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You're not just leaving out important context -- you're missing the main point, entirely:

This morning, as always, my son was up and dressed before the rest of the household; he likes time to play Minecraft before school starts. But he also cleaned the dirty glass on the woodstove, started the fire and brought wood into the house. Because he wants to.

The whole point is that they let him "slack off" sometimes because they've chosen to let him feel empowered to make his own decisions about how he spends his time generally. And they've seen that it pays off -- sometimes he plays minecraft, but most of the time he's on the ball, helping with chores and such. And (they say) he's doing it because he wants to, not because he's told to.

Here's a novel idea - don't let your kid play minecraft until he starts doing better in school.

Again, you're missing the main point of the article -- it's not that kid is failing school (and needs to be disciplined back into shape); it's that the school is failing the kid.

That's not how life always works, though. Sometimes you have to do things you don't want to do. Sometimes you don't get to decide how you spend your time.

It's great to raise a child who does some valuable things because they chose to, but it's also important to raise a child who understands duty, responsibility and obligation: because those are also part of life.

>That's not how life always works, though.

Why? What makes life that? Nature? A social construct?

I'm willing to bet is the second thing, and I don't believe questioning such things is bad.

No, it's just... life.

If I did only the things I wanted to do in any given moment, I pretty well guarantee you our lawn would never be mowed, the dishes would go undone, dinner would frequently not get made, etc.

Not to be too snarky, but... that you're questioning that makes me wonder if you've ever actually had to run your own household, or work in a real-life job, or generally operate as an adult, which is practically defined as finding that balance between doing what you want and doing what is needed.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong to do or not what you want. I'm saying that questioning such thing is okay. There's no physics or natural law that dictates it has to be this way. This is the life we have built. Nothing to do with my personal experience running a household, work or ability to operate as an adult. But questioning stuff is just part of critical thinking.

> There's no physics or natural law that dictates it has to be this way.

Yes there is: At a very basic level, humans need to eat food to live. If nobody wanted to do the work necessary to procure food, everyone would starve.

Maybe at some point in the near-ish future we will have automated away all unpleasant-but-necessary tasks, but that day is not today, and when it does arrive, it will be a new development for our species.

Until then, being a responsible adult will involve at least some modicum of doing-things-that-one-doesn't-want-to-do and it makes sense to prepare children for that eventuality.

You should want to do the things you need to do because you understand the consequences of not doing them. Consider this: many unsuccessful people spend all day doing things that they have to do because someone told them so, whereas the most successful people in our society have the means to do anything or nothing at all but choose to work at the highest levels as CEOs and Congressmen. Teaching children how to make good decisions on their own is much more valuable than teaching them how to sit still because someone said so.

There might be more healthier ways of teaching those values other than by forcing kids into a Pen and treating them as all the same, though. Im not saying I know what they are.

I feel like adults do a great disservice to kids in general by not treating them as intelligent individuals.

It's also important to raise a child who understands duty, responsibility and obligation: because those are also part of life.

Right -- but there are ways the child can attain that understanding without its parents perpetually lording over them, deciding how they spend every minute of the day.

That, my friend, is a strawman.

I didn't see anyone suggest that helicopter parenting is the "correct" alternative.

Only that it is a mistake to raise a child who is taught that they only need do what they want, and not sometimes what is necessary.

The advice offered by the poster I had initially responded to -- "don't let your kid play minecraft until he starts doing better in school" -- seems to embody the very essence of helicopter parenting.

It always bugs me when I see people stuck in that mindset. I was for all of my teens and early 20's. I feel like it's true in some sense but I ended up using it as an excuse to continue down a less desirable but easier path e.g. keeping a miserable job because I needed money and finding a better one was hard. Luckily, I had good friends to help snap me out of it.

Funny, I never do things I don't want to do. I do, in fact decide how to spend my time. I've never found any value in letting other people make these decisions for me. There are trade-offs for sure - I often choose to do things that I find less pleasant, but only with the expectation of a future payoff, or else because I'm happily making a sacrifice for the happiness of someone I care about. But in every case, I do choose what I do.

That argument always comes up. And I agree, maybe it is a worthwhile lesson to learn to sometimes do things you don't want to. I'd say it would be worth dedicating maybe 3 months to it. Not 12 years (the length of school in my country).

Responsibility and obligation might be better learned with something worthwhile to be responsible for. Pleasing teachers isn't.

> so your son is slacking off in school, but you're still giving him everything he wants?

I don't see how you get from playing Minecraft in the morning to her letting her son do "everything he wants". You're assuming that playing Minecraft is frivolous or negative or that shouldn't be allowed in the morning, much less encouraged. And you have little information on what other activities she has encouraged, permitted, or forbidden.

It's tempting to pass judgment on other people's parenting. This temptation should be resisted.

If there's ever a time it's OK to judge someone's parenting techniques, it's when they write an article like this - that's practically asking to be commented on.

And while you're right that it doesn't give a full picture, I suspect blkhp19 is right based on the entire premise of "it's not his fault" in the article.

You're right that kids need to buckle down at some point, but it doesn't help to fight their biology at the same time. Just like how high schooler's sleep rhythm is such that they want to stay up late and sleep in, yet we still make them get to school by 7:40am. http://www.aap.org/en-us/about-the-aap/aap-press-room/Pages/...

I'd hope that AAP would have this right, but since they don't cite any studies - my instinct would be to assume that teenagers don't have a specific problem getting to sleep earlier other than social/cultural. It's generally understood for adults that you can train yourself to fit a different schedule (to become a "night person" or a "morning person"), what is it that makes this different for teenagers? Certainly when I was a teenager my failings to be alert in the morning were based on not going to bed early enough because of things I wanted to do and lack of self-discipline, not because of biological reasons.

And therefore, if school times were moved back would teenagers not just stay up later and still not sleep enough?

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21829130.100-why-teena...

Thanks - though that still doesn't offer any details on why they believe there is a biological cause, not just a social cause.

> Adolescents are increasingly using stimulants to compensate for sleep loss, and caffeinated and/or sugary drinks are the usual choice. The half-life of caffeine is 5 to 9 hours. So a caffeinated drink late in the day delays sleep at night. Tiredness also increases the likelihood of taking up smoking.

> Collectively, a day of caffeine and nicotine consumption, the biological tendency for delayed sleep and the increased alertness promoted by computer or cellphone use generates what Carskadon calls a "perfect storm" for delayed sleep in teenagers.

Having looked at the full paper about school start times from AAP [1] it cites three papers on this subject [2] [3] [4], I'll come back with another comment if I manage to dive deeper into the rabbit hole on those...

(I'm not saying there isn't a biological cause, just that since my gut instinct is that it would be caused by cultural reasons I'm interested to see the reasoning behind thinking there are biological reasons too.)

[1] http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/content/early/2014/08/...

[2] Frey S, Balu S, Greusing S, Rothen N, Cajochen C. Consequences of the timing of menarche on female adolescent sleep phase preference. PLoS ONE. 2009;4(4):e5217

[3] Carskadon MA, Acebo C, Seifer R. Extended nights, sleep loss, and recovery sleep in adolescents. Arch Ital Biol. 2001;139(3):301–312

[4] Roenneberg T, Kuehnle T, Pramstaller PP, et al. A marker for the end of adolescence. Curr Biol. 2004;14(24):R1038–R1039

> I don't understand this parent. "I let my son play minecraft in the morning before school" - so your son is slacking off in school, but you're still giving him everything he wants? He's your son. He needs to be shown that sometimes, you have to suck it up and work, even when you don't want to. That's a tough lesson to teach an 8 year old, but it's something that parents should enforce early. Eventually, their kid will see that hard work and self control will pay off. Here's a novel idea - don't let your kid play minecraft until he starts doing better in school.

That's a pretty narrow view of how and why their son is doing poorly at school. How do you know he's "slacking off"?

As an adult, one of the most valuable lessons I've learned is to take time for myself. I've watched quite a few of my peers go full tilt into the startup industry and burn out, switching careers, and in one case, having a full mental breakdown. Depression, anxiety, and other mental problems, not to mention physical ailments, are well-documented within the working class. Meanwhile, I work 8 hours a day, and if that doesn't get my work done by the deadline, I miss the deadline. I take all my PTO, and some unpaid time off also. Maybe I'm "slacking off", but I'm a senior developer in charge of people making 6 figures at a profitable company, so I think I'm doing okay.

When I was in high school I went to school 7:30AM to 3:00PM, plus a few hours of homework (AP classes are a bitch). On average I'd say I was working 10 or 11 hours/day. I did very well in school, but I also had very little social life and came out of high school overweight and socially maladapted--problems which only fixed themselves when I had a breakdown in college and sought mental help. I'm actually glad I had my breakdown earlier than some of my peers because that's where I learned to set boundaries on my work/life balance. But I wish I had parents more like the OP, who were sympathetic to the fact that schools are really putting a huge amount of pressure on kids, and teach their kids to take some time to themselves.

So nothing in the article says her son is doing academically poorly in school. Simply that he has been labeled with the classic "behavioral problem" catch all and the author believes it is because of her son's lack of physical movement.

>If it's rainy or cold out, kids should be able to go to their school's gym for an extra PE class Nothing wrong with a bit of cold or wet. It's character building :) Send em outside

As a kid, I would have loved that! But can't you just picture the musty smell the classroom would have with 20 soaking wet kids? :p

I agree with what you say. Kids should learn to follow rules even when they don't like them. Society cannot function if everybody does only the things they like. Schools should focus on building solid character in kids and teaching them responsibility and hard-work not coddle them and let them play all the time. Personally, I think asian kids achieve more things because their culture enforces discipline, hard-work and obedience from a young age.

>> I think asian kids achieve more things because their culture enforces discipline, hard-work and obedience from a young age.

What do they achieve more of? I keep hearing how the US needs to change education to be more like other countries so they can compete on tests, but why change when you're winning on innovation? Or do we attribute that to something else?

I am just going to give you one example. At least 11 out of the last 15 spelling bee champions are of asian descent[1]. I don't know about changing the education system. I actually don't agree with the author of the original article but to answer your question, the innovation that US is so proud of has major contribution from Aisans also and is not something you can attribute entirely to Americans. The reason there is so much innovation could also be due to the fact that US is a developed county with abundant resources and most asian countries are not. When you don't have to worry about pollution, population, food etc, the mind gets freed up to think about innovation and creativity.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Scripps_National_Spelli...

I used to do the spelling bee thing. I did ok, would generally make it from my school -> local -> regional, but not beyond that. That's because I was good at spelling from all my reading, but I didn't study for the bee at all.

Now, the kids who did really well at the spelling bee, they didn't have time to read. Their moms were making them spend 3 hours a night with the little spelling bee booklet, learning how to spell every possible word that could be asked, and forcing themselves into the rhythm: "'Rote'. May I have the language of origin? 'Rote'. Can you use the word in a sentence? 'Rote'. May I have the definition? 'Rote'. R-O-T-E". (Hilariously, I once watched a girl do the whole routine over the word "talons", even getting "the eagle had sharp talons" as the sentence, then spelling T-A-L-E-N-T-S. Her mom made a fuss over microphone placement and got her back into the round)

Is this a worthwhile thing to do? What useful things does this method teach? Spelling is extremely good, but like I said I'm pretty good at spelling because I read a lot. Maybe I could have been the Spelling Bee Champion if instead of reading, I'd memorized the entire word list. Then I would be extremely good at spelling "prestidigitation", that's for sure.

Spelling bee was just an example of what people achieve with persistent effort. I understand the use of the said skill is debatable. The key is that most asian families enforce rules on kids and the kids do well in their life. Asian families set higher expectations and do not pander to their kid's childish desire to play minecraft or chop wood.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08...

They achieve more of all the things that schools try to teach. Math, Science, Extra-Curricullars etc. In general, skills. Skills that can only be learned when you're disciplined enough to do the work that is assigned, which I believe is what the parent is referring to.

I think you've misunderstood what the author is saying. She's saying that the rules aren't helpful, even if her son is largely following them.

If we take your argument to the extreme we could make rules so stifling that NO child would be able to follow them and then it would obviously be the system that's the problem.

Here is a case where the rules are stifling enough that SOME children are having problems continually following them.

Who is to say what level of rules and restrictions is correct? Should they be broken only 0.01% of the time, or 5% of the time, or 50% of the time, or what? What is the standard that children should be held to?

I was actually in agreement with blkhp19 and not the author. If most children are able to follow the rules and still function well, then the system does not need adjustment. If a small subset of kids are having problem following the rules, then the kids need to be taught about how life is not always about the, and what they want OR create a system where they don't have to follow the rules. Making a blanket statement that the system is failing boys only based on the fact that her son does not like conforming to the system is over simplification and generalization.

I'm aware that you disagree with the author. What I'm saying is that it's not just this lady's child that's having trouble, there are many kids who don't like being cooped up in a classroom for hours a day.

There is a lot of sentiment that schools are failing kids.

https://www.google.com/search?q=schools+are+failing+boys

https://www.google.com/search?q=schools+are+failing+girls

https://www.google.com/search?q=schools+are+failing+children

Many modern parents tend to coddle their kids. With the Internet and social media, we get to hear more of their complaints. The situation is exactly how it was from years, the only difference is we hear more about it now. There is always negative sentiment about everything, that does not mean it is wrong. A lot of kids don't like milk and vegetables, but does that mean we should stop feeding them? If a small number of children have nut-allergy, does that mean we stop making food that contains nuts for everyone else? Schools have worked for ages. They may be failing some boys but most certainly not all boys.

> Kids should learn to follow rules even when they don't like them.

Except when you're forced to go through 16+ years of conforming and not being able to say "no" without being labeled a problem-child. That's a long time to be in the creative and free-thinking suppression chamber, and by my estimate most minds don't ever truly recover.

> Personally, I think asian kids achieve more things...

Personally, I think asian kids are brilliant when it comes to rote-memorization and standardized testing but they totally lack in the creativity department. Just look at all of the articles, studies, etc that show that the East has a severe lack of creativity. As an example: [1]. Ill take free-thinkers over number crunchers any day.

[1] http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/13905.html

I agree 100% with blkhp19