Comment by __egb__ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by __egb__ | Hacker News Reader

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We had a similar situation in our family and we tried teaching mindful screen habits. We still lost because we couldn’t do anything about the school screen (chromebook). If we took that away at home it just provided an excuse for not doing schoolwork.

We contacted teachers about our child downloading and watching anime and playing games all day in school. They wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything. We requested that the school take the computer away and give hardcopy assignments. They refused because that would invite notice from other students which could lead to bullying. That’s what they told us. I found the acceptable computer use policy on the school website and tried playing that card. Turns out our child hadn’t actually even signed it the last year…but that didn’t actually matter, and the school didn’t enforce the policy anyway.

The schools here won’t actually discipline kids anymore. We would get emails from the principal begging parents to tell their kids that they’re not supposed to leave school grounds at lunch, but every day at least a hundred kids would just run out. (Our kid didn’t do this…I guess watching anime in the corner of the cafeteria prevents truancy…yay?)

The last two-and-a-half years of high school were so exhausting trying to find anything that would work. Nothing did. Two parents and a therapist trying to counter one teenager, bad family influences, the school system, and multibillion-dollar internet corporations that intentionally work to addict people is a very uneven situation.

My wife is an educator.

Asking teachers to switch to paper assignments might not be feasible depending on the curriculum they're being asked to teach against, number of students in the classroom (I'm going to assume that your kid is in a public school; class sizes have been increasing due to funding cuts), books that they're using, etc.

For example: one of the classes my wife taught years ago was designed around an online LMS. All quizzes, learning checks, exams and practice was done on this platform. Some of her students didn't have access to a computer at home. They would either be given a loaner or were given instructions on how to obtain one from the local library. In this situation, switching to paper grading was not possible.

Oh, I guess it's no one's fault then and nothing can be done. Thank you for explaining that bit in case OP hadn't gotten the full coverage of excuses from their local bureaucracy.

In reality, giving kids Doubleclick Chromebooks with unsupervised general Internet access is gross negligence on the part of the school. Pacifying kids with digital dopamine is likely why class sizes have been able to continue growing. So it's a bit rich to then trot it out as a reason why they can't start to undo the horrible path that they've sent kids down.

Then again the whole dynamic isn't really that surprising for the US - personal responsibility is held as sacrosanct when rationalizing how it's right and just for corporations to be deliberately attacking us, but then when it comes time to actually do the work of being responsible there are no resources to support it because most wealth has been vacuumed away by the Keynesian MBA parasites.

I didn't say it's no-ones fault.

Public schools have been under attack for decades; curriculums that can only be executed with the help of laptops is a side effect.

What I was trying to say was that the situation at hand is very likely not the teachers fault; they probably agree with you!

If you want more outrage, spend 15 minutes on /r/Teachers.

I would think you need a buy-in from these kids that they agree these influences are harmful and that they don't want it in their lives or at least moderated it. Otherwise it's an uphill battle to regulate those influences.

Buy in is nice, but parenting does not require buy in on your rules, just a clear understanding and explanation of your role, and why the roles of parent and child and the rules that sprout from that relationship exist.

To me, buy in is necessary, especially when they will eventually become adults and free to make their own decision and it will be much harder for them to control their addiction especially when there is no more guardrail or when you no longer have authority. We're raising them to be autonomous adults, after all.

You could try blocking his anime website on your home network. Then he can keep using the Chromebook for school work but can't access his favorite sites.

That's just an arms race. The kid will find a new favorite website to play games on, there seems no end to them. There's endless websites out there that are more appealing than doing homework. I have a very locked down network, there's always some new website that has games of some sort to play.

If schools are going to provide these things, they should have the sites the kids might need to access white-listed and block everything else. Telling parents to try and block things is not realistic.

With SSDs costing under $50/TB now, it's hard to see why you couldn't put everything the kids need onto the laptop itself. The entirety of Wikipedia with pictures is 110 GB. Throw in a selection of reference books, videos, and software, and there's essentially no reason to have it go online. Provision it with the full year's worth of material at the beginning of the year and that's it.

Definitely agree this is possible and a great idea, but I think one challenge might be if you need access on a school laptop to do the majority of the homework. Not sure if that’s the OP’s case

Whitelisting is the way.

It sounds like they need to get other parents involved and go to the school board and have them create a policy where only Google Classroom or whatever is whitelisted.

Other parents are going to fight that though because it's a free pacifier for their kids.

Sadly, this is very true. Each family is on their own, and you aren’t going to be able to count on the herd to protect you from having to make tough calls.

Parenting involves doing a lot of things that will probably be wildly unpopular with your children if you are taking your responsibilities seriously.

Remember, as a parent you have a specific role. That role is not to be a friend to your child, but rather to be a parent. Making these roles clear with everyone involved is what makes it possible to parent effectively and still be on good terms with your child.

It is a very asymmetrical situation, to be sure. But that’s precisely where parents are forced to take measures to balance those odds.

No one is going to do the hard part of parenting if it’s not the parents. My house, my rules is a real thing, and it’s not a parent’s job to be liked by their children, but rather to make sure they are prepared for life as best they can be.

With the 5 that I have raised to adulthood so far, as soon as they can understand well enough to, I explained to them our relationship. Something like this:

“I love you son. You are the most important thing in my life. I want us to get along well. But I’m not your friend. I’m your father. My job, the most important job I will ever have in my life, is to make sure that you survive your childhood in good health as may be possible, and that when you are ready to go out on your own, you will be ready to face life’s challenges and make the best decisions that you can.

This is the basis of our relationship.

I’m just a person, and I won’t always be right, but I’ll always be your dad. I will do whatever it takes to complete my mission, and I’m not going to let anything or anyone get in the way of doing the best job I can.

Not even our relationship.

Through all of this, I hope that we can be friends, and no matter what, understand that I love you more than my own life, and I will do anything in my power to prepare you for life as best I can. You can always come to me, no matter what, and I will be there for you. It might not always be in the way you want, but it will be in the way I think I can help you the most.

Remember, I’m just a man. I won’t always be right. But I’ll always be your dad. I love you son.”

That is “the talk” I’ve had with every one of my children so far, somewhere between seven and ten years old, depending on their maturity.

We also memorise a non gendered version of “If” by Rudyard Kipling together, as I find it a useful example of the expectations that one should set for oneself.

Most of my kids are full fledged adults now with their own families, and I have a great relationship with all of them. I count this a a success, though of course there have been many trials and errors along the way.

It’s not about being tough on your kids, it’s about being very clear in your responsibilities and being willing to be tough on yourself when it’s needed. At least that has worked well for me. Every child is unique, and must be handled differently, but the same basis of the relationship applies.

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