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Comment by FuckButtons | Hacker News Reader

Counterpoint, my parents didn’t shelter me from shit and my life went off the rails at 12.

That's not a counterpoint. The inverse of "shelter too long" is "shelter less long", not "zero shelter ever".

(And the proper way to do "less long" is to slowly loosen up over time.)

I think the point I’m trying to make, albeit very bluntly is people often make the banal point that kids these days are too sheltered because they turned out fine. But they’re actually just observing survivorship bias.

How to avoid that survivorship bias though?

I'm sure a study can follow kids or look in records, but that takes serious time, so I can understand looking at oneself and everyone you know and coming to a conclusion that way. Do you know if such a study had been done and the results or conclusions are publicly available somewhere?

The person you replied to didn't mention their own life at all, and they were talking about a good number of data points. That's not "just survivorship bias". The data of college kids is biased in some ways but it's not useless.

There needs to be both things - the opportunity to make mistakes, and the support to make it okay after mistakes are made.

Sounds like you got the first but not the second, which must have been tough. Hope you're doing better now.

There's a balance to be struck, it shouldn't be all or nothing.

12 is the magic number when things start going to shit. I'm sorry for what happened to you but maybe you should start a counselling service for clueless parents and tell them what should they do and what they shouldn't to correctly shelter the children. Because sheltering is an art. I think about it all the time. I always wish some one would take a bit of money but tell me how to guide or not guide my child to be independent in the rough world and to take decisions independently

I watched an older sibling go off the rails. That is what kept me from doing it.

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