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Comment by gradstudent | Hacker News Reader

There's a few things on the list I disagree with (games, sleepovers, school play) but otherwise? Spot on. Kids lack sufficient perspective to understand which activities are important and why.

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> Spot on. Kids lack sufficient perspective to understand which activities are important and why.

Important to whom? I am pretty sure kids know what is important to them and why. Sure, this may be different to what their parents think(e.g. their parents may find games, sleepovers and other stuff "unimportant").

BTW, you can use the very same logic as justification for controlling adults. [And frankly speaking, this logic is used by (almost?) all politicians]

Kids don't know jack. If a kid isn't good at maths, and their friends aren't good at maths, they conclude that maths is stupid and not worth doing. Adults know better which is why they need to push kids toward productive activities and away from unproductive ones. Which isn't to say they shouldn't be allowed leisure time to be kids. Simply that a guiding hand, and sometimes a forceful hand, is necessary.

But is it necessary to micromanage to that level? I mean , it's certainly preferable for your kid to study music than to do drugs but do you need to dictate the exact instrument they will play?

Or perhaps they aren't so interested in music and would prefer to use the time for some other constructive activity (say programming).

Music education makes you a better rounded human. IMO it should be mandatory in early development. Kids are fickle and shortsighted. Why even let them decide these kinds of things at an early age? As a grown adult a parent is obviously in a better position to choose. Expose them to music, math, programming -- all that good stuff!

Obviously you wouldn't take it to extremes and torture the kid but I have noticed a trend among Anglo parents to let their children make important decisions during their elementary years -- like what is and isn't a worthwhile pursuit. It then comes down to pure dumb luck whether the child is engaged in a worthwhile recreational activity or a dumb one.

Again, worthwhile - to whom? And again, you can apply the very same logic to (some) adults. Many people, actually, do this. That's why they ban drugs, for example. That's why they setup(or allow the setup of) censorship systems(china great firewall and many others). Some people are just too dumb to think.

This may sound irrelevant to the discussion, but it is not. What age is not early age? Parents always be more "grown"(their age number will always be bigger).

Coercion is killer of motivation: force kid to play violin, and he is likely to hate violin in the (near?) future.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't "expose" kids to music, math, programming and other great stuff, but I'm saying that you probably shouldn't force them.

IMO, you should parent your children until they go off to University. They live under your roof and need to follow your rules. If they do not follow your rules they need to argue their case in a rational adult manner and to your satisfaction. If they cannot and act like petulant children you need to treat them as such; i.e. tell them to shut the hell up and eat their dogfood.

I don't care that the same arguments could be applied to adults. Adults are grown individuals who by virtue of their age have earned their right to be bone-headed and make stupid choices. As a parent all you can do is try to instill in your children values that prevent them from turning into boneheads.

Clear enough?

Is the child being a "bonehead" if they decide they don't enjoy the violin and would prefer to play clarinet or percussion instead?

You're putting words in my mouth. I only argued in favour of mandatory exposure to a broad range of activities, including musical instruments. The precise instrument probably doesn't matter but. I would prefer e.g. a piano or clarinet over a guitar or drums but hey, whatever. Just learn some music theory!

You said that you agreed with the list, the list explicitly says "nothing apart from piano or violin".

I pretty much do? I definitely have some strong personal biases toward particular instruments and not others and I would push for those. Asking a kid to choose a music instrument yields a decision every bit as informed as rolling a dice. Why bother?

> Asking a kid to choose a music instrument yields a decision every bit as informed as rolling a dice.

Except that is his own decision.

> Why bother?

Because a kid is a separate person, not an extension of your personality.

I don't know if your comment is a troll or if you're simply dim. I assume troll. Still, I'll bite:

The relationship between a parent and child is not a democratic one. As a parent you have a responsibility to make choices for your child until they can make them for themselves. I do not agree with letting kids decide which developmental activities they will or will not partake in or how they will do so. Is that clear enough for you, sunshine?

Surely the kid can choose an instrument on the basis of the one that they like the sound of or even what seems 'cool'. They will probably have more motivation to study something that they have chosen themselves even if it is for fairly superficial reasons.

It's not like there is an objective way to choose a "better" instrument anyway since half of the fun is playing with others who use different instruments.

So why not, as a parent, present a set of options that seem reasonable to you and have them choose amongst those? i.e. you can play one of e.g. {piano, violin, clarinet}. When the child is better informed, they can choose for themselves. Until that point comes though, asking children to make arbitrary choices, particularly ones that affect their development, seems silly to me.

Surely the choice is basically arbitrary anyway?

Why would it affect their development if they picked say a trumpet, guitar or flute instead? They can always pick up a different instrument later.

It would be like if a kid wanted to learn python and you said "no! you must learn Java instead".

Python and Java are equivalent in the sense that both a Turing Complete. Is there a similar equivalence between all musical instruments which makes choosing one over another a purely arbitrary decision? I don't know but I suspect not. A pair of bongos seems to have much less to offer as an instructional vehicle for learning about music than, say, a piano.

EDIT: Setting aside the above argument for a second, there are practical considerations too that make the choice of musical instrument a non-arbitrary decision. For example: the cost of the instrument, its portability (important if the band decides to tour) and of course the availability of instruction.

Certain parents also lack a sufficient perspective to understand what kinds of activities are good for their kids' well-being and happiness.

I agree. No child should ever be allowed to be anything less than the best student in their class.

Your irony is wasted on me. IMO parents should actively encourage their child to be the best student in the class. So many talented kids amount to nothing because they're allowed to coast during their formative years. Encouraging them to be the best, teaches ambition and excellence. It doesn't matter if they don't end up being Engineers or Surgeons or what-have-you. Regardless of the life goals they purse, to succeed, they need to be always hungry for better.

I'm afraid you are unfamiliar with a key element of "tiger mothers", or in fact many asian parents at all. From what I know of my friends' families growing up, asian parents did not encourage. They required.

An encouraging hand can be a forceful hand. It's lazy to tell little Bobby that he should do math and that math is important. Sometimes you have to sit his spoiled little ass down and make him get on with it.

I did not grow up with Asian parents. I do however come from a Eastern European background. There were times when my parents forced me, kicking and screaming, into certain social and academic pursuits. They encouraged me to excel, whether I wanted to or not. I am a better human for it and I am thankful for their guidance.

I see, this is why I misunderstood your comment. You include "to force someone to do" as among the definitions of "encourage", I normally do not.

In the case of parenting, certainly. You cannot reason with a child as with an adult. Thus you make them do certain things because you know better.

Personal anecdote: when I was young I resented my parents for making me do all this "pointless crap". I even told my dad I hated him. He very calmly told me back "That's OK. You can hate me for this now. You will not hate me however when you're 22". He was right.

I don't object to that. I just don't normally refer to making people do things as "encouraging" them, so I didn't read your initial post(s) the same way as you do.

I speak as somebody who had parents who pretty much neglected my academic pursuits and I emphatically disagree that a 'forceful hand' is in any way necessary for success.

I went to university and didn't do anything there, aside from sample the local herbalists' produce. I didn't do much of anything in school either. During all of that time, due to the fact that my schedule was my own (sans school-time), I managed to teach myself software development. Not because it was a good career move, or because I wanted to impress anyone but because it was interesting.

Fast forward a decade and I now earn more than pretty much all of the people I grew up with, lead software projects and have leverage and freedom up to my ears.

You might want to read about Stockholm Syndrome.

You seem to have fallen into undertaking some productive activities by sheer dumb luck. Congratulations. You are in a minority. I knew lots of pot-heads at school. All of them had lasseiz-faire parents and none of them amounted to much.

EDIT: To clarify, I do not understand your argument at all. In my experience, excellence and ambition are traits that need to be cultivated. Sure, you can find them in-the-wild, but this is not a reliable approach.

Dumb luck? I put a hell of a lot of effort into learning my craft. The point I'm trying to make is that you don't need a dictator standing over you to learn something.

By your own admission you were totally aimless. I understood from your post that nobody said to you "hey, this is an interesting and worthwhile thing to pursue". The fact that you were attracted to programming and not some useless activity (like mastering sports) seems to me the result of pure dumb luck.

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