to have a lot of help they use their children for. Not even going back to farms. Though, hard not to see all of the chores that many of those would have around the place as scheduled.
Edit: Tried to stealth fix, but I did flip a less to a more at the top there. Apologies for anyone that may respond to my mistake there.
I’m not 100% sure what is real and what is selection bias. What is due to class shifts, increased income earning, etc. too. This seems like something that should have studies around it with actual data, but I couldn’t find it directly with a quick search.
All I’ve personally experienced is seeing parents (and myself) struggle to get kids into various activities due to the huge demands on our own time/mental energy, and trying to figure out how to get a good outcome for the kids from it. All of these folks I know were either from low middle and now high middle, or high middle and still high middle class backgrounds.
Upper class type folks already had a set of things they ‘did’, and while there was competition, it looked different.
I found [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6720124/] which is quite interesting, but that also seems to be oriented around ‘what do various types of extracurricular activities/after school social interactions actually produce’.
Which is very interesting, and goes more to the outcome as compared to changes over time.
That is, I feel it acutely, but not clear how much of this is the biases you named. Would love to see studies. I also failed finding any. I also agree it is almost certainly studied.
To be fair, my schedule got quite busy in final years. But it was because I started building websites for €€€. But I doubt it’s comparable to parents-scheduled extracurricular activities. And I learned programming in my free unstructured time by myself.
Learning to live self sufficiently is better with unstructured time IMO. When you have to learn to put together your own schedule, follow it and do day-to-day tasks. It’s horrible how many kids can’t make themselves dinner and clean up the house after themselves. Because kid is always busy and mommy takes care of everything because little 18 y/o is so tired. Of course it doesn’t help that in many cases mommy can’t do much better than microwave dinner or order a takeout :/
This is a major thing in many East Asian cultures as well, China/Taiwan/Japan/Korea. Korea had to pass a law saying that private academies have to close at 10pm, so that kids aren't studying past midnight, but some academies still stay open secretly as the parents are demanding the extra hours. It's a vicious circle: kids compete for the few spots in top universities so they can get into the best companies, average qualifications rise, so next generation have to compete even harder for the same few spots.
This is carried over to the US as well. Asians compete for the few spots in top universities, as they are held to higher standards already, and this just keep ratcheting up the average standard for Asians each generation.
(I suppose the answer is that there's an economic incentive in squeezing your kids into a pressure cooker of endless commitments, to the point where the pros outweigh the cons; but this assumption makes me feel like I'm being unfairly cynical to the parents in question.)
And indeed, in that framing, it is going to be tough to make it so that those who can afford to spend their time shouldn't do so.
So, are there policies where we could make it so that folks can put a legit value in the things they are neglecting for this extra spend in time? I can certainly hope so.
Depends on what you mean. Afterschool activities often include sports, so there's some balance between academics and physical activities, but physical activities won't get you into a good school unless you are at a competitive level, so there are high pressures there as well.
As for parents who recognize the importance of downtime? The ones that can afford it... send their kids overseas. But of course, even with added downtime, those kids are more academically competitive, so they end up ratcheting up the standards in the area they go to.
Mom would find me, send me back to bed, and shame me for reading. Then I was further shamed and humiliated when I was fitted for spectacles in third grade. Of course my parents blamed myopia on reading books in poor lighting.
That bathroom was actually the site of innumerable playtimes for me. Battleships and Cartesian divers in the tub, Rubik's cube maintenance, trying to get my alligator lizard to drink from the tap. It was a dingy, dusty playground where I felt kinda safe and clean.
similarly, china banned private afterschool services for school subjects. i don't know how effective the ban is, but their argument was similar.
Bring back the pop-in!
Today, I'm not really crazy about the idea of a random pop-in, having to cut the few hours of time that I do have for laundry, dishes, or just a bit of down time, to have to make coffee and find snacks and sit down for a chat. If I were home all day that would be quite different, or so I think.
Doing the dishes when you pop in? Cool, you get to dry them as I wash. Everyone basically follows this rule. There’s no expectation of entertaining guests if you pop in for a visit.
Although, I see no problem with impromptu visits, I get them all the time. They just happen to call or text before coming.
These days many people don't even know the names of the people living across the street.
If not that well off, it’s usually worse.
And near as I can tell, that barely keeps their head above water, if that.
Maybe this whole "scheduling" things was a mistake.
no need to roll up and see how your week has been, just send someone a how-do and maybe to a 5 min facetime
There is something deeply wrong here. I blame other parents who overschedule their kids.
Ah, the mantra of our parental lives!
These classes kids go to aren’t always some kind of arduous, academic overachiever factory. My kid goes to a Spanish immersion after school program once a week and she loves it. She’s made a ton of friends there. We’re not shoving her through the door.
Don’t get me wrong, some parents do go over the top with it, no doubt. But a lot of these activities are genuinely enriching.
The problem is over the holidays when all your kid's friends have been sent to camps and summer schools (mostly as a form of holiday childcare for working parents presumably) or taken away on holiday, leaving your kid with nobody to play with. It presumably varies a lot but it's a real thing in our and our childrens' lives. The summer holidays should be filled with friends and play, not spent at home with your parents because nobody's available.
Oh, and even after, gee, sorry, not charging phones when on the road.
Meeting other parents is a huge effort, though! It's basically dating all over again. If your kids ride the school bus, that's a big help because you automatically meet nearby parents who are home in the afternoon. Otherwise, you have to go to lots of events and ask parents for their phone numbers, but the majority don't work out for random reasons.
When I was young, my parents knew the parents of maybe one or two of my friends, and that was only largely because they knew each other from somewhere else. We didn't need to have our parents organize and sync up their schedules to go play together. We'd just go and meet up. If no one was around outside, might go up and knock on the door of a few friends see if they wanted to do something. But ultimately, we had largely free reign to ourselves.
Now, at a later age, I also really wouldn't want to have to get to know the parents of my kids' friends either. Meet once or twice to get to see them face-to-face, maybe get some basic contact info just in case, but for the most part, I don't really want my kids' social relationships to be based on how well I can get along with other parents (with a few small exceptions.)
Why don't you move to an area that's not like that, or you go an play with your kid at the park until other kids show up.
or build an app that makes the makes scheduling the play time very seamless.
I'd talk to people in class and they'd claim to have like 1 or two hours free between school and sleep. And I had something like 8 hours free. What the hell?
Fast forward to present day and my kids are beginning to build ramps for their bikes just like I used to do - and I'm right out there with them building so I can shred on my MTB just like the old days lol.
The neighbors have been gone every weekend to a different part of the state or another state entirely for 8U baseball, and I can't help but feel sorry for them as someone who went through the same thing as a kid.
What we should have done is expand access to elite colleges commensurate with demand, and thereby dilute the status of the "elite" college. Harvard still accepts ~2000 people, around the same as 40 years ago, even though demand has skyrocketed. That is basically leading to more and more competition over the same slots, same as the bidding wars in the housing market. And all of the alumni of the University get to ride the wave of more and more exclusivity (they benefit from a low acceptance rate), so this is unlikely to change.
Artificial scarcity rules the day.
Guess what? Kids who have never had time to play are ones who have never had time to develop cool interests.
Jack Nicholson said it best (repeatedly): All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.
I know enough of those who went to these so-called top tier colleges, meanwhile I took my time getting through an average college, but nonetheless exploring interests, making eclectic friends.
Most people around me were treating life like a sprint - My young self even back then knew it was a marathon.
I am not saying be aimless but don't drive yourself crazy at this altar of success - it will come, but there are life lessons you learn in your 20s - that are the foundation for a better life later.
There was also definitely a strong undercurrent of first-generation immigrants to the US pushing their kids hard, because they had no reason to distrust the message that if you want to succeed in the US, you need to go to a top college so you can get a good job.
But as I've studied this issue and experienced life, it seems to be the case that credentials are in reality overrated compared to competence and experience. The vast majority of colleges will admit anyone, and the vast majority of employers requiring a degree just ask that you have a degree of any kind.
So now I think parents should just chill, not because it's the altruistic strategy in game theory, but because that's how the actual labor market works. Parents are killing themselves and their kids for no reason.
Anyways, point is, this fostered my interest in nature (looking for bugs), my sociability and strategy (card games), and my agility and teamwork (wall ball). This was stuff I worked hard at too, because they were my interests.
In surrendering utterly to the preeminence of streets, we have essentially taken our open, free world and overlain it with an immense grid of electric fences -- thick lines all over the map that, if children wander across them, might easily lead to their deaths.
So "hold hands everywhere" and "don't let your children run free outside" become the norms. The only safe place is locked inside or behind fences; the wider world is a death trap for children.
Play inherently requires a degree of freedom, but children have none. We are just prison guards eternally transferring them from one captivity to another.
Granted the numbers are lower now than before but that’s because of various safety and traffic calming efforts. Seems like we should push harder on that front, so parents can feel safe encouraging their kids to just pop over to their friends place on their own.
Things like the sex offender registry "help" but don't at the same time. It's not something I ever concerned myself with ("I know the stats, it's usually a relative!") until someone encouraged me to do it while closing on a house. I'm now acutely aware of the fact that there are dozens of child predators within a 1-mile radius of my home.
https://reason.com/2014/08/19/august-2014-reason-rupe-nation...
Americans are split regarding whether there should be a law requiring 12-year-olds be supervised when playing in a park - no cars there.
As an European, to me this is absurd. At twelve I had a bus card and the privilege to go wherever, as long as I respected curfew.
But the numbers say its the actual white van going too fast on a four lane road (speed limit 45mph) next to the park. This isn't that much of a problem in older European cities.
The OP said that everyone is walled off by cars so they have a mindset of controlling their children, lest they get run over. You're saying that they're actually afraid of kidnappers etc., while they should be of cars. To me these points are contradictory.
In any case do you think removing cars will solve the problem? My guess is that no, because this mindset appeared decades after cars took over, and these things are actually not related.
I think a big part of this is just our risk tolerances change. We naturally want to protect kids, and looking historically we've taken safety to relative extremes compare to 20 years ago (and similarly before then). Its natural to want more security, and its obvious how it helps. But its not as obvious what we've given up in return.
Interestingly, I moved to Portland recently, and live mid way between suburbs and downtown; its fairly dense but mostly SFH or townhomes in my neighborhood, many businesses, some homeless. Kids of all ages walk to school and are... just everywhere, around here. Its quite normal to see people walking with their kids too. Its just got a really great mix of urban density -- you can walk to stores, bars, school. There's a few high traffic streets, but they are not large and the speed limit is 20mph. I think what this neighborhood has taught me is, while our risk tolerances are lower than ever, its still a bit of a design and culture choice to not let kids walk around. Its nice to see here, in Portland of all places, there's a bit of a counter trend going on. I hope its what the future looks like in other places (here and elsewhere) too.
So kids are stuck at home, miles from a playmate.
The driver who led to Sammy's Law (which still hasn't passed) only received a 180 day license suspension a year and a half after the accident, even though he sped past a stopped vehicle on the righthand side (the vehicle had stopped for the child). Death by car is often considered acceptable.
There is really no disincentive to dangerous driving, to say nothing of the preeminence of driving more generally.
this is a great example of where whataboutism is not a logical fallacy. i mean what is your solution? ban all driving?
sure, but give me a proper public transport network that can supply the suburbs and rural areas. fix urban cost of living while you're at it.
Step 2 is to change the highway code to make stroads illegal and make more normal safe roads.
Step 3 is change the fha rules so more dense homes are built.
Step 4 change cafe standards so smaller lighter cars are the norm, possibly tax suvs and trucks.
These are all stroke of a pen changes.
In a democracy you need buy-in from society at large. What's the plan on achieving that?
A part of being a democratic society is accepting that an opinion of an average person is worthless.
Neighborhood != community. Imo with: - Lack of interesting nearby spaces - poor walking options (unsafe, unpopulated, unshaded) - poor transit options - growing options online - polarization
Families are less likely to spend leisure or errand time in/near their neighborhoods. And kids suffer for that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_Alone https://www.youtube.com/c/NotJustBikes
Helicopter parents don't let things like logic and convenience get in the way of taking every atom of independence from their kids. It may also have something to do with trust. Nobody trusts their kids with anything these days anymore and then they expect them to somehow grow up capable of taking responsibility? Like, how?
At 6 years old I was literally biking by the river or wandering in the woods with my friends after school for hours on end. Every day was an exciting adventure without any adult supervision, just random groups of 2-10 kids who would gather in the afternoon to play together. The rule was "home by dinner or there won't be any dinner for you". I never did any extracurricular activity, ever.
This did not prevent me from going to a great university in my country, get my master in Computer Engineering, graduating in the top 5% of my class, have a curriculum good enough to legally immigrate to the US, and working at several tech companies including FAANG, making high 6 figures now.
I would never give away those wonderful memories and early life experiences for some random extracurricular activity just to "stand out" later on, I do believe such freedom helped form my character to a much greater extent than any scripted activity would have.
The key question is more, could you do that today and would you sacrifice that to give your kids that childhood? Would your grades and lack of extracurriculars have earned you admission in this year's cohort? Is that path still really available?
I am 9 years out from the university admissions game, so still pretty young, but some time has passed. I would not be a competitive applicant today for many of the same programs I was admitted to back then.
High school was by far the most stressful time of my life and the fun part is, it would have had to have had more pressure to be where I am today.
Disclaimer: I live in the US but didn’t grow up here. I also grew up in the 90s.
In my experience, in higher education the prestige of the school has a smaller impact on learning than most people seem to think. Mostly, it seems to function as networking and a badge on your resume which can open the next door.
But once you have a bit of experience, more doors will open. In a few years, people care more about what you worked with than what school you went to, even if it’s an Ivy for instance.
Plus, working at smaller companies is a much faster way to learn than faang, imo. Sure, you get good at politics, perf reviews, and learn some best practices, but in terms of domain knowledge and practicing decision making, faang is terribly inefficient for “growth”. I wish I had worked more at smaller companies/freelancing, because frankly most of big corp was a waste of time (although money is good).
what is the point of growth if not to make more money?
you could quit your faang job and work as a janitor while hacking projects on the side if so inclined. except one has a pathway to 500k+ and the other does not.
I’d definitely swap those two, for life in general. (Depending on what you mean by growth, which is why I quoted it, because I don’t really subscribe to the implicitly assumed linear progression model.)
Anyway, I’d be the first to say money is important, because of what it lets you do. Similarly, the potential of earning money in the future (should it be needed) provides financial safety, and having faang on resume helps with that. But money also has an aggressive diminishing returns curve for what most people do with it, including me.
A lot of young people are concerned that they have to be competitive early to not have doors close on them, which is what I’m arguing is less true than they are mostly told. Especially for tech. So I was mainly arguing that sacrificing childhood to be molded in the senseless game of early credentialsm and extracurriculars is a tactically meh choice in most cases, and that’s excluding the emotional abuse itself.
> you could quit your faang job and work as a janitor while hacking projects on the side if so inclined.
Already did :) except the janitor part.
In my darker moments I fear this may be one of those things where the tradeoffs between a high performance society and a take-it-easy culture just can't be squared. But then I remember that it's more likely downstream of other, more transient issues in American culture - the ever present fear of getting cancelled, the heavily bike-hostile ecosystem, etc. It's worth fighting to get back.
Independence, life skills, and fun stem from the freedom to explore on one's own. If anything parents, should be constantly nudging and encouraging kids to be more independent than is typically expected by:
1. Letting them have some unstructured, unsupervised time, especially out in the neighborhood.
2. Not automatically doing or thinking for them, especially by answering advice questions with questions that encourage reflection and independent decision-making.
3. Expect them to help with chores and needs self-service, pushing back against the expectation that parents are the forever barbers, waiters, and maids while the kids are on permanent vacation.
I love this article with the comparison across generations.
I grew up in Europe in the '80s, and was riding streetcars and taking subways when I was 10.
We live in a society where a small mistake can ruin the rest of your life; where parents can be jailed for allowing previously common freedoms to children; where children are increasingly subject to age restrictions; where parents are under increasing threat of legal actions; surveillance is everywhere; and more.
Many of these things were done with the best intentions of protecting children. How much joy does one get out of keeping a toy sealed in a box, preserving it's "value"? How much more valuable would that toy be if one enjoyed it during their childhood? We're keeping our kids in the packaging to protect them, but we're losing the real value.
Wait a minute, what?
Nearly 1 in 10 attempted suicide? So in a middle school of say 400 kids a kid would know almost 40 peers that tried to kill themselves? I wasnt in middle school in 2019 but this just doesnt seem right. Maybe im misunderstanding.
Edit: it says high school not middle school, but point stands
But having graduated high school in 2014, my anecdotal reaction based on that experience would be that it seems on the high side but is plausible.
My reaction certainly isn’t “no way.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maryroeloffs/2023/07/19/teen-su...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/childrens-risk-of...
This is horrifying. These kids are going to become adults who will, to some extent, struggle to have successful, satisfying and rewarding lives.
Still, 10 out of 400 needing medical treatment for a suicide attempt, is awful, and seems much higher than when I was in high school.
The 2.5% number is more directly comparable to past numbers, if we assume that suicide attempts that lead to requiring medical care are more likely to get reported somehow.
Maybe, in the past, some high schooler one night decides to drive his car faster and faster on a deserted road, hoping that it will end up with death by car wreck. Then, they decide against it, slow down, pull over, cry, and eventually go home. We never hear about it unless they admit to somebody that it happened. But, if they end up putting the car in a ditch and get treated at a hospital, perhaps we do.
My goodness what a depressing topic to comment on. Anyway, hope everybody out there reading this feels ok! If not, it gets better, keep trying!
It's the police and CPS that I am afraid of. The ubiquity of smartphones has made tattling and "calling someone" so easy. And it's almost never from other parents! The parents are more worried about "what people will think" than they are their own kids actually being hurt!
Also, there are so many fewer kids in a neighborhood than when I was a kid (both from a declining birthrate - and also the monopoly older/kidless people have in suburban housing right now is very underreported) that there is less safety in numbers. There are only 2 other kids on our block.
I threw up an arm in disapproval, and he flipped me off in return, like I was the problem. Sometimes the entitlement is unreal, and I'm not sure how much enforcement it would take before people did the right thing.
There was a YouTube video of a man standing on the sidewalk next to a puddle with an umbrella, then a brick. Perhaps staged, but I'll let you guess which one kept him drier.
Usually sports, but sometimes something else. I actually really enjoyed this sort of setting. Kids would get hurt accidentally, there were some harmless fights, and that sort of thing.
I'm just concerned that, independent of my own viewpoint on the subject, I will be unable to find sufficient other parents with this approach, or, should I find them they'll be clustered with other beliefs that I think are suboptimal for success.
Ultimately, if there is a place with this culture then I will try to make it so I can reasonably live there.
I took music lessons, did Cub Scouts Weeblos & Boy Scouts, played little league, played Pop Warner & high school football and ran track. All after school activities.
As for freedom.. I took SF MUNI, BART, Ferries and Golden Gate Transit starting at 7 year old. Any free time I had was spent playing with friends. And I had to be home by the time the street lights came on.
So it is possible to have a lot of after school activities and plenty of time to play with friends and explore the world.
We ramp up the pressure younger than ever, tell people that their entire future hinges on their success and getting ahead of their peers right now, then we're surprised that people crack under the stress?
(FWIW, the sports that seem to come up on top are rich, exclusive sports like fencing and polo, because they serve well as class signifiers in admissions)
Even children need to be optimized for maximum success (so profit) now? Must have missed that memo.
There was a discussion here a while back with a college admissions person where they confirmed that volunteer work is a bonus where actual work is not. It's not explicitly stated, but anyone who comes from a family where they _have_ to work is at a disadvantage.
Well ... no they don't and this is the problem. 'Regular' people for some reason feel the need to replicate what 'they' do. Why do you see 'them' do this and then think 'my children need what they are doing with theirs'.
Look.. the data are unequivocal. Most people are unhappy. If you are not unhappy with your life, you are the outlier and the exception. Thus... don't try to do what others are doing, since most likely they're unhappy. Just enjoy yourself.
Those people are dumb; ignore them. They're "fighting the last war", so to say.
Seriously, an orchestra needs 30-40 violins per tuba. There has to be a lot of violin players, or there is no orchestra (the Harvard orchestra is short on violin players right now [1] - they certainly aren't going to be taking many more "unusual" instruments without more violins)
The injury rates for young athletes keeps increasing (as in younger than 25-30). Plenty of research shows that specializing in a single sport at a young age is a strong contributor to this. Of course those "elite" coaches want your kid to give up everything else; when your kid burns out or get injured the coach just moves on to the next kid in line.
Just opt out of this system, your kids will be fine.
[1] https://www.harvardradcliffeorchestra.org/current-roster
But you know, just about every single good university has an orchestra - lots of them have multiple (symphony, philharmonia, etc). There are way more kids playing music for their school than will ever be professional musicians. And there is a need for 2-3 times more violin players than cello players.
If your kid enjoys playing violin and wants to play in college, that will count for a lot more than someone who plays a cello just so they can write it down on their application.
"Kids these days" (at least the ones I know) have their whole days scheduled for 'stuff'... school, home, music lessons, sport practice, come back home at 8pm, homework, sleep. On weekends, they're packed in the cars and taken somewhere 'in nature/countryside', so they wouldn't spend their days at home or outside sitting on a bench for the whole day.
I'm an adult now, for quite a few years, and the thing I miss the most about childhood is the "freedom",... after school, you were free to do whatever, and during the summer, you were free for 2.5 months... no responsibilities, no timetables, schedules, no nothing... just kids and stupid (then important) kid stuff.
Perhaps the real losses of community and public commons (other countries call it "commonwealth") create a desert of human interaction. Maybe this is partly why the US has an absurd number of depressed and maladjusted young people.
- In the rest of the world University applications are (mostly) decided on academic scores. This adds academic pressure but it means outside school work the time is yours (probably not so true in Asia though). In the US I get the impression that kids (and parents) need to create some sort of 110% intensity overachiever halo in all their out of school activities (as early as possible) to be able to pad their applications in order to impress an Admissions Officer.
- Your infrastructure is (beyond insanity) car hostage and the SUV arms race adds to even more pedestrian lack of safety. That pretty much makes a lot of kids confined to a few blocks around the house until they are 16. If you were to say to anyway in Europe that a town with more than 50k people has multilane streets but with no sidewalks they would probably protest.
- Having said that I still feel that at least for teenagers smartphone/social media usage is a major cause of mental health decline across the globe (so not US exclusive). It's the whole problem of comparing other people's filtered best with your internal self-perceived worst.
When I was in college, I was either studying or running around with friends. The only time I mindlessly scrolled on my phone was when I ate alone in the cafeteria.
Hanging out with close friends, I hardly felt any urge to use my phone. I really miss that.
>> He notes that this is a correlation, not proof of causation, although experiments with animals support the claim that play deprivation causes anxiety and poor social development.
I also wonder if "playing" in Minecraft, or Roblox supports this definition of play. Or even RPGs like DnD. It's interactive, and allows children to experiment. It's not a physical world, but I don't know if these parameters were explored.
I don't think so, but that's my opinion.
These virtual worlds have entirely different sets of rules that do not reflect those of reality or social norms. Kids do go through the same motions of testing boundaries, but they're testing boundaries that would get you punched in the face or jailed IRL-- but they get away with it without consequence because it's all virtual. There's no consequence to scamming other kids in Roblox or destroying people's artwork in Minecraft. It's completely normal behavior to them.
Tabletop D&D doesn't count; it's in-person, so if you're tossing around slurs or being conspicuously offensive, someone will correct your behavior.
That's the extent of their socialization, and then they're unleashed into the real world expecting things to work the same way there.
I'm not sure. From my limited observations of my N=1, and even from observing some Minecraft Youtube channels, there are definitely rules and consequences. But these are tested, changed, negotiated when new members (usually classmates) are brought in.
i'd like to disagree. first of all these actions don't have serious consequences because it's a game. destroying someones work in minecraft is no worse than destroying your lego house. that would not get you punched in the face either, nor would cheating your classmate out of their lunch money.
there are also less consequences because of lack of supervision. i don't know about roblox, but the minetest servers my kids play on absolutely have rules against breaking others work and punish players by putting them in an in-world jail or blocking them from the server. in both cases the consequence is that the kids can't play. they have to learn how to interact with other players just as much.
Cats, dogs, animals in the wild not not agree, try taking their food away and see what their natural reaction is to theft and|or interference.
> and not one they should learn to accept.
I agree that they should not learn to accept being punched for knocking down other peoples lego houses, I agree they should not learn to accept being punched for cheating others out of their lunch money.
I woud suggest encouraging them to respect other peoples work and to not cheat others out of their money.
I'm guessing your comment was poorly phrased and that we're in agreement here on the need to play nice and to first address poor behaviour with non violence.
yes of course. what i was trying to suggest is that punishment that happens in well moderated game servers is adequate, and comparable to what should happen outside.
But I hesitate to write off teen mental health as just a result of over parenting or social media. Those are probably contributing factors, how much is not clear to me.
Another contributing factor is the economic knife hanging over everyone’s head. It’s not enough to just finish high school like it was in the 1950s. It’s not even enough to finish a bachelor’s degree now, even though only 40% of millennials have accomplished that. So just being above average isn’t enough. You need to be excellent.
If you compare pretty much any other time in American history to the post-war economy, every metric is going to look worse. Does it mean we should be letting kids play tackle pom pom [1] during recess? So I’m not convinced by the hand-wavy look how great things were back in the day analysis.
This analysis would be much stronger if it tried to account for confounding factors. For example analyzing countries where life expectancy is not decreasing.
[1] https://www.yellowbullet.com/threads/school-yard-recess-game...
One is that cultures with highly structured time for kids like China do not have the same dramatic rises in mental illness, that I’m aware of. Two is that this seems to only apply to middle class or rich western kids (unsurprising for academic studies). You really think poor kids are spending too much time at piano lessons and not playing? No they have the opposite problem of too much lack of structure.
Overall this seems quite narrow minded to me. The only part of this that rings true is the cultural phenomenon of wanting to make feel everyone safe all the time, even from mere ideas and speech.
Or does their culture just tend to view higher levels of distress as normal given how competitive it is there?
https://fortune.com/2023/07/06/china-gen-z-mental-health-cri...
That being said, they are open that there are issues there as well.
Improv acting, for example, centers simple "improv games". Playing the game imposes moments of vulnerability and creativity. But if you don't add enough context some proportion of the actors will fall into habit and "play like a winner", knocking over everyone else's boundaries by being an asshole.
Obviously if the kid comes from a rich family that is willing to support and leave all of their money to the kid that changes the equation, but I have seen examples where those kids still ended up as drug addicts etc..
Really? There's a constant push to "grind" more, even for well-paid professionals. This is a cultural problem, not one of attainment. Consider how Elon Musk, one of the richest people in the world, claims to work ~16 hours a day. Someone with a steady job in construction probably has a lot more free time than him.
That said, social media aside, I wouldn't want to be a teen today. Too much fear. Too much gloom & doom. Too much adults preaching "Don't do Y and/or Z (and not offering "do this instead" alternatives).
And parents are looked down upon for not overseeing their kid's every move. So yeah, the parents live in fear as well.
This level of fear is not healthy.
We've removed agency and replaced it with a void. Is it any wonder teens are struggling?
It's not only unstructured play, it's physical activity that's needed. But how do you tell a society raised on taking pride in fat & stupid that the bridge they brought is - in the context of history - one of the biggest scams of all time? You don't. You go all in on blaming something secondary like social media (which - fyi - parents could exert more control over).
Early Sesame Street is all about unsupervised kids in a big city.
i mean, its even gotten to the point where no one is having them. other countries around the world apply all the golden rules of economics to become wealthy and successful, but it fails in 2 main areas: education/upbringing, and maintaining a stable birthrate/population
we're eating ourselves alive through a more insidious version of the soviet-era snitching system while proclaiming that cannibalism is immoral
Genuinely wondering where they got any data for that, given that child labour is generally illegal these days and all. What kind of part time jobs for children that pay actual money exist in the present?
I suppose you've got the rare ones like acting, modelling, toy testing, but those come with a lot of other factors that are probably hard to control for and in most cases I doubt the kids are paid directly. Maybe they counted getting $5 from your parents for mowing the lawn.
In the US that's changing...
current selection:
- skat
- gin rummy
- german whist
- spite and malice
i found playing cards to be an amazing catalyst and temporary distraction while having a drink with a friend. it relieves the pressure of having to talk more or less nonstop. and shifting attention to the game away from conversation tends to engage the subconscious producing new interesting subjects to discuss. similar to that effect of ideas popping up during having a shower.
any standard card game enthusiasts here? what's your game of choice?
When I was growing up, basically no one had it. The rates were 1 per 1,000 or lower. So one or two kids in the entire high school. Now you can expect one in your class. Many of these kids are supper naive and vulnerable, just trying to fit in. One reason why the right is skeptical of what is being taught to them.
The paths available in society have gotten less friendly to those with ADHD/Austism (by default), so more people are seeking diagnosis today than in the past.
Also, if you go far enough back, the U.S. used to institutionalize people with mental conditions, which is a pretty strong case against seeking any sort of diagnosis.
The decrease in child mortality might have also increased the occurrence of certain conditions in the population, but I'm not aware of specific studies to that effect.
Key signs of autism in children include:
1. Social communication difficulties: Lack of or limited eye contact Difficulty understanding and using nonverbal communication (e.g., gestures, facial expressions) Trouble with understanding and using gestures, body language, and facial expressions Difficulty developing and maintaining age-appropriate relationships with peers Challenges with sharing interests or enjoyment with others Repetitive behaviors and restricted interests:
2. Engaging in repetitive movements (e.g., hand-flapping, rocking, spinning objects) Insistence on sameness and routines; becoming distressed by changes in routines Intense focus on specific interests or topics, often to the exclusion of others Communication difficulties:
3. Delayed speech development or difficulty in acquiring language skills Unusual patterns of speech, such as echolalia (repeating words or phrases out of context) Difficulty initiating or sustaining conversations Challenges in understanding and using language pragmatically (e.g., taking turns, using appropriate tone of voice) Sensory sensitivities:
4. Heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli, such as noise, lights, textures, or smells Seeking or avoiding certain sensory experiences (e.g., seeking deep pressure, avoiding crowded places)
5.Unusual play and behavior:
Engaging in repetitive and imaginative play that lacks social aspects Using toys in unusual ways or showing little interest in toys altogether Engaging in self-stimulatory behaviors (stimming) to self-regulate or express emotions"
Also, multiple twin studies show how parenting have negligible effects over life outcomes, so I am pretty skeptical of this theory.
We let kids look at cars, poison signs, stairs and elevators and make them understand hos it works and why it's dangerous. Online threats shouldn't be different.
I will also ALWAYS point out that our parents could go to bars at 18 and actually had places they could gather socially without parental supervision before half-way through college.
They put kinds in child jail, tell them to behave or else, make them sit through hours and hours of shitty classes in un air-conditioned rooms with checked out teachers. ( note: this is not how the children of the wealthy experience school )
Once again, you can point to economic factors like the erosion of the public spaces, the massive over-building of suburb and road infrastructure making outside objectively dangerous, and outsourcing public spaces to corporate owned malls that were NEVER profitable.
A kid can play free as much as they like, but that doesn't parlay into success if that kid routinely goes home to unhappiness and imbalance in other areas of life.
Streets of Rogue was really fun for couch co-op, especially given the comical consequences of accidental explosions or poisoning air ducts with the wrong chemical. There's a character for every playstyle too.
Who could have ever foreseen the rampant hollowing out of the holistic life in the service of making a few people richer....
In my 50s and I still smile when I think about that day.
... Oh, and the compulsory XKCD link https://xkcd.com/1227/
My children are at home with my wife (not school age yet). This is apparently abnormal now. So many people have expressed concern that our daughter is not in preschool or daycare. My own mother is concerned she hasn't started academic work like my niece and nephew (they're all around four and five). A neighbor has commented that we're pursuing an 'alternative' lifestyle just by having our kids at home. It's crazy.
Now back to play deprivation. Hot take: the play at preschool, etc is not the same as play with parents, family, and friends. At the end of the day, daycares, schools, etc are businesses (yes, even public schools) that need to protect themselves from liability, which means they are naturally going to promulgate the safety culture that we now know leads to all sorts of mental health issues for teenagers. To get around the issue of lack of play, they announce new activities for the kids. One preschool we were looking at bragged that they did a 'research project' with the children! Now, I'm sure research projects while sitting inside carry less liability concerns, but I'm not sure a preschooler needs that. But, this is the best business decision as they get the benefits (low insurance premiums and ability to get more revenue by enrolling more kids) while they outsource the problems (a teen's mental health issues are the parents problem).
We are lucky to have an active community and my wife and other stay at home moms take the kids on play dates basically every day. On the days they're not with friends, they're at one of the grandparent's houses. Over the summer, they've done things like gone hiking, gone fruit picking, zoos, museums, playgrounds, pools, etc with other kids. The best part is that, since it's not a professional environment, the kids get to do things like jump off rocks, fight with each other, fall of playground equipment, run down hills, climb tall trees, etc. Now of course, not all parents are like this, and some probably think my wife is negligent (I've seen many of these parents at the playground and they seem dreadfully boring). However, some parents allow their kids to play. On the other hand, I've never met a teacher or daycare worker that would allow these things. My carers growing up certainly wouldn't. I don't even blame the teacher; they're often watching 10+ kids at a time, and it's simply impossible to pay attention to a kid doing anything fun at that scale.
But, when you have a group of adult friends supervising children, what ends up happening is that the adults sit around having fun, while the children play, which is awesome. So many times I've seen one of the kids come up to the adults with a complaint about play, and the unvarying response from all the adults is "if you're not having fun playing, why don't you sit down and engage with the adults?" Sure enough, after you put it that way, every kid goes back to playing regardless of whatever slight initially sent them away.
We need to normalize being a child again, and we need to have an honest conversation about how to make that possible.