Comment by dreamweapon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dreamweapon | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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