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People want to be reassured that they're doing the "right thing", that what they're doing is "correct" according to some external source of truth. It's no surpr

People want to be reassured that they're doing the "right thing", that what they're doing is "correct" according to some external source of truth. It's no surprise that there's this much counterproductive parenting advice (even "praise effort, not results" is merely slightly less bad). Anything other than "pay attention to the actual needs of the child" is probably the wrong direction to go. Like, if you try to praise effort instead of results, you're evaluating and judging things rather than searching for their needs. Seriously, though, stop reading and trying to follow parenting advice and pay attention to your goddamn child. Otherwise, you'll wind up doing the "right thing", praise effort, and fail to meet your child's actual needs until you've got a suicidal college student saying "well, it looks like I just didn't try hard enough."

lfowles 11y ago
> People want to be reassured that they're doing the "right thing", that what they're doing is "correct" according to some external source of truth I think this somewhat boils down to being able to take advantage of others experience. If you're the only person you know with a Macbook, would you feel that you are able to take advice from everyone else with Windows desktops? ( Or maybe some poor analogy about tainted kernels and bug reporting :) )
- ThrustVectoring 11y ago
  My point is that I expect to see parenting advice regardless of whether or not it actually makes anything better. Similar things happen with nutrition - administrators of schools, prisons, and other facilities want to have an excuse for why they serve the food they serve. So, professional nutritional advice is given regardless of whether or not nutritionists have any idea what they're doing. Agile is probably in the same boat with management techniques. Nobody knows what works, and nobody wants to be blamed for doing things that don't work, so there's a booming market in 'experts' that you can offload your judgment to. Compare this with something like physics, writing, math, sales, or mixed martial arts. It's much easier to tell what works and what doesn't, so there's both less room and less demand for bullshit peddlers.

lfowles 11y ago

> People want to be reassured that they're doing the "right thing", that what they're doing is "correct" according to some external source of truth I think this somewhat boils down to being able to take advantage of others experience. If you're the only person you know with a Macbook, would you feel that you are able to take advice from everyone else with Windows desktops? ( Or maybe some poor analogy about tainted kernels and bug reporting :) )

ThrustVectoring 11y ago
My point is that I expect to see parenting advice regardless of whether or not it actually makes anything better. Similar things happen with nutrition - administrators of schools, prisons, and other facilities want to have an excuse for why they serve the food they serve. So, professional nutritional advice is given regardless of whether or not nutritionists have any idea what they're doing. Agile is probably in the same boat with management techniques. Nobody knows what works, and nobody wants to be blamed for doing things that don't work, so there's a booming market in 'experts' that you can offload your judgment to. Compare this with something like physics, writing, math, sales, or mixed martial arts. It's much easier to tell what works and what doesn't, so there's both less room and less demand for bullshit peddlers.