Blank screen if kids yell too much
superuser.com
superuser.com
But holy crap! Half of this place seems like they want to be raising robots, not individuals who all have their own needs and will need to be taught and treated differently. Worse, I have a strong feeling most of them haven't talked to a kid in years, much less ever raised one.
And these people are not just giving advice, but being highly judgmental. Saying the father is wrong. I raise four kids with my wife. Two kids as a single dad would be twice as hard at least.
Go walk a mile and see how your "build a robot" methodology works for your kid.
(Sorry about the rant. I take fatherhood and other people judging it very seriously. I came from an abusive household, and that is the only kind of environment I would openly judge a father for. This is not abusive, even if it offends somebody's sense of logic.)
If you are not a parent, evaluating parenting strategies is not possible, just like evaluating sexual positions if you're a virgin just doesn't work out. You need to be 'experienced' as Jimmy Hendrix famously said, to flip the bit in your brain associated with that experience before you can effectively evaluate different choices. Sad but true.
And frankly, most of the criticism has nothing to do with parenting but with intellectual honesty and how much you yourself understand about the world. If you teach your kid 2+2=5, I will be sure that is wrong, and "but you don't have kids" is a hilarious rebuttal.
Then you might realize that, yes, not knowing anything about parenting actually does mean you have no basis to evaluate parenting decisions.
I would ask what did they mean by "working"? If the kid doesn't understand addition anyway, and asks what is 2+2, why not tell them 4? What would be the rationale to say it's 5, what is "working" here? It answered the question, but so would the correct answer.
Then you might realize that, yes, not knowing anything about parenting actually does mean you have no basis to evaluate parenting decisions.
If that parenting knowledge gives people expert insight, why don't they share it? Why hide behind "only parents would understand" (even ignoring that some parents disagree with them)? Why not refute the so obviously wrong armchair amateur advice with the correct facts? I see lots of talk, where is the money?
not knowing anything about parenting actually does mean you have no basis to evaluate parenting decisions.
It's cute, but sadly I saw what you did there: What or who, other than asexually reproducing life forms, or maybe those that lay eggs, does not know anything about parenting?
There is an scientific approach to parenting. We can take a testable metric like body weight, and apply rigorous analysis of contributing factors, like eating habits and exercise, and arrive at a more-or-less objective conclusion like, "Feeding kids lots of sugar will make them fat." That's not a conclusion that's amenable to subjective analysis, and non-parents are as capable of drawing them as parents are (and in fact, non-parents may be better, because...)
There is also an intuitive approach to parenting, which is how most parenting decisions actually get made, because once you get the little details of keeping your kid alive and healthy taken care of, you start running into abstract problems like, "I want my child to have a happy and fulfilled life," for which really actionable scientific evidence is thin on the ground. Parents develop this intuition over the course of years of near-constant exposure to their children, where every single little thing they do has some consequence which they have nowhere near enough time or energy to seriously consider. It's the sort of problem our brains are made to solve, and generally it works out okay.
Consider that if you aren't a parent or full-time-plus childcare professional, you have something like one one thousandth that level of interaction with children, and much less in a custodial role. So let's swap out some nouns and see if this makes sense to you:
There's a question about a programming language. In the discussion are a layman, who has never used the language, and an amateur, with fifty thousand hours of subject matter experience. Somewhere are educated people studying the language rationally, but they are not here.
The amateur says, "Look, I know you have your own opinion and all, but I don't think you're really even qualified to discuss this if you haven't done any programming before."
The layman says, "Why not? This stuff is just common sense."
The amateur replies, "I understand it looks like common sense to you, but, in the nicest way possible, you just don't know anything about this."
The layman protests, "Of course I know about it! I use computers almost every day, and so does everyone here."
The amateur is frustrated. "That's... not really the same thing as programming at all."
The layman feels challenged. "Okay, if you're the big expert here, why don't you just share some of this so-called expertise with the rest of us?"
The amateur is perplexed. "...that's what I'm doing."
This discussion will never arrive at a productive result. There is just no path from here to there.
Look, I know you have your own opinion and all, but I don't think you're really even qualified to discuss this if you haven't done any programming before.
Yeah, but if the programmer actually does have the experience, he CAN prove it, albeit in language the layman may not understand or follow. I don't see this happening here in this particular case. And therefore...
The layman feels challenged. "Okay, if you're the big expert here, why don't you just share some of this so-called expertise with the rest of us?"
The amateur is perplexed. "...that's what I'm doing."
This discussion will never arrive at a productive result.
Where are you guys doing that, sharing the expert knowledge? You skip INSTANTLY to "only parents would understand", AND you ignore the facts that some parents disagree, which is rendering your entire argument zilch -- that isn't hard to get, I already mentioned that and am now repeating; will you repeat with an even bigger wall of text every time I point out that flaw? Are you treating me like a kid, perhaps? No need to explain, just keep using big words and bloat it up? Pah.
Maybe I should make it explicit that I'm not a parent; I've just heard enough experts say that to believe it. I am flattered you think I talk like a grown up, though.
The fact that your intuition is deceiving you is expert knowledge.
Nah, it's gotta have slightly more substance than that; no matter how often you repeat it. Just literally telling me to shut up won't cut it either.
Riddle me this, how is it not possible to tell your kid you want them to be not yell so loud when playing computer games impossible, and in what situation is it preferably to deceive them? If they actually respect their toys more than their parents, that's clearly a FUBAR situation.
You might say you don't know, because you are not familiar with the details. Well then, what of the stuff you do have experience with would lead you to say "hands off, it's 'their' children"? I mean, by this logic you also give carte blanche to any and all abuse, too: after all, nobody should judge what people do with 'their' children. I say bollocks to that, and am still waiting for a single argument that actually applies to this situation, instead of just hiding behind generalities, strawmen and logical fallacies.
Oh, it's possible. Nobody claimed it's impossible. The question is, what do you do when (not if, when) it doesn't work? And by "doesn't work", I mean that they stop yelling for 30-90 seconds and then they start again.
and in what situation is it preferably to deceive them?
What people have been telling you over and over is that these decisions aren't as clear cut as
if A and B and C then deception.preferable = true
If they actually respect their toys more than their parents, that's clearly a FUBAR situation.
That statement reveals a profound lack of understanding of the subject matter, which is why so many people are criticizing you.
I say bollocks to that, and am still waiting for a single argument that actually applies to this situation, instead of just hiding behind generalities, strawmen and logical fallacies.
Which just goes to show you haven't actually bothered to look for those arguments. If you had, you would have found an explanation I offered, based on my experiences with my son, on observing other kids and on talking to other parents and educators: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5155974
Feel free to disagree with the explanation, but please stop throwing hissy fits because people called you out on your lack of credibility.
No, it means I got a LOT of replies goin on and on about strawmen. I consider those replies to my posts, imagine that.
please stop throwing hissy fits because people called you out on your lack of credibility.
Well, I appreciate the irony and the projection. Mocking non-sequitur arguments repeating what they missed isn't throwing a hissy fit just because I'm not going out of my way to read the whole thread over and over, and your argument boils down to "believing in Santa doesn't hurt anyone either". Well, that still makes it an undesirable, unnecessary, mediocre thing at best. And I don't buy the whole "kids at 4 are super egotistical" either, some are rather protective of their baby sibling for example, so they clearly know what being disturbed is. Actually, I remember one thing my father told my when I was a kid, that you can't lie to babies, they always notice... I took that literally, and told my baby brother I'd go to the toilet, thinking "I will go to the kitchen instead". When I left the room and he failed to cry, I was disappointed, I was already planning on using him as lie detector. You see, the fact that you shrug off the myth of Santa, the uttering of which would have been like crapping on the carpet for my family, just tells me we experienced and live in different worlds. And I couldn't care less about the additional credibility which the "parent" flag would give me, it's just not relevant; if I have kids they might turn out to be completely different persons who I was. But instead of speculating about a kid who is not me, even if it's "mine", I actually do remember. As you say so ironically, "Feel free to disagree", feel free to claim I remember wrong or whatever; but don't throw hissy fits just because your kids don't notice that shit.
As devil's advocate, i would argue this is not true. There are externalities to any strategy. And one can judge the impact of strategy X on people outside the immediate family. This is perhaps a caveat outside the scope of the context, but when evaluating things generally is worth pointing out.
I could argue either side of this but I would simply like to add that as a parent perspective also depends on the particular of your kids. Parent in situations "that work" who observe situations that don't work sometimes fail to see reasons out of anyone's control as to why a particular strategy may or may not work with a child.
In a sense someone with no children at all actually might have less of a bias ironically. (I have children..)
+1 to this too, so when my first child was born I was very scientific, I watched her reactions to things, trying to understand her needs and her wants, how to interpret a cry of frustration from a cry of pain, etc. I was so totally an expert. And then my second daughter was born and she was different, literally from the moment she popped out of the womb. Her response, her verbalization, her responses. It was there and then that I realized that and advice about any specific kid, was likely as not completely worthless to parent of some other kid. All you could do is discuss 'strategies' for understanding or responding. Even simple things like 'cloth' vs 'disposable' diapers vary on their effectiveness between different kids.
Parenting has easily been both the hardest and most rewarding thing I've done with my life. And I came to realize early on that every parenting journey is unique. I think other parents figure this out too.
You make two very good points here and in your other post.
1) Kids are different. There is a whole spectrum of right and wrong decisions depending on what your kid is like. Would anyone suggest that the same methods would work with a kid who is stubborn and one who is easy going?
2) These decisions depend on a kid's age. A 2-5 year old is not logical or rational, and can do outrageous things just to see how you would react. Don't deceive them, let them be kids, yadda yadda are almost funny to read. Like you said, walk a mile in the parents' shoes.
Anyway, getting back to the original post, I do see an issue with this approach (to parenting, not the technical solutions): I'd rather solve the bigger problem of the kids not listening to what the parent is saying rather than fixing this single instance. On the other hand, it is easy for kids to get rowdy without realizing it and this method seems to fix that particular issue well.
Or, have had the luxury of having great parents who never bothered playing such mind games with you. Of course, since such gifted parents are rare, it's easy to simply dismiss such a high standard. But once you go non-bullshit, it's just hard to go back.
It's interesting that you're responding from the perspective of a child to a statement from the perspective of a parent.
Do you have children?
Yeah, it's almost as if it's a relationship between two humans, instead of a one-way input pipe.
Do you have children?
What makes you ask? That I respect kids more than quite a bunch of folks who are actually raising some? Or is that just an attempt to dismiss what I said without addressing it? That shit is getting real old.
I don't know why @incision asked, so I can't speak for him or her. However, I know why I would ask you the same question: I would be curious whether you were simply speaking out of profound ignorance and entitlement or whether there was actually any credibility to back up your stance.
That I respect kids more than quite a bunch of folks who are actually raising some?
This has nothing to do with respect and a lot to do with hard-earned experience, which you don't have. And I say hard-earned because there's no decent parent out there that doesn't regret a whole lot of mistakes they made while they were bringing up their kids. Your attitude of moral superiority is not only undeserved, but it's also quite insulting.
Or is that just an attempt to dismiss what I said without addressing it? That shit is getting real old.
Is it? Funny, from where I stand, it looks like you were coming up with criticism and theories you never bothered to verify in any way, just because you feel entitled and I can tell you: that shit has been ancient before I was born.
I suggest you read Steve Yegge's "Have you ever legalized marijuana?" [1] or, if you're short on time, a relevant XKCD [2].
[1]: http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2009/04/have-you-ever-legali...
[2]: http://xkcd.com/793/
?
"have had the luxury of having great parents who never bothered playing such mind games with you"
And I run into PLENTY of adults who just tried to use their privilege, or lies, for shortcut solutions. I know how they fared. So what exactly don't I have experience with, other than doing it to someone else?
"I suggest you read Steve Yegge's"
I suggest you actually address the content of my posts.
You're a troll.
You haven't said anything. No content, not even an anecdote. You just spat out a couple of emotional, condescending quips, likely in hopes of teasing out another abstract argument [1].
You're a troll.
Maybe stop thinking that for a second and pretend you are actually supposed to give me an actual answer. I mean, it's neat and easy and all that, I understand, but you're flat out wrong and that you are just looking at an exit while being unintentionally ironic. I am not teasing these abstract arguments, I am time and time telling you stop with the logical fallacies and generalities, give me the argument for this situation. I also love how you hold exactly the BS responses I complain about, including yours, against me.
You haven't said anything. No content, not even an anecdote.
Right, and while you're lying you think you might just keep on with it, huh? Nope. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5156988
So you would rather talk about the messenger, than the message, also ignoring that some people with kids say the same fucking thing. Well, I already established that, too, the question is how often are you going to repeat proving it?
So, so true.
I find it's a common source of frustration and tool of rationalization to blindly apply what appears to have "worked" for one kid to all of the rest, expecting if not demanding the same result. Kids aren't uniform data ready for predictable processing.
>Worse, I have a strong feeling most of them haven't talked to a kid in years, much less ever raised one.
Child-rearing is such a magnet for expert advice given from a position of zero practical experience. There are all sorts of things in life that would be more applicable to speak authoritatively on with only theory to work from, but I rarely see the same kind of absolute assuredness anywhere else.
I'm thinking folks tend to take their own childhood as years of "factual" evidence and experience in the matter.
People would submit articles entitled "How I hacked my children", if it weren't because there was a nagging feeling in the back of their skull that something wasn't right about this attitude.
Doesn't stop people from applying it to everything else, though.
while true; do sox -t .wav "|arecord -d 1" -n stat 2> /tmp/tmp; echo -n `date +"%Y%m%d%H%M%S"` " "; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Maximum amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Midline amplitude" | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d '\n'; cat /tmp/tmp | grep "Rough *frequency" | cut -d ":" -f 2; done
and got this: http://i.imgur.com/oD6ZKIg.png?1
Interesting things: When my neighbor walks in his apartment above mine, it creates a amp peak with low frequency.
I have no idea what are those approx. one hour long periodic variations in the frequency, maybe my computer's fan or me snoring.
Anyway, pretty useless...
* You didn't write a single line of code (well technically you did write one), nor researched about sound APIs or any kind of sound analysis algorithms or theory.
* You used several tools that just seamlessly shared their inputs and outputs and each one worked as supposed.
Granted, you need to know some bash and figure out how every utility works and the right command line switches to use, but still, pretty impressive.
while true; do sox -t .wav "|arecord -d 1" -n stat 2> /tmp/tmp; echo -n $( date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S ); grep -e "Maximum amplitude" -e "Midline amplitude" -e "Rough *frequency" /tmp/tmp | cut -d ":" -f 2 | tr -d "\n"; echo; done
Shortening a line like this reminds me of a discussion on a forum about picking a random movie to play. It started off with loops and scripts of all kinds, and eventually ended with "shuf" :)
...
for (int month = 1, month <=12, month++)
{
printf ("You never call. I'm your Dad you know. :-( ");
}Raising kids who will want to "call their Dad" once grown up is hardly about letting them make as much noise as they wish at age 4.
I sometime envy how some people view life as a simple If-Then-This-That... Much easier to sleep at night that way.
Kids are noisy. I have dealt with it by installing a solid door at the end of the hallway. No scripting required. Occasionally I tell them to quiet down if they get out of hand. Kids are noisy, that is just part of the experience.
Read the comments on SuperUser. He's a single dad. Being unable to hear what your 4 year old kids are up to is a bad idea when there's no one else to monitor them.
Why not tell them "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud"?
Same result, more truthful method.
I'm a father (and I also remember something about being a kid) and I can tell you that 4 year old kids are unbelievably egocentric. A lot of the rules adults try to impose that are perfectly reasonable to anyone with enough empathy seem completely arbitrary to a 4 year old. So, "don't yell because that distracts/bothers me" is an "arbitrary" rule coming from a "cranky" dad. "I put a script in the machine that will shut down the screen if you yell too loud" gets translated into "I don't want you to yell", which is, again, an "arbitrary" rule kids don't care about.
On the other hand, "computer doesn't like loud sounds" is a perfectly "reasonable" rule, because the computer is "in charge" of letting you play the game. You disturb the computer, the computer reacts. And you can't argue with it or try to manipulate it. Crying at it or throwing a temper tantrum won't do any good. It has no mouth, so you can't have a conversation with it. In short, you have to follow its rules.
If you want to avoid having the kids jump to the "logical" conclusion that the machine is a person, you can formulate it differently: instead of saying "the computer doesn't like loud sounds", you can say "the computer is a machine that doesn't work well when there's a lot of yelling".
Then again, someone else already pointed out that kids believe that an old, fat man can come down their chimney and leave gifts in a matter of minutes -- and do so for every kid in the freaking world -- without suffering any psychological scars from an "untruthful" method of influencing their behavior (because Santa brings gifts only to kids who are "good"), so I don't see what the big deal is with going through a short period of believing the machine is a person.
None of the above is a bad thing or an insurmountable obstacle, but there's nothing seriously wrong with making the computer take the blame either. In my opinion, it ends up teaching the kids to be considerate to others (even if it's just a computer), with less suffering all around. YMMV, etc.
People anthropomorphism objects all the time. Kids do it even more than adults. This action isn't going to cause psychological damage and, if it does, it is only because it existed already from something much more serious.
So, if a deceiver is always a deceiver, what do you do if they tell you they are a deceiver? beep boop does not compute
Stupid word games. The word "deceiver," as used by the parent commentator, is quite reasonably used to mean "one who is noticeably more likely than baseline to choose to deceive" - your example gives no trouble: you accept it at face value. Disagree for reasons, if you disagree.
Can you please tell me what your definition of "most" and "leeches" are.
I find your response stemming from a false assumption as evidence that you are spending too much of your neural network trying to deal with the deceivers in your life. Instead of having success, coming to right conclusions about things, you instead come to false conclusions, evidence of failure, can't get things right the first time. I find it disturbing and yet an addition to my understanding of how present-emotional people work. Without automations for the lower classes our society would not run as is.
When you get back into work Monday morning, you did your thing wrong, you'll have to correct that as well.
Really, you got all that because I assumed your parents lied to you about Santa Claus, just like the majority of parents in the US?
Honestly, I'd love for you to continue ranting. I'm all ears, it's a lot of fun to read. I promise I'll read it.
It's teaching the kids to be passive aggressive. Can't get what you want? Work behind the scenes to cause the people you love to do what you want. Do it to the kid, the kid does it back to you. It's not something to trifle with. You're configuring the personality of the kid with these interactions, and these choices have huge consequences about how the kid interacts with society, family and friends. There are only a couple people in the world I would trust with my life, whom I could give them power of attorney over me and I could rely on them not to loot me and leave me powerless. And that relationship is built on one of trust, one of never deceiving. The father is deceiving the kid, that trust-relationship I have may not materialize with the person who plays these mind games.
The relationship I describe is the most valuable thing on Earth, people KILL for it, literally, and I'm trying to comment here about how to get that thing, and I see these articles are pooping all over it, and I have to give my 2 cents. These ideas I have aren't silly, it's the operating principles of the most valuable thing in the world: Love and trust. The only thing worth more than money.
1. A zero tolerance policy on "lies" does have a psychological cost on both the parents and children (not just convenience) and, while it's great that has worked alright for you, that's not a proof that it can be generalized and get it working well for everyone.
Love, Pa
That would have been more awesome :)
Furthermore, on the technical side, it's not too easy to calculate some number corresponding to the perceived loudness level, especially not as some answers suggested to parse the RMS-signal number output by the command-line tools "aplay"/"arecord". You'd need at least to take the (non-linear in amplitude, dependent on frequency) weighting curves shown on the wikipedia-page for "Loudness" into account:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness
Then, you'd have to take into account how annoying a sound is, which is obviously highly dependant on the circumstances: A colleague might drive you mad with only very quiet squeeking of his chair, but a lound regularly humming machine you might be able to completely mask out mentally so that you don't even remember if it was turned on or off at some day.
Putting these technical things back to the (morally questionable) problem at hand: If you don't "punish", "educate" or "feedback" your children according to a quantity that they can actually perceive and whose magnitude they can judge, they will experience this apparatus to be highly unfair.
And, additionally, if I would put such a machinery to use, my children would with absolute certainty become masters in creating the most appallingly unpleasant and annoying sounds one can imagine that just don't reach the threshold of the machine. And they would be completely right doing so ;-).
Edit: Typos, "tools aplay/arecord".
The idea of changing behaviour, conditioning living creatures, to obey rules enforced my machines feels very disturbing to me.
I find myself sharing the grandparent's discomfort. I'm an avid gamer, yet sometimes, when I lie awake at night and mull over the events of the day, I find myself wondering if I've truly mastered the game or if the game has only taught me what succession of button presses and mouse movements give me the highest levels of dopamine.
I've made use of this technique on myself; I've got a concentration app that, when turned on, will make an abhorrent piercing noise if I go on Facebook/Twitter/Hackernews/ read RSS feeds / etc. It's helped me train myself to focus when I'm working.
I will grant that using this on someone else without their knowledge is more questionable, but I wanted to say that it's sometimes legitimate.
If you set that alarm, you know why and what for you are conditioning yourself, and that is even true if you know how and why someone else set it; but when it's just a faceless event that you learn to adapt to, possibly while even having a narrative about it that has nothing to do with reality, that's not just slightly different or worse, for me that's worlds apart.
I disagree, when I have kids I will tell it everything my wife tells me not to tell it, if this includes telling it Santa Clause is not real- I'm going to do it. I rather have him learn from me then some snob egotistic kid who thinks he knows the secrets of life preaching about how unfair it is that other parents are lying to his friends or another ignorant kid, who is figuring it all by himself, confusing my kid. Having a kid who is aware might pay off..or not, like someone in the top said, us without kids don't know how the robot methodology isn't going to work.
On Topic:
Putting the tv to a certain volume level and a tablet, with a voice monitoring application- if it passes a certain threshold it will change the channel to a 1 minute pre recorded message telling him not to yell, sounds more productive than a white screen and a notification for you to go to the room and explain to him why that keeps happening or sending him to the room for yelling to loud after a few warnings. We can all agree there's a certain level of yelling one can stand from kids!
Good luck staying married, with that attitude. If you don't parent as a team, you'll fail in much worse ways than doing the "wrong" thing wrt Santa.
It? Please never have kids.
In 2100 your comment will be evidence of wild anti-AI sentiments popular in our backward times.
when duke nukem forever is ported to common lisp running on the hurd
suuuuure
Edit: More seriously, trends in AI seems to be running towards statistical analysis and away from anything that might resemble actual "sentience"--even were we to define such a thing. I doubt that an overgrown Bayes engine would take offense at anything I do.
Now looking back at a machine - it has microphone, and sound card. So the input mechanism is in place, the only missing bit is the logic that determines machine's reaction to stimuli.
Without the scrip, the machine cannot be "upset by the noise", but with the script it actually can be, IMHO. So there is some grain of truth in what the guy is saying to his kids...
Who is monitoring them while they are playing video games?
It's reasonably easy to calm children down when you need to, you just need to learn some techniques. These techniques would probably require someone to be in the room for them to work, but once you've succeeded in calming down the over-boisterous behaviour they'd be okay.
And, of course, children enjoy being boisterous, so I hope they get opportunities to let off steam in a more appropriate setting. Soft play rooms[1] are good, as are parks and gardens and some games in the home.
The adult could investigate various parenting courses. "Webster Stratton" is an example of a respected course.
[1] In the UK you might have a Sure Start centre near you with a soft play room for hire. These are lovely because you will be in the room with your child alone, and you can really enjoy the experience. There are also commercial providers such as Play Barn which will be full of screaming, crying, poorly supervised children and stressed harried parents. This is, for some people, a hellish experience.
Get a stick. Stand over child. If child makes noise, hit child with stick. Repeat until child quiet, becomes adult, or gets stick. If child gets stick, leave home.
And that is the "British" way. :)
Eventually children will learn and stop making too much noise. This is a parenting problem, not a technical one.
Then you end up with a dysfunctional family. Funny joke, but there are serious child education problems in this joke. It's like laughing at a baby seal getting kicked around by teenagers. It's hilarious to people who are emotionally present-oriented. yolo, if it feels good, then it's good.
It's not a manipulation or a trick.
It's a "reward system". You get X only if you do Y. Period.
It has worked wonders for ages. Still does in most parts of the world. The US has a messed up system that ends with annoying, over-self-indulged, entitled children and adults.
Annoying, over-self-indulged and entitled. Also damn dangerous.
You got me as far as "confirmation bias". Still looking up that citation?
But in fact everyone I know who commutes on foot has been hit by a car in the last 5 years. No one’s been hurt badly, thankfully. (I don’t think anyones even gone to the hospital in that time period - unlike the bicycle commuters I know.)
I know that's small sample size - and poorly chosen - still it suggests bad things.
Well, yeah. Human beings are not equipped to operate motor vehicles safely, and there is a mountain of evidence to support that fact. It doesn't have anything to do with parenting, though.
> People posting pictures of their cats?
Man, you got some messed up trauma or something.
Well known facts should need no citation upon an audience of educated adults.
Still, here's a secondary corroboration for you: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297020474090457719...
Of course that won't work if the game doesn't need a headset but you could disable external speakers and make it only work via the headset.
Do you seriously think 13-year-olds are homophobic? They just repeat what their peers say like parrots. It doesn't really matter to them what it means as long as it sounds offensive and they can pronounce it.
Also what I presented is not a serious solution to kids acting like jerks. Kids would just invent new words to get around a filter like that.
They need some kind of JerkRank algorithm to allow players to rate other players and machine learn what kind of people are compatible to game with each other.
Like how does he know what 3 and 7 have on them? And would this work on a windowing system? And why does it appear as if the screen has turned off?
If you boot into the GUI and spend all your time there, then although 1 will probably contain remnants of the boot process, 2-6 will be unused, a blank screen with some text in the corner.
Basically, he's switching between a near-blank screen, and the graphical environment.
So basically it's :
switch to text terminal wait 15 seconds switch to X Window
Set clear rules, make sure they understand those rules, and follow through with enforcing those rules.
Nothing is more infuriating than parents setting rules that only apply to their children for arbitrary reasons.
You use terms like "because I said so" with a 2 year old who literally can't understand why you shouldn't play in the street.
Don't insult other people's intelligence, much less your kid's. There's no excuse for that.
Funnily enough, my 2 year old understands exactly why she shouldn't play in the street; Every time we go for a walk around the block and a car passes us, she tells us all "look out for that car, it might hit us!".
And then again, I know plenty of other 2 year olds who can barely talk, let alone say something like that.
And then I know 2 year olds who have dexterity and body awareness that makes my daughter look like she's walking around with a blindfold and her arms tied together.
If being a parent has taught me anything, it's that kids are just incredibly different from each other. Oh, that, and that nothing good can ever come of a parenting thread on Hacker News ;) So many strongly held opinions from such small samples (often zero!).
In fact, the question is why people make a lot of noise in the first place. It doesn't seem like a very good evolutionary strategy, which suggests it is in fact learned behavior with a cultural source. In which case it may not be a bad idea to try and unlearn your children this behavior.
As a parent of 6 kids ( ages 2 to 19), quiet does not equate to better adult. IMHO, we are talking about parental intolerance. Or, to be fair, conforming to the intolerance of those around. (I understand the problems of living in a flat or apartment)
All that quiet discipline stuff kicks in at pre-school, then school, where they do have to follow rigid rules, and face consequence if they don't. I have always allowed my kids to let off, as it were, at home. Obviously only to a point, but I give them a fairly long leash. I tend to think if they cant be themselves at home, then where can they? Of course if it gets too much, or seems distressing, then something is wrong and it needs discussion.
But, I fear the rigid. I don't want drones for kids. They learn enough about fitting in with others from the rest of life. At home, to a point, I let them be.
Telling your children to tone it down is not the same as telling them that Justin Bieber is an awful musician, or that MMORPGs are a pointless waste of time. You will not effect your child's personality by enforcing some noise violations.
If they want to yell while playing games, then they can play games outside.
From the single bit of data I have, your idea of repression seems to be anything less than complete anarchy... do you have children?
Not computer games they can't. And not in all seasons/kinds of weather, either.
I'm fairly certain that every mother ever has told her children to stop yelling in the house at least once.
And I'm fairly certain every parent (mother? what?) also sometimes allowed it. You know, politeness is kind of about a sentient counterpart, rather a fixed sound threshold in a panopticon.
From the single bit of data I have, your idea of repression seems to be anything less than complete anarchy
How so? If I think it's repressing if a child is under no circumstance allowed to yell out in joy or fright while playing? What does this have to do with anarchy? That's not anarchy, that's life.
Let me ask you: would you mind sitting next to a group of kids at the movie theater chatting away and carrying a running commentary throughout the film all out of sheer excitement?
I suspect you would; I know I would. Why? Because it's disrespectful. Telling a kid to quiet down while playing a PC game is usually done simply to teach them to respect the presence of others around them. Sure, there are controlling parents out there, and in those cases, you may call it repression, but most of the time it's as simple a lesson as teaching a kid to say please and thank you.
The topic is about the question how to blank the screen when a certain loudness threshold is reached. Which means "is even anyone else in the house" or other such factors do not enter into it. Which in turn means this isn't teaching politeness, this is like teaching a dog; no disrespect to dogs intended, but I mean that they usually just learn what to do, not why (which is fine in the case of a dog, unacceptable for a kid).
Maybe it just seems like being dramatic to you because I'm actually paying attention to the finer details here, and you don't. I complain about this specific case, and you defend it because there's sometimes a reason to tell a kid to not yell etc... which is funny, but not quite the rebuttal you imagine it to be.
Telling a kid to quiet down while playing a PC game is simply to teach them to respect the presence of others around them.
I completely agree; what in anything I wrote makes you think I don't? And what about the topic makes you think what is being done here?
Though I would add that I wouldn't want to be the person who doesn't sometimes also get joy out of the loud expression of joy from others. Depends on what you're doing etc.,.. so respect also means letting the kids holler sometimes. Respect doesn't just go one way, and if you haven't made children to become happy humans, what have you made them for?
But don't get sidetracked, remember: The parent in question does NOT tell their kids "I want you to be more quiet, so I made this script", they outright lie (and proudly report that it's working, too), and even seek to automate it just to put a hard cap on the loudness levels of their kids.
And that's okay because it's effective, gets the desired result, case closed...? Well pah, I disagree, just like I also frown upon telling kids they should be nice so Santa gives them presents; not because I am against being nice, but because I'm against the layer of indirection and dishonesty.
This is the second time I responded to a strawman, and I find that telling in and of itself. I have nothing against something the parent in question isn't even doing, I have something against what they actually are doing. Is that so hard to understand? You don't turn kids into "good adults" by not taking them seriously and telling them the computer is annoyed by loud noise... What. The. Fuck. That this topic is not _full_ of ridicule, just like the comments on the linked site, is just sad.
On the bright side of things: maybe this scenario will drive the children to "fix" the computer. Maybe they'll learn new things that they never would've learned if not for their father's "repression". Maybe they'll realize that parents are sometimes full of shit, and shouldn't be trusted implicitly.
;)
When he wants something he requests it, and I will usually honor his request unless I see a good reason for not doing so. If that's the case, I will take the time to explain it to him even thou I know that he will not understand everything I say. I think that's important, because it shows commitment to him. My decisions are usually final (for now). This will change when he grows up and becomes able to articulate good arguments on the reasons of what he wants.
He does play with other children. And when he does, he is quite clear on the limits with him. When another children attempts to steal one of his toys he will stand on principle (I really like that he has this personality). He will talk with other children but not yell. If the other child is yelling he will probably ignore him. And he chooses to play with other children who are also calmed.
If he does not do something I want him to do, he will get punished (as part of the feedback loop). It usually involves not looking at his favorite cartoons. If he does something right, he gets a praise.
What is even more interesting is that other people's sons and daughters also behave like that when they are with me. So, it leaves two possible choices:
1. I am somehow special and children behave different around me.
2. Lots of children also behave like my son.
So far, I have chosen option number 2 as my belief. I also think that if you make clear the boundaries for children, they will honor them.
He will talk with other children but not yell. [..] Lots of children also behave like my son.
Does he also not ever squee real loud for sheer excitement? You know, humans only have a short window where they can even experience the world that intensely. Sometimes it's good to let them.
I also think that if you make clear the boundaries for children, they will honor them.
Yes, but I think it's important to have good reasons (there's plenty for "don't yell at people", not so many for "do not ever, under any circumstances, exceed this loudness threshold while playing"), and to be honest about them; like you are, and like the OP decidedly isn't. Even just "you cannot understand that yet", if it's actually true and spoken in a bond of trust, can be enough. But "the magic pixie dust in the computer has spoken because I can't be arsed to tell you to shut up while I leave you alone with the computer?" Nah.
And I do agree on the fact that telling lies to your own son is counter-producing. He will learn that you lie and not take into account what you say.
This worked surprisingly well from a very young age (<1) for my son. It seems like it shows him I take his concerns seriously, but that I have good reason for my objections.
After all, it's not like parents have a life to live, a work/personal life balance to strike or any shot at personal happiness anyway.
Words of wisdom, dear sir. I can totally tell you have no idea what you're talking about.