Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

Comment by samtho | Hacker News Reader

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> What makes you say this will alienate the family? Should I give up whenever my values for raising my children are not 100% endorsed by others?

For some background, I volunteer to help people find genetic family who may have been separated from them. I also help parents/offspring reunite if both are willing.

These reunions are not always meant to be as the offspring is often the one that cut contact in the first place (and refused to reunite) because they felt they were mistreated at some point during their childhood. This ranges from their parent not letting them join the extracurricular activity they wanted (usually because it aligned with the child’s goals but not the parent’s), to literal abuse of all kinds. I would say about 80% it’s one or both parents withholding something that child just wants to enjoy with no rhyme or reason and thus feels as if it were done to spite them.

I guarantee that three streaming services do not put them at the top of their peers of being spoiled, which what they will be comparing their situation with. If they already feel they are getting by with less and more is taken away, the long term resentment will start.

I recently encountered an adult offspring of my client who went no contact with their parents because they banned video games in their house and as a result, lost their group of friends who kept in contact by playing games together.

Wow, thanks for sharing this. Do kids react this strongly to being limited to just two streaming services, instead of three? (For reference, my kids are in primary school.)

I’m going to answer this genuinely and ignore the straw man because this needs to get tied up.

There are two facets here that are important to note: values and autonomy.

Your values are not your children’s. They may be related and overlap but they are never a carbon copy. Values also change over time, not only what ideas they hold true but also what things they literally value. Sometimes these values are different but compatible, e.g. I’m sure there are hundreds of things you would rather be doing than having a play tea party, but when that play tea party is hosted by your child, we recognize this is a good opportunity to bond and share an experience with the child and that in itself has tremendous value. Sometimes values conflict, in my example of an adult child not wanting anything to do with their parents for the small crime of not letting video games in the home, to the child, this caused them immense social harm in that they could not keep in close contact with their friends any longer. To the parents, they did not see this as harm because “video games bad” and thus anything associated with it was bad (including their friends).

The second facet is autonomy. Reductions in autonomy is why grounding works very well for teens - it directly impacts what little agency and control they have of their own life (side note: which is why grounding should not be done unless the rule they broke was an inappropriate use of autonomy or if they pose a danger to themselves or others). Children have their own sense of autonomy, although limited, but they can tell when it’s being taken away for reasons that are unjust.

To bring to it all together, if you are the kind of person that demands compliance “because I said so”, the crime of reducing the steaming services from three to two represents a bigger problem that begins with small transgressions over disagreements, entering into the range of learned helpless, and finally escalating into outright rebellion once all respect is lost. All rules that they feel is pointless and does not reflect their values is disregarded and a typical response is ”no contact” leaving the parents wondering why their kids don’t talk to them.

I didn’t intend to soapbox here, I just recently dealt with 3 holiday cases where the adult children want nothing to do with their parents and its sad to see that happen for preventable reasons.

It sounds like you deal with some extreme circumstances! I wonder how common this sort of reaction is to disagreements between parents and kids. Growing up, all of my friends had parents who didn't let them to various things, including some who weren't allowed to have video games. But none of them (or any of my college or adult friends, so far as I knew) ever considered cutting off all contact with their parents, or even got all that upset about any of their parents rules (some did break rules from time to time).

I appreciate your sharing these stories, but I wonder if your perspective on likely outcomes is skewed by virtue of your chosen (and very noble) volunteer work. But regardless, thanks for sharing. I will be sure to not let things go off the rails in the way that you describe.

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