Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

Comment by TimTheTinker | Hacker News Reader

Some of the things my wife and I have provided for our kids:

- lots of bookcases with probably >1500 books (including lots of kids/picture books) - what we've collected over the years

- a family laptop (2012 MacBook Pro) with no internet connection, pre-loaded with Pages, Sheets, Affinity Photo/Designer, a few small games, and some coding tools (Python, Ruby, VSCode, Scratch, etc.).

- Lego Spike and Spike Prime robotics learning sets (with software on an iPad, no internet)

- an upright piano (originally for me, but now they're taking lessons; I got it for $700 at a closeout sale at a piano store)

- a MIDI keyboard connected to Pianoteq running on an iPad in single-app mode with a couple of self-powered studio monitors and headphones

- an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month).

- Each of them has their own CD player boombox, we have a large collection of CDs

- An iPad with Audible, disconnected from the internet, but with our audio book collection available (over the years, it's gotten into the hundreds of books)

- starting from when they were very young, I've been periodically loading up Cosmic Osmo (CD edition, from an un-stuffed .img file) running on an emulated Quadra 650 in System 7.5.3 on InfiniteMac.org and let them play for an hour or two at a time. This is such a good game for kids - literally black and white (dithered grays), not overstimulating, very thoughtfully built, sparks imagination and curiosity, full of easter eggs.

- some good play equipment and a hammock in the back yard :)

I hope it has been and will be enriching to them.

The CD player is the big hit for my 10ish y.o. kids. Physical ownership and control of music is a huge boost for little kids and really suppirts musical exploration.

Not only kids. I am an adult, and I also enjoy physical ownership. Physical music (especially LP) sales have been rising yoy since 2020.

As an alternative to the VoIP phone: Redpocket has a $2.67/mo plan. We loaded that SIM into a small android phone (Unihertz Jelly phone).

It works great as a home phone but has the additional advantage of being able to wander if a pre-cellularized needs to go somewhere. For example, my 13-year-old takes it when going on a long bike-ride with his friends.

We keep it in our closet and only comes out when needed. They aren't allowed to give the number out to friends.

Well, the point of the landline phone (at least to some parents) is also that it has no screen, and has actual buttons, and stays home... for cell phone, we have prepaid SIM cards that are actually usable (in many EU countries credit doesn't expire and you must just use it every few months to keep them active, not sure about US).

Pretty much all phones have screens, even landline ones. They communicate at minimum caller ID, or what phone number you dialed out.

Using an old flip phone (they still make them that have 4g/5g connectivity these days!) gets you a similar ask, with the benefit that it’s portable if you need to.

This sounds very interesting and very much in-line with what I’ve been musing as a soon-to-be father.

One question that comes to my mind is do your kids compare their experiences to their friends? If their friends have access to a laptop with internet, or a music subscription service with all the music constantly available (a la Spotify), do they not compare and ask you why their experiences must be so limited? Why do their friends get to be on iMessage and they just have a landline phone number.

These are the kinds of questions that worry me about how much the kids can truly buy in to this. But maybe I’m overthinking this.

It can be important to tell kids early that comparisons don't matter, that everyone's diffferent, and that's ok, and every family's different and that's ok.

Depends on personality I guess. That would be sooo unsatisfying to me. E.g. not wanting to accept that languages have exceptions "just because" is what got me interested in historical linguistics as a young lad.

Yep, we can see a lot of people here have had little experience in raising children. Some will just seem to naturally say "I accept that", and another kid that will be like "f you, I don't do what you tell me" born a year apart and raised in the same household. Nurture can moderate these behaviors, but nature is strong.

I was more referring to the children that compare themselves to other children, or differences between what they have/are allowed to do and what others can.

It's why I prefaced it with "It can".

Every child is different, but a big impact is every parent who has or hasn't dealt with the normal childhood stuff every parent can have, plus the extra, or latent reactivity can be modelled and passed on.

We say “comparisons are the thief of joy”.

Just tell them the truth, friend. You want to protect them, this is your family's way.

> this is your family's way

Don't say that one. It's creep zone 9000. Respect will be lost. Better off just saying "because I say so."

Re: the subscription music service

We got my daughter an FM radio when she was around 9. Turns out it's a novelty among her friends and she really enjoys using it. I find local commercial radio insipid but apparently the music they play is acceptable to her. The music on broadcast FM is tame enough that I wasn't worried about subject matter.

Hmm, hasn’t been tame enough here for decades ..

That sounds super cool. What age range are your kids, and when do you expect them to start pushing back due to peer pressure from friends playing whatever the equivalent of Roblox or Pokemon is when they get there?

One of the secrets to parenting is that kids will rebel no matter what you do. They will push back on something, and giving in means they will push back on something else. Choosing when and what is the complicated part, because it really is simple that you cannot and should not prevent the rebellion.

> an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month).

That sounds interesting, going to look into it. My son is old enough to be home alone but I don’t want to get him a cell phone yet, but I don’t want to leave him alone without a phone in case of an emergency. Traditional home phone plans from the usual telecoms are way more expensive than I thought they’d be.

What should I be looking for with regards to a VoIP box? Not even sure what to search for specifically,

> What should I be looking for with regards to a VoIP box?

I just bought the one from Ubiquiti. No fuss, works out of the box: https://store.ui.com/us/en/category/managed-voip/products/ut..., though you do need a separate piece of hardware on which to run the UniFi talk app. For me, that was my UniFi gateway (UXG-Max) - I have a lot of UniFi equipment.

There are others that could work - you can look up UniFi Talk supported devices.

Thanks, that makes sense and is simpler than I was thinking. I’ve already got some Unifi gear so should be easy.

I love this! I'm kind of sad that I'm likely beyond the point where I can ever have kids, but what you describe are absolutely the kind of things I'd want to provide them if I'm lucky.

One recommendation I have is a basic 3D printer and OpenSCAD installed on the family laptop. I can see that opening up a lot of added interactivity with other things like the Legos, robotics, etc.

these are great, thanks for sharing. ive found the tonibox for my youngest (3rd go round) really has helped deescalate tv watching and given us an alternative when they want to watch cartoons.

one question for you; any plans on what you might do when the kids are 15, in highschool and all their friends have iphones?

My oldest just turned 15. Here's what I've done:

Gave her a slightly older iPhone and added it to my prepaid plan with AT&T. It's supervised via Apple Configurator, has a password-protected profile created with iMazing Profile Editor.

That profile disables a lot of things - primarily Safari and adding apps. I also have Screen Time set up to block people not in her contacts list - if she wants to add someone, she asks me. I haven't said "no" yet (not that I wouldn't ever).

The idea is less to be restrictive (although that's part of it, for now) and more to give her plausible excuse not to join Instagram/TikTok/whatever - "my dad locked my phone, but you can text or call me". She hates social media, if only from having watched teenagers glued to their phones when she was younger.

I started it in extreme lockdown a couple years ago, and recently lifted a few restrictions. I plan to finally arrive at "no restrictions" by the time she's 17 or so.

It's helped that her mom has zero social media use - she texts, calls, and hangs out in person with people, that's it. I obviously hang out on HN sometimes. (I was on Twitter for a few weeks one time, and my kids complained "dad, what are you doing, get off of social media" :) They also think LLMs are evil, haha

Also -- I told her "you can buy your own laptop if you want" -- and she did. I helped her choose a used MacBook from Swappa.com. It has no internet access, but I gave her a bunch of apps, particularly Scrivener. She is becoming quite a writer (I think up to 15 books now, 2 or 3 are finished). It's quite common to see her tapping away in the living room :)

A few ideas for you:

1. Talk openly and often about how much you hate your phone, how it's addictive, and all the dangers of social media. 2. Consider an Apple Watch with its own cellular plan. This allows them to TXT with friends, call you, and be located in Find Devices. 3. Create a sense of pride in not having a phone. Other parents will openly praise this.

My child doesn't have, and doesn't want a phone. It's been our biggest win as parents.

> Talk openly about how much you hate your phone...

The idea of modelling the behaviour you're trying to teach your kids seems to be a key one as mentioned in this interview with Zak Stein [1]. Obviously the general tone might be a bit too much anti-tech for this forum, but he certainly seems to have some well reasoned points to make and obviously the genie isn't going back in the bottle so working with tech whilst being aware of it's dangers as mentioned in the original article might be the best compromise for now?

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpHuK4f7Mw4

That's really interesting!

Not too long ago, I got unreasonably upset at a streaming service forcing me to watch ads on a subscription plan, so I went out and got a Blu-ray player. I've been periodically visiting my used DVD store, and I've been able to STOCK UP on movies for next-to-nothing. While this isn't the most low-tech solution, it's been kinda fun for someone who spent their youth with CDs/DVDs.

Old CDs and movies are decently cheap on eBay, but local sales (antique stores, library sales, thrift stores, etc.) can be amazing for stocking up on media in bulk.

Great list! So far I’ve done phones and DVDs but I’m gonna try some of these too.

I would like to also suggest letting them play old adventure games with no audio - my 8yo is deep into Monkey Island 2 original pixelated version

Emulators are a great idea. Makes me want to 3D Print a mac classic, then put a tablet in it running an emulator with the touchscreen disabled.

Touchscreens can quickly be disracting, finding ways around that are important.

Another option: buy a real Mac SE (re-capped), then put a scsi2SD in it with whatever cool stuff you'd like your kids to have on the SD card.

This is such a great list. Screens are bad when they are connected to the internet. Not so much when they arnt.

>an old-school landline phone connected to a VoIP box, served by UniFi Talk ($10/month).

Not sure if things are different where you are, but I'm Australia we use PAYG plans through CrazyTel. You pay per minute, ends up costing us like $1.86/mo for our small business

Reply on news.ycombinator.com