How to parent more predictably (2018) | Hacker News Reader

How to parent more predictably (2018)

jefftk.com

102 pointsyamrzou77 comments

My most valuable piece of advice for parents is to keep your children informed about your plans for the day, especially things about to happen soon, and bear in mind that kids have their own plans and time schedules (and don't wear watches).

For instance, if you are about to go out, give them fair warning and a few reminders. Especially the all-important: if you need to save your game, you need to do it now.

Similarly, if kids are taking turns with toys, your kid might be patiently waiting their turn. To be suddenly yanked away before their turn will, quite rightly, feel like an injustice. I used to tell them all that if its someone's turn coming up that they should get to have it before we leave. Kids are usually fair in these circumstances.

These simple rules meant my kids never had leaving tantrums, and rarely had tantrums at all.

I found out the same thing. There were still tamptrums with mine, but significantly less of them.

However, when they know we leave in 10 minutes, they expect that and leaving is easy. And thinking about it, even adults get angry if you demand they do something RIGHT NOW at random moment. Even adults want to know in advance, finish youtube video or page of the book.

This is the only way we could ever leave a playground.

I feel like if we treated kids a little bit more like adults, things would be much better. These reactions are pretty reasonable relatively speaking, kids are just not quite as adept at navigating reality as adults are. With a little help they can be pretty good though.

Oh absolutely. One of the lessons of e.g. Montessori education is that treating kids as grownups will lead to them acting as grownups.

Let me guess, you're from the UK.

Definitely not, though I'm not sure what's that supposed to mean.

Dunno, I always thought that treating children with respect was common sense. When I got to the UK all of a sudden this is such a ground breaking idea, everyone calls it "Montessori". What a revolutionary concept!

Well if in your household children were treated "as adults" (relatively speaking, within reason, etc), then you're in the far far minority x) And not just UK, think of all cultures around the world from Hispanic to Chinese.

Yes and no. I think we should at least treat them as intelligent beings and give them enough information to understand the world around them.

"As adults" though is super difficult to balance. They'll still do illogical things (you can explain its cold outside and they need a coat, they'll still get out in t-shirt) and need a ton of flexibility. It's kinda hard to square that they have a brain but don't use it the same way when looking at them in terms of "partially adults". My mental image is of aliens learning about our society.

If they’re cold they’ll learn and not do it in the future.

Honestly the consequences of some actions are so basic, just let them see how it goes imo

Spoiler: they don't learn until some point, when they become able to project themselves in the future and act accordingly.

Many basic assumptions just don't work until their brain evolves past specific points.

Some research around the subject: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S08852...

[edited for clarity]

Yeah, they don't. They will be cold again and again and show Pikachu face again and again. It changes from certain age, but that is much higher age.

You would think. However, rationality is not a product of behavioralism.

"Remember, you complained about being cold last time?" will be met with, "I won't be cold this time." (modulo individual interchild variation). The part of their brain that says, "you know, I was cold last time," cannot be rushed to speak.

I would follow on with advice that if you tell them, “we’re leaving in 10 minutes” make sure that it happens in ten minutes.

I’ve seen so many other parents set expectations, and then ignore them. It sets a bad precedent that is left open to interpretation and conflict.

The problem I have with a lot of parenting advice is it's always written by someone with fewer than 30 kids.

Now I'm not saying you don't have a right to say anything until you have enough kids to fill a bus, far from it.

But the advice you get is always variations of the same. Try to be patient, try to be reasonable. If you need to make threats, have it escalate slowly. Follow through on consequences.

This works for most people, because if you have under 30 kids, you have a good chance of never getting a kid who is on the 1% level of difficulty (Rule of 1/3n).

In fact my first kid was normal in that sense. Ask him to do something, he does it eventually. Not too many issues. Patience and reason prevailed, I didn't even have to make a lot of threats before he just got it. At that point perhaps I should have written a book about parenting, because it was working great.

Second kid, no. It's not that the kid doesn't understand the trade: clean up first, then get read to. It's that the kid objects to the very idea that there's a deal. I'm being unreasonable in presenting this Faustian trade, no kid should be held prisoner until they unwillingly clean up after themselves! Consequences? Sure, try to hold to the things you said. No dinner, take away toys, stern voice, shouting.

Nothing helps. I can't be the only parent who has tried all the variations of "be reasonable". But that's also where the advice ends. I guess in programming we have the same problem: you've seemingly looked everywhere for the error, now you have no ideas left, but the problem is still there.

My experience has been that it still has paid off to stay consistent. My youngest one is also extremely stubborn with a rage issue (I wouldn‘t dare to say 1% but at least 5%), and I can‘t count the time outs I‘ve had to distribute. All of them as a consequence with advance warning. Partially it was borderline violent, but I‘ve always did my very best to only use as much force to not hurt her, but just keep her from hurting herself and others as well as escaping the isolation from stimuli (I‘ve always stayed with her the entire time). One time I carried her screaming and shouting through a whole restaurant of people and stayed a whopping 20 minutes in front of the door until she was calm and my food was cold.

At the time, it looked like no progress at all, but fast forward 4 years and she‘s 7 now, well behaved, thoughtful, but still confident and strong willed: the upside of stubbornness. I feel like we did a decent job there.

> I can't be the only parent who has tried all the variations of "be reasonable".

You're not. It helps to get an assessment from experienced preschool teachers, in our case, I asked out of the current 100+ kids if there was anyone more stubborn/difficult and there wasn't. The problem is most parents think their kid is "difficult", so there is little understanding from them, and definitely no understanding from 20-somethings who think it's just bad parenting...

One example is the concept of "timeout", you mean that kids simply accept this without escalating? When applied on my son that would just lead to a series of escalations until he throws up from crying too hard. Or he tries to leave the house and run away leading to having to be physically constrained for his own safety, leading to screaming until throwing up and loss of voice for a few days. Thankfully he's since matured and is quite well adapted, but ages 1-5 were rough.

LOL I feel like me and my siblings were all the second kid. We're all very stubborn.

Dealing with an unreasonable child is very difficult because the consequences mean nothing. You take away all their stuff and it's just fuel to continue stubbornly disobeying, if you say "no dinner" they will just not eat, etc.

My unsubstantiated opinion is that you probably have to wait them out and not give them too much attention. Taking away more things doesn't really work.

My partner read Hunt, Gather, Parent which is more or less about getting kids to do chores and not yell all the time. It's not not in the category of "miracle cure books", but the general thesis of, "do chores together and don't paint them as chores but things the family does together, try not to get angry" seems relatively sane.

Our kid is ~6 mos. so it's not applicable now, and thus can't give you practical experience. But yeah, 100% sympathy here. Wading through parenting advice is just like, epistemologically annihilating. Hang in there :)

I've had parents, and enough therapy to know how they fucked me up. I have friends who are in similar situations and who are comfortable discussing such topics. Arguably this is a much more productive way to develop a better perspective on how to raise children than any given parent, whom we cannot guarantee have the same kinds of insights.

I think it's a right view that parents don't trust the advice of other parents proferred willy-nilly, but then apparently desperate and exasperated parents see no other options and so keep reaching for the same failing systems and directives that float around in the zeitgeist. I suggest to look within, and act through empathy.

I'm not going to respond to every comment by others here that upset me but I wanted you to know that I appreciate what you've spoken up about in this thread. I'm largely of the same spirit though some details may be different.

> The problem I have with a lot of parenting advice is it's always written by someone with fewer than 30 kids.

William Sears, who has written numerous books, has eight kids of his own, and is/was a practicing paediatrician:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sears_(physician)

> But the advice you get is always variations of the same. Try to be patient, try to be reasonable. If you need to make threats, have it escalate slowly. Follow through on consequences.

You may wish to look at the books/advice that a larger pool of parents have found to be useful:

* https://old.reddit.com/r/Parenting/wiki/recommended_reading

I think I have a high difficulty child. My kid has ASD and whew meltdowns and all that label entails.

I don't think that I had change my parent much, although the results I got at first would be considered less than ideal. I agree that consistency is key. My kid wails, screams, and more, but eventually she does come to understand that her actions have zero impact on the rules. The rules are what they are.

I also don't have a lot of rules I'll be honest. I really only have 3 core rules and all the rules she gets are all enforcement of those rules. The rules are 1) don't impede my ability to keep you healthy and safe 2) you must be able to operate and be productive within your slice of society 3) you are not allowed to be a direct or indirect physical, mental, or emotional danger to yourself or others. That's it.

They seems vague and they're probably abusable, but it gives me a compassion go operate from. It allows me to let things go. There are many things I wish my kid would do, but ultimately when I check The Rules, I find she's not really in violation of breaking anything but my dreams for her or my preference for how I personally want her to live.

I think this ideal makes me both a strict and lax parent, but I like the results I'm seeing now. It was a long hard battle at the toddler years, but she's mostly accepted how it goes I think because she can know how it will go.

I'm come to believe that having core values and being consistent about their enforcement is the way to deal with kids. As long as you aren't too oppressive and they have some space to act as they please, I think you can eventually get to a good state. I guess we'll see how right I am in a decade lol

Dealing with kids with special needs can be a challenge. And is definitely a 1 out of 30 difficulty you are describing. I’ve had “regular” kids, and special needs kids I took care off, the difference of emotional energy needed to take care of them is incomparable. Normal kids, feel as almost no work to me to be honest.

They can have emotional moods of a 2-3 years old up till teenage years.

The biggest thing to live a happy life, even just for yourself is to not get emotional, best is to not even raise your voice. Anger, even mild, is extremely draining to yourself. And makes the kids feels terrible, even if they look blank to it, creating a vicious cycle.

Leave expectations out of the door. Don't expect reciprocity. Be extremely consistent, make sure you’re schedule is easygoing.

Steps of dealing with an emotional escapades:

1. Get them out of the situation. Best is physically, but don't do it agressively if possible. They get a chance to reset. Do not ever correct kids in front of other kids.

2. Acknowledge their feeling. Start with understanding.

3. Explain why and how it’s no acceptable. But don't tell them they are wrong, focus on their behaviour; and give them an acceptable way out.

4. Only allow them to return to their wanted activity if they act appropriately again. That can be in their room, timeout, at times you have to get creative.

And also very important: get them out of stimulating situations (such as parties or busy playgrounds) half an hour before they normally would be overstimulated. When overstimulated, these kids normally need 1 hour, till sleep time to fully get back to normal.

> fewer than 30 kids.

I agree. And I'll go you one further. I have kids. I also used to work in a psychiatric hospital for kids, so I frequently had 30 and most of them were in the bottom quartile on common "easy to parent" metrics. On my first day a kid had found a lightbulb and broken it. She was threatening to eat it. I was shadowing someone and they sort of nudged me forward to see what I would do. I said, "you'd better not eat that" in a pretty authoritative tone. The kid responded, "or what?"

This was sort of a lightbulb moment for me. It's your first hour on the job, and you've been presented with an "imposing of consequences" dilemma. Your dilemma partner has threatened to eat some broken glass. What result?

Anyway, I obviously didn't escalate with threats of consequences, right? Or my username would be prosecutor. The action:reaction, misbehavior:punishment model operates as violence for some kids. Parenting has to be adaptive and parents have to sort of ride the bronco and parent the kid who shows up that day.

Unfortunately for you, nobody would probably publish a book titled "sometimes you just have to clean the kid's room and still read to them and there are different rules for the older brother but that's all fine and good," but anecdotally that's the truth.

Anyway your parenting experience sounds normal (in the sense that it's normal for a parent to have an uncommonly oppositional kid), so don't feel like you're doing anything wrong. Good luck.

Your story is really interesting because it highlights how ineffective consequences can be if someone refuses to cooperate.

I'm curious what you would consider the "correct" approach in that kind of situation is?

I'm not an academic, but I don't really think there is a correct choice. I think there are strategies that work in the moment to de-escalate. From among those, we often have a choice of damnations regarding long-term goals (e.g. "what will she learn from this if I..."). I think we are often poor estimators of long-term impact, though.

So what did you do with that kid? The suspense is killing me.

I had to walk back pretty quickly and save the credibility I had. So I pivoted to something like "There is no 'or else,' you'd just better not--as in it would really be better if you did not. I think you'll be pretty sad and miserable if you do that."

This turned out to be a step down the correct path, even if pretty embarrassing in the moment. Someone with a better relationship with the kid stepped in and used that relationship to de-escalate, á la "please don't do that because it will hurt you and I wouldn't like that because I care about you."

What I found to be key in a situation like this was: (1) focus on the person, not the behavior; (2) Have full attention on the situation; (3) try to determine/address root causes. It's obviously impossible to do all that stuff in real life sometimes, but I can try.

why not present the consequences of cutting open your mouth with glass? those should be serious enough to make an impression.

> focus on the person, not the behavior

what does that mean? or how do you do that? when it comes to bad behavior, i want to show them that their behavior is problematic, and not judge the person. so if i should focus on the person, that needs to be qualified that it's not about punishment or threats but something else. but i don't know what that would be.

> always written by someone with fewer than 30 kids

And even if you got a book written by someone who'd had 30 kids, their experience is (if they have their own kids with the same partner) 30 draws from the same genetic distribution and still won't transfer all that well to randomly selected children.

Not to mention, the people who need the advice are not going to be selected from the general population.

Also, if they really had a 1% kid then they probably married someone with a personality disorder or they have one themself.

It seems quite reasonable to write advice for handling 97% of kids.

If your kid belongs to those other 3%, you likely need a more specialized book.

You have been withholding meals from your child as punishment? No wonder they have decided to write off any and all life advice you give them. You have already proved to your child beyond any doubt that you are incapable of being “reasonable” in your words. Why should a child have any respect for someone who abuses them?

>This works for most people, because if you have under 30 kids, you have a good chance of never getting a kid who is on the 1% level of difficulty (Rule of 1/3n).

What is the "Rule of 1/3n?"

> Similarly, don't make commitments unnecessarily. Instead of "I'll go downstairs and get your bear" maybe "I'll go downstairs and look for your bear." While with adults we understand that when a person says they'll do something they mean they'll put in a reasonable effort and may fail if the task is surprisingly difficult or if factors outside their control intervene, [...]

I'm not sure adults understand it either. Many times, I've seen managers calling out a team member for not delivering by the time that they told they would. So, I started to add a caveat to almost everything I say about the future: “I plan to [...]”.

This is underrated advice. More than once, my spouse has promised my son something as we're about to leave that I can't deliver, guaranteeing a tantrum or at least some level of having to drag him along while he's sulking and disappointed in me.

The new family rule is: Don't promise the kid something you won't personally deliver for certain! Which means, don't promise anything on behalf of anyone else, even if that other person is well-meaning.

I'm always amazed at how much parenting advice comes down to "don't be an asshole to your children"

Like imagine if the article was about being a manager and had advice like: follow through on promises you make to your direct report. Everyone would respond, "no shit". Suddenly when it is about children this is sage advice.

Yeah sounds easy until you have kids and it isn’t. Imagine the employee who like acts like a 5 year old all the time.

That is what looking after a 5 year old is like! The good, beautiful, bad and ugly of that.

Now imagine you have the next shift is not 8 but 1.1million hours.

The thing about parenting advice is it’s usually just tailored to whatever worked for some random person’s kids. What if you (as my wife and I have) adopted 4 kids over the course of 8 years, all with FASD who are all insane in different ways? We have had to learn 4 radically different approaches to parenting.

Our key has been understanding the needs (emotional, mental health, etc.) of each child and accommodating those needs. I think this translates to normal parents and their biological children, though maybe the needs aren’t so severe. Some specific ways this has played out for us:

- for our kid who needs to understand “why” she can’t do what she wants or else has a panic attack, we have had to spend an inordinate amount of time explaining our philosophy of parenting. Sometimes this means “opening her eyes” with some information that is probably a bit mature for the typical kid her age, but for her that’s outweighed by understanding our good intentions for her better.

- for the super needy one who stuffs her emotions and ends up having migraines and puking everywhere when she’s not doing well, this meant spending a lot of money on a mental health specialist to figure out her exact needs, experimenting with basically all aspects of her life and tuning things over time. We spend about half an hour with this one every evening just talking about her feelings, making her feel heard and nothing else.

- kid #3 has the most severe case of FASD but is probably the most emotionally healthy of the bunch. For him we just have to accommodate his education and development in a way that keeps him confident and develop some “key words” when we want him to adjust his behavior. E.g. when I need him to stop joking around, which is all the time (haha), I tell him to “lock it up,” and he knows what that means.

- #4 had 4 other homes before coming to us, so he has always had abandonment issues. He doesn’t remember any of it, but it’s part of him. As a result he tends to want to be more self-reliant and he doesn’t deal with big changes very well. When we still needed outside help he would have difficulty anytime we changed nannies. For him this meant we just really needed to reinforce his concept of family, remind him we won’t ever leave, etc. And then also let him do things for himself since that’s where his confidence comes from.

Those are just some examples. And as kids grow their needs change. In my experience parenting is not a set of steps or a magic formula. It is time invested in knowing your children’s needs (whatever those are) and helping them reach their full potential (whatever that is). It’s trial and error. It’s sacrifice.

Can anyone recommend parenting books that are either from other cultures or from a long time ago? When I read articles like this, I nod along and agree that it all seems rational. But then I get a creeping feeling that all this over-optimization is a trait of contemporary Western culture and not necessarily the “best” advice for raising healthy kids, whatever best is supposed to mean. (I’m not sure.)

I think it would be insightful to read parenting advice from different cultures and eras and think about it from first principles.

Perhaps:

* https://old.reddit.com/r/Parenting/wiki/recommended_reading

This all seems pretty recent and by American authors. I'm asking for more of: how do Indian/Chinese/Japanese/Mexican parents raise their kids? How did 19th-century American parents raise their kids? And so on.

You might be interested in Hunter, Gather, Parent.

I will check that out, thank you

This isn't really a parenting book, but rather an analysis of parenting advice from different cultures & eras, and their outcomes: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/29101505 I enjoyed it particularly for its critique of modern Western parenting.

Thanks, this looks insightful.

Danish: https://via-ritzau-dk.translate.goog/pressemeddelelse/nordis...

It is also worth checking actual stats for those other periods and cultures. Things like violence rates, youth criminality issues, alcohol abuse by minors and so on. People often idealized past, but when you check above, you fairly often find out current kids are not all that bad.

In my culture, kids used to be beaten a lot. So did women, for that matter. And guys getting into drunk fight with nearby village were also something fairly normal. It is improvement that all three happen less nowadays.

I sympathise with the sentiment, but I would still prefer to take advice from scientists and psychologists and doctors, than absorb fucked-up value systems from yore.

Thinking from first principles is the opposite of "absorbing" ideas.

The Anthropology of Childhood might be interesting to you: https://www.cambridge.org/highereducation/books/anthropology...

As well as this article: https://aeon.co/essays/why-runa-indigenous-people-find-natur... (Amazonian childcare)

I don’t think there’s any reason to believe other cultures or time periods had parenting more figured out than us… But I do believe in a first principles approach. Basically, be good to your kid, use natural consequences instead of punishment and rewards, and model the behavior you want to see.

If you’re curious about that approach, check out RIE parenting or Respectful Parenting.

How much do you enjoy coaching books ?

We have pletora of business and self-help books, a ton of them are about management, and we're talking about adults being litteraly paid to be there getting managed. If you see tremendous value in these current books, I'd argue reading current parenting books will be of the same quality.

If you're looking for older books to compare, wouldn't any "best seller" book be a good comparison point on what was seen as acceptetable advice at the time ?

The three skills presented here are useful and deal strictly with shaping behaviour. I would add some random personal observations: 1) Being more predictable also involves being more available and predictable about trying to understand the seemingly wildly fluctuating emotions to which kids are prone. So I’d argue that predictably “seeking first to understand then be understood” is a way of building empathy and trust. 2) What works at one stage of life doesn’t necessarily work at another. Teens, for example, have much more complex lives and the levers you can pull are different. 3) Where possible predictably offering choice builds a sense of agency and self-efficacy. 4) The author acknowledges that socioeconomic disadvantage can cause this to go off the rails. To that I would just say there are 1001 ways it can fall apart. Child with mental health issues. Parent with health issues. Any life changes. Fortunately, kids are pretty resilient if they have one or more trusted adults in their lives who are empathic , caring and reasonably predictable.

Another thing that's worked well for my children is using positive reinforcement in as many stations as possible. The carrot, not the stick.

If you do X, you'll be rewarded with Y.

If you don't do X, you'll be punished with Z.

Kids, even young ones, are pretty smart. In most situations simply being reasonable, consistent, and explaining your rationale goes a long way.

"You can't watch more TV because doctors have said X hours are the maximum healthy amount."

"If we start another game before cleaning the other one up, the house will be too messy and it's unfair for Mom and Dad to do all the cleaning for messes we didn't make"

Rereading this post 5 years later and with now a third child (2y) it's pretty close to what I would write today.

> mostly just my observations with my own two kids

I appreciate this line. Maybe right, maybe wrong, but I won't take parenting advice from anyone with zero or one children.

I would say one child gets you the pass too.

you can make that argument, but not sure many parents who went from 1 to 2, or 2 to 3+ would agree with you. The game changes--scarce resource allocation and sibling rivalry (which is mostly a function of the former).

Not sure why we're feeling the need to gatekeep here.

I got multiple kids and people with any amount of kids understand parenting.

Reading the title I clicked this hoping to read an interesting code related blog post... I was disappointed

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