Hacker News Reader

Comment by olafmol | Hacker News Reader

Now it's smartphones and devices, but in the past it was work. Personally I think these days kids get a lot more attention from their parents than anytime in the past. Even so much that it can be irritating/damaging (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).

View on HN

Beware the helicopters.

Give kids the freedom to make mistakes and suffer the (nonfatal, no loss of life or limb) consequences.

Yes, there are cases to intervene, but generally, you should let your kids hurt themselves more. Pain is a very important form of learning. By overprotecting them, they become very vulnerable adults, then worse things happen.

They also become dysfunctional adults, needing a replacement parent, when the parent disappears- which is mostly the state, sometimes a company - and always a example for stunted individual growth.

> you should let your kids hurt themselves more

This is quite presumptuous. Even minor injuries can add up to long term damage. We don't need to keep our kids inside or wrapped in crazy layers to protect them. We also don't need them to get hurt a lot for them to learn what's good or bad.

It sounds like your concept of “minor” may be calibrated too high. Kids need to test boundaries to learn limits. They need to learn limits to live safely while understanding their actual capabilities. This involves getting hurt sometimes. Is it fun? No. Do you learn a lesson almost every time? Yes. This is the compounding that actually matters.

I thought there was a difference between "hurt more" and "hurt a lot" even when accounting for subjetiveness of both.

but I guess part of this "screen based society" we live in is the loss of nuance and charitable interpretation.

It's called "controlled risk taking"

Children need to take these risks themselves, the caregiver there is to put them in a place where the control limits the damage.

I think that's the issue in some cases though, while being totally absent is a major negative, the perception the kid has of the parent _while_ present is more improtant than when being absent if the absence is understandable, a kid in daycare will observe other parents leaving and picking up and normalize it.

I remember growing up that my dad reading the papers and watching the news was pretty much sacred. Paper maybe less so, but it was his "me time" after work along with coffee and cake, with the occasional chat with mom while we'd watch tv.

Part of me misses it, part of me thinks it's the same, just different now. I do think phones capture attention more than newspapers though, and trigger more violent or faster emotional ups and downs. Scrolling through social media exposes you to something fun, worrying, horrifying, etc every few seconds, I can't imagine that's healthy.

> but in the past it was work.

I suggest that reading previously took the roll devices take today. When my parents weren’t at work they were reading as often as not; newspapers and novels.

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, novels were regarded as the video games or TikTok of their age — shallow, addictive, and dangerous [0]

You can interpret that as either "there's always a moral panic about anything new" or (my own take) "this is how far we have fallen".

[0] https://clivethompson.medium.com/why-novels-will-destroy-you...

There may always be a moral panic but that doesn't mean every moral panic is equally misplaced.

Most high school age children of the 1800s weren't inclined to read novels 12+ hours a day and neglect their sleep and hygiene to finish a few more chapters...

It's parental hysteria. Same as always.

> (parents being "friends/playmates" instead of parents).

That seems like a cultural thing to me. It's common in some countries for daughters ~15yrs to ~40yrs to claim their best friend is their mom.

I don't think you understood what op meant. There's a difference between a child saying this and parenting style.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com