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Comment by Transpire7487 | Hacker News Reader

Get up at 6am. Get kids ready for school. Help my wife with any chores around the house for a bit. Start working. Lift on my lunch break in my home gym. Back to work. Kids come home. Feed them. Help with homework. Do something with them outside weather permitting. Put them to bed, read to/with them. Get lunches ready for tomorrow. Load the dishwasher. Load the laundry. My turn to walk the dog. Be mentally and physically drained. Hopefully this all gets down by 9:30 so I can get to bed before 10 and get enough sleep to start it all over again.

Thank God I don’t commute.

If you want to work after work - don’t have kids.

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The trick is to learn during your working hours. I generally subtract one hour each day from the time i do actual work for my company and put that time towards learning. You'd be surprised at how in the long run i'm actually doing much better than my peers. I think this is because fundamentally, there is a large percentage of work that is just muscle memory. I'm speaking as a senior software engineer but 30% of my work is design (this actually involves the most research and thought, i put 100% of my focus here), 50% is just coding (after many years on the job, if i design it correctly, it should mostly be muscle memory and coding from the design) and 20% meetings. That 50% of coding, that is where you can slack off and use that time for self improvement.

This really is it. Most knowledge / white collar / software developers (not all) have downtime during the day. We are posting on HN during work hours. Its within the realm of reality to pare off an hour 3x a week to learn. Now I generally spend that hour doom scrolling, but if I was dedicated I could absolutely study, thats on me.

Here's mine:

Wake up at 4AM. Stretch Achilles (gets stiff when I sleep), make a coffee and check emails/prep for the day in my notebook. From 4:20 to 5AM I run 5K and then shower. From about 5AM to 7AM I work on my own stuff/learn/whatever. At 7AM I wake up the wife and help get kids ready for school. I walk with the kids to school at 8AM. From 8:30 to 3PM I work on my stuff and have lunch somewhere in there. I walk to the kids' school and pick them up at 3PM. Work on my stuff until 5-6PM. Help out with dinner, kids, play, etc. Put kids to sleep around 9PM.

You get less than 7 hours of sleep a day?

Yeah--- seven days a week. I do the same routine on the weekend.

Are you self-employed?

I am, but that's irrelevant. I became self employed because of my lifestyle. I don't think I ever could have done it otherwise.

"Work on my stuff until 5-6PM". Nice. Slim chance for me.

"Help with homework", I have seen this in movies. Is this a cultural thing? I don't know any parents that help there children with homework.

Culturally normalized cheating. Also gives advantage to those with rich parents who can afford the time.

It's cheating to help a 7 year old understand how to do basic math? Because the alternative is them staring at a paper and writing random numbers down.

So what do they do in school all day?

Because everyone has personalized tutors at school.

I didn't have tutors or parents helping me with homework when I was in school. Also, bad grades were not tolerated in my household, so I had to keep up.

You had a household where bad grades were not tolerated, but no support in achieving better grades? Sounds like a crappy household/parenting. That doesn't mean everyone else should have a crappy household or parenting philosophy because you managed to get through it.

They are exposed to the material on which the sorting and ranking will be done.

I do not call this is cheating. but this is a crazy advantage of children. some kids never learned learning is important, parents can let deep in their mind. teachers have some chance, but there are too many kids in classroom.

The alternative is, you know, the school actually teaching well enough that they understand it without your help

The understanding should happen in school. Homework should be only for things that have already been learned.

If the learning is already complete then any homework seems like utterly unnecessary busywork.

There’s learning, and there’s practice. Both are necessary.

Practice during school hours is more than enough. Primary education is not so demanding that you need more to succeed.

In which case homework should be wholly unnecessary.

It is, unless you spend too much time in a lecture format with too little deep practice. Taking work home is not a good solution.

It sure would be nice and just if the schools had the means to provide the personalized tutoring most children need to understand. Reality is that the parents do that - and yes, it is an advantage to children with parents able to invest time and skills in their education.

I've heard that some well-off parents will even send their children to schools with attendance fees...

The thing is, what if your parents aren't educated. Because of lots of reasons, my parents didn't even attend high school, they wouldn't have been able to tutor me after I was 10. I really think tutoring should be done in school else it would be very difficult to rise above your previous generations. Also, children should play after school, not do more work IMHO.

So, you're suggesting we limit everyone's potential so a few uneducated/poor families don't feel left behind? That's ridiculous.

Should schools offer extra tutoring and support for kids and families that need it? Sure. Should people limit what they learn at home or out-of-school? No.

They're children, not some neural network you can train. They're all going to learn at different rates, and individualized education in a school setting is simply not possible. You're lucky if there's a breakdown by remedial, regular, and advanced classes. Even within those, kids are going to struggle and need some help outside of class time.

Is this “help” meant only to be available to kids with rich parents, as it is now? Or is the school at fault for not being willing, or able, to teach all kids to an acceptable degree?

I'm surprised to see that you think there is a clear dichotomy between what can only happen at school and at home when it comes to learning.

You'd be even more surprised to learn that learning can happen anywhere, anytime and from anyone in any kind of form.

Helping kids at home with school work as a parent is not only accessible to rich families. You should help your kids when they really need it regardless of your socioeconomic background.

Now if you're talking about personalized/paid tutors outside of school, then yes - it's much more accessible to richer families but there is fundamentally nothing wrong that. What you decide to do with your kids outside of school is your choice.

A person’s “socioeconomic background” may dictate that they don’t have time to spend many of their vanishlingly rare non-working hours on being a teacher. I'm surprised to see you assume that everyone has this kind of time. I assure you that they do not.

Not everyone does but it's not something restricted to the rich like you said in your first comment. Growing up, my wife had a lot of help at home and she came from a middle class, dual income household. I came from an upper middle class household and my parents were so busy working so they could keep up with the Joneses that I never had any help whatsoever with my homework.

I'm not going to deny that schools can probably do better, but telling people you need to be rich to help your kids with school is, in my experience, not true. I think the bigger problem for many is relationship dynamics - most parents I know lack the patience to help their kids with homework.

> Not everyone does but it's not something restricted to the rich like you said in your first comment.

Very well; I grant it. Now, does that invalidate the rest of my point in any way? Some kids are still going to have a large advantage over other kids, whatever the cause. If teachers are aware of this, would this be a reasonable way for a teacher to handle education? To just dole out homework, and leave any help or not to the vagaries of chance depending on that kid’s home situation? And any kids getting help would probably getting this consistently over other kids, giving some a huge permanent advantage over a long period of time. Why would teachers do this? I chose, instead, to charitably assume that teachers meant for homework not to be done with assistance by parents or tutors. In which case “helping” would indeed be cheating.

What is your obsession with correlating good parenting with generational wealth? You can be poor, have relatively uneducated parents and still be taught by them.

My father died when I was five. My mother never finished high school and worked in a medical factory. She still found an hour to try an teach me and help me learn (even when I was beyond her upper skill limit).

When “generational wealth” correlates directly with “availble hours to spend with the kids”, then it matters a great deal. It’s great for you that your parents did not have to work every waking hour to afford food and living space, but many are not as lucky.

I found the person who doesn't have kids.

Nothing about helping someone better understand something is cheating. Helping your own child? That is just natural. I find what you said revolting.

If parents “help” kids with homework, the teacher will get a misleading view of what the kid has learned and is capable of. Other kids, lacking this “help”, will get worse grades.

If you want to argue that the teacher understands that parents are helping their kids with the homework, then:

1. Why aren’t teachers sending study aids, pedagogical material, etc. to the parents, on order to aid in the further education of the kids? Why are teachers universally acting as though kids are supposed to do the homework on their own?

2. This would still only help kids with rich parent who can afford the time to be a part-time teacher to their kids.

In summary: If teachers assume that kids do all their homework themselves, unassisted, then “helping” is (culturally normalized) cheating. If teachers instead assume that kids get help from their parents, it would be burdening kids with poor and/or busy parents with a severe disadvantage.

How old are you, which country do you live in, and...do you yourself have children?

I don’t want to feed your Ad Hominem monster. Find some actual arguments in the debate as presented.

You're funny. Good luck.

You're dying on a very strange hill. Yes, children that have active and engaged parents have an advantage over those who do not. "Cheating" implies that the parents are doing the homework for the child without the child's involvement. Of course, that's not what is happening, and I'm sure you know that.

I'm sure you also know that not all school districts, teachers, and children are equal. Some are funded better than others, some are better trained than others, and some learn in different ways than others. If my child is struggling for one reason or another, I am going to be engaged in several ways. First, I may speak to the school and/or the teacher to understand the details. Second, I may speak to my child about their assignments and offer to explain unclear concepts to them. I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.

> You're dying on a very strange hill.

Please don’t do that here.

> children that have active and engaged parents have an advantage over those who do not.

You’re not answering my questions, or responding to my summary. Either teachers are aware of this – in which case teachers should logically help the parents, not arbitrarily assigning homework to kids – or teachers are unaware, in which case parents helping kids is skewing teachers’ perceptions of the kids’ abilities – i.e. cheating. I made the charitable assumption that teachers are acting reasonably based on what they know.

> I won't take a pencil and start solving the problems for them.

But this is what the stereotypical, commonly depicted, behavior is. It may not be universal, but I am sure it is not uncommon.

Not sure what other regions are like, but i believe this is more necessary the less children receive adequate attention in the school setting. Ie overfilled schools warrant more individual time outside of school.

Without "help with homework", the child may have gotten no individual instruction/teaching, so how are they expected to learn?

Even beyond that though there's the possibility of needing more and/or unique care. Parents are the end-of-the-road for ensuring that they raise a capable, educated human. Some children just struggle in standard school settings.

I was in classes that averaged 30 chilren per class. I haven't gotten any individual instruction/teaching, and did just fine until high school math kicked in (bear in mind, this was Polish high-school math, and in a class that focuses on math), when I got lost and needed help of a tutor. But the other 98-99% of my school time, I was completely fine on my own. Also, I don't think I was any kind of exception.

Not sure what your point is? Ignore the child because Badpun was fine?

It honestly sounds like you're arguing against "Interact with your child, help them if you think they need it", which seems.. odd. You could perhaps be arguing that parents are wrong usually, and should go against their intuition on helping the child - but that's also a mixed bag.

I'm arguing that school's difficult level is set up for children to manage on their own just fine. Also, managing on their own means learning grit, figuring out what to do when you're stuck, learning how to find information etc. If a parent is hand-holding their child through their school experience, they may be taking away a chance to develop these skills in their kid.

Agreed, but who else can make that judgement? Certainly you can't accurately make blanket decisions for all children, right? Who is the last in line, the final judgement, then?

No one is saying parents should hand-hold and hurt their children by way of robbing them of essential experiences. What i am saying, though, is that parents are the last-mile. The only ones who are ultimately responsible.

It sounds like you're ignoring a very wide gulf between doing nothing and doing the homework for children. Kinda sounds like you advocate sink or swim style learning. Which works great for those who swim, perhaps. Less so for those who sink.

I am not advocating for any style of learning, I was merely responding to someone who said that it's constant help by parents is "more or less necessary in schools with large classes". I provided a counterpoint to that, citing myself as an example, and also giving the fact that most of the other children were like me (children helped by their parents were an exception), and we turned out perfectly fine.

So your reply is to counter children receiving "adequate attention" (to quote the reply you're referencing). Which is to say that you don't believe inadequate attention is a problem.. which by definition is inadequate.

However there is of course the important matter of what we, or parents, define as inadequate. You argue that children are fine to receive inadequate attention. which seems.. odd.

I also said nothing about "constant attention". Rather all i said was the more inadequate the attention, proportionally the more attention they're likely to receive at home. Which is a very reasonable statement, no?

Do you not expect parents to fill in where they feel their school is failing to teach?

Homework shouldn't exist anyway. Maybe, for higher level high school classes it makes sense. There's no reason to be giving homework to elementary and middle school kids. They get them for 8 hours a day, they don't need to be spending more time on school stuff after school.

> Homework shouldn't exist anyway. Maybe, for higher level high school classes it makes sense. There's no reason to be giving homework to elementary and middle school kids. They get them for 8 hours a day, they don't need to be spending more time on school stuff after school.

Yes, also because it creates inequalities very early between children with parents who can afford spending time helping them (or paying someone to do so) and those who can’t.

I help my kids with homework, 5 minutes here and there. Seems like that shouldn't be too hard for most people, unless they literally never see their kids.

I didn't think of that one but that is a consideration as well. Children don't have the attention span to be working on school work for 8+ hours a a day anyway. Additionally, they should be developing through play/socializing just as much, if not more, as in-classroom and paperwork time.

I've misspelled 'their', maybe my parents should've helped me with my English ;)

around me, only kids whose parents are illiterate and/or busy make a living who don't get helped by their parents to do their homework and study. so, yes. cultural thing.

I help my kids with their homework. I don't do it for them, or anything like that. My mom helped me with mine when she could.

Is that weird?

My kids are in elementary school now and all homework except reading is optional. However, I have them do their homework then I review it when I'm done with work. Any concepts they don't understand I go over with them. It's usually 5-10 minutes per night per kid.

If I didn't do this my oldest would have easily flunked math last year. But just a few minutes per night of making sure she understood the concepts was the difference between that and her acing it.

I started this because we had a teacher that was really bad at noticing if one of our kids was understanding things or not. For example, we got worksheets back from school where everything was done incorrectly and there was just a giant star on it. Fuck that.

Exactly this. I have three kids and a dog. There is zero spare time. I typically sit down for the first time at 9pm at which time I'm so exhausted that learning is not really possible. I may get to read for 30 mins to an hour before I crash.

One thing I realize while reading this is that, having recently signed up for a local gym, I'll lose that "alone time in the home gym", where I would often listen to podcasts and watch videos while I lift. Sure, I can get some headphones and lug my phone around at the local gym, but it's certainly not as conducive to learning as having a screen set up that I can walk around and view as I work out.

Same. Though at least biking the kids to school in a cargo bike helps with exercise (but not as good as lifting).

I understand now how people stagnate in midlife.

Love ‘em or hate em, Kids suck up ALL of your time

> I understand now how people stagnate in midlife

Only way to gain some advantage is to delegate/hire help. Which is beyond the reach for most ppl. At the same time, there is a lot more filler admin-work for adults.

Wondering, are kids (after a certain age) more helpful around the house? So parents get back time?

This is generally representative of my day also

Working in the office or home my daily schedule was: Wake 4:45am

Breakfast

Work

Play with kids while (slowly) teaching, working side projects.

Eat and Post dinner tasks (bedtime stuff)

Learn/Build for 15-60 minutes during wind down.

Bed at 10pm

Learning is done while at work, during naps, weekends.

Working after work is possible. Having kids brings clarity to our priorities. Mine at the moment is to maximize peace and stability.

How can you work on side projects while playing with your kids? My kids get 100% of my attention because otherwise it ends up more like being 0%. I can’t learn the next whiz-bang framework while inventing storylines for plying with Batman figures or playing hide and seek.

Great question. I include them in the process. If I clean the garage I give them jobs.

I was cleaning the workbench and provided a few boxes of random screws, nails, nuts, and bolts - had him sort them by size and shape. This teaches pattern recognition, sorting methods, names of objects, function of objects, and fine motor skills. If I ask for a 10mm socket the 3 year old can identify it including telling me it is used for tightening bolts.

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