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> One cause of [children and teenagers'] fragility is a weak parent-child relationship. I don't buy that the relationship between parents and children has chan

by ksenzee 11y ago

> One cause of [children and teenagers'] fragility is a weak parent-child relationship. I don't buy that the relationship between parents and children has changed all that much in the last 25 years. I certainly don't believe parents love their children less, as the author is implying ("they cannot get unconditional love and acceptance from their peers or from a report card"). Plenty of Gen-Xers were latchkey kids and we don't seem to have suffered for it. The explanation I personally favor is that children and teenagers aren't allowed to do anything the slightest bit dangerous anymore -- even the playgrounds are padded -- so they can't calibrate their sense of what really is dangerous, and therefore everything feels dangerous.

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
> I don't buy that the relationship between parents and children has changed all that much in the last 25 years. Certainly social workers in some countries (including my own) think otherwise. When we got our child there were heaps of "how to bond with children" guides given to us. > The explanation I personally favor is that children and teenagers aren't allowed to do anything the slightest bit dangerous anymore -- even the playgrounds are padded -- so they can't calibrate their sense of what really is dangerous, and therefore everything feels dangerous. Even if playgrounds are padded, children have plenty of opportunity to learn the cause of their actions with their parents in a safer environment. I don't see how children would develop any less just because they don't end up being disabled due to playing in dangerous environments.
- jacquesm 11y ago
  > I don't see how children would develop any less just because they don't end up being disabled due to playing in dangerous environments. Speaking from my own experience, I really wonder how I would have developed the way I did without being allowed to handle (very dangerous) tools from an early age, roamed all over Amsterdam from the ripe old age of 6, toyed with chemistry, explosives, electronics, household power and petrol engines all of which could have easily killed me. I'm probably more careful rather than less careful because of this and none of my friends or me ended up disabled. Long before we got to the stage where we could have become disabled we learned how to respect the stuff we played with. Trying to imagine the alternative universe where all my tools had been plastic, safe imitations, where I was only allowed to work with batteries, being limited to the local playground (supervised, of course) and chemistry would be limited to playing around with salt & vinegar. I'm treating my own children in much the same way, I trust them to use their heads when it matters and I show them the consequences of failing to do so in as controlled (but very real) a way as possible. Of course other parents think I'm nuts but that doesn't overly bother me.
  - the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
    > Speaking from my own experience, I really wonder how I would have developed the way I did without being allowed to handle (very dangerous) tools from an early age, roamed all over Amsterdam from the ripe old age of 6, toyed with chemistry, explosives, electronics, household power and petrol engines all of which could have easily killed me. Neither, but that does not mean that your parents did not bond with you. Here is what happened in my generation: the time I spend with my parents and family was significantly bigger than most children today. For me personally the reason for that was that my parent took me to their office and I could spend time there. For many others in my generation it was because one of the parents stayed at home. Here is what's happening right now: children enter Kindergarten at 6 months of age or when they turn one. The only person that can tell them what to handle or not is most of the time a randomly assigned caretaker. Note that when people talk about bonding they do not talk about a 6 year old child, they talk about a newborn to toddler of less than two years of age. You're from the Netherlands where there is a proper maternity leave. Not everybody is in that fortunate situation and I assume the article is written with this in mind. //EDIT: also to leave another note on older children: I'm not sure how it was for you in the Netherlands, but parents and teachers used to be proper authorities to me. This is something that is becoming less and less the case. There are brats around our flat that would not even listen to police if it came to it.
    - jacquesm 11y ago
      > Neither, but that does not mean that your parents did not bond with you. You have no clue.
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Certainly social workers in some countries (including my own) think otherwise. When we got our child there were heaps of "how to bond with children" guides given to us. Giving such things to everybody is an easy way to make sure that people who will benefit from them will get them.
webkike 11y ago
Teenagers go out of their way to do dangerous things. This is mostly anecdotal; I've been a teenager until pretty recently. But one thing I simply don't understand is the notion that safer playgrounds leads to a poorly calibrated sense of danger. What real life dangers truly appear in the playground? I haven't recently gotten a nosebleed from being hit on the nose with a rubber ball. What has mirrored the real world is all the diseases I've gotten.
setpatchaddress 11y ago
But what explanation is required? I find the entire article disturbing, in the sense that they're describing the behavior of a subset of kids of every generation that ever lived. If anything, adults now have the tools to witness how their children behave -- they can now monitor the child's Gmail and Facebook accounts, and read chat logs in some cases. Other than improved monitoring, there's really nothing new being described here. Just pop psych parenting du jour.

by ksenzee 11y ago

the_mitsuhiko 11y ago

> I don't buy that the relationship between parents and children has changed all that much in the last 25 years. Certainly social workers in some countries (including my own) think otherwise. When we got our child there were heaps of "how to bond with children" guides given to us. > The explanation I personally favor is that children and teenagers aren't allowed to do anything the slightest bit dangerous anymore -- even the playgrounds are padded -- so they can't calibrate their sense of what really is dangerous, and therefore everything feels dangerous. Even if playgrounds are padded, children have plenty of opportunity to learn the cause of their actions with their parents in a safer environment. I don't see how children would develop any less just because they don't end up being disabled due to playing in dangerous environments.

jacquesm 11y ago
> I don't see how children would develop any less just because they don't end up being disabled due to playing in dangerous environments. Speaking from my own experience, I really wonder how I would have developed the way I did without being allowed to handle (very dangerous) tools from an early age, roamed all over Amsterdam from the ripe old age of 6, toyed with chemistry, explosives, electronics, household power and petrol engines all of which could have easily killed me. I'm probably more careful rather than less careful because of this and none of my friends or me ended up disabled. Long before we got to the stage where we could have become disabled we learned how to respect the stuff we played with. Trying to imagine the alternative universe where all my tools had been plastic, safe imitations, where I was only allowed to work with batteries, being limited to the local playground (supervised, of course) and chemistry would be limited to playing around with salt & vinegar. I'm treating my own children in much the same way, I trust them to use their heads when it matters and I show them the consequences of failing to do so in as controlled (but very real) a way as possible. Of course other parents think I'm nuts but that doesn't overly bother me.
- the_mitsuhiko 11y ago
  > Speaking from my own experience, I really wonder how I would have developed the way I did without being allowed to handle (very dangerous) tools from an early age, roamed all over Amsterdam from the ripe old age of 6, toyed with chemistry, explosives, electronics, household power and petrol engines all of which could have easily killed me. Neither, but that does not mean that your parents did not bond with you. Here is what happened in my generation: the time I spend with my parents and family was significantly bigger than most children today. For me personally the reason for that was that my parent took me to their office and I could spend time there. For many others in my generation it was because one of the parents stayed at home. Here is what's happening right now: children enter Kindergarten at 6 months of age or when they turn one. The only person that can tell them what to handle or not is most of the time a randomly assigned caretaker. Note that when people talk about bonding they do not talk about a 6 year old child, they talk about a newborn to toddler of less than two years of age. You're from the Netherlands where there is a proper maternity leave. Not everybody is in that fortunate situation and I assume the article is written with this in mind. //EDIT: also to leave another note on older children: I'm not sure how it was for you in the Netherlands, but parents and teachers used to be proper authorities to me. This is something that is becoming less and less the case. There are brats around our flat that would not even listen to police if it came to it.
  - jacquesm 11y ago
    > Neither, but that does not mean that your parents did not bond with you. You have no clue.
maxerickson 11y ago
Certainly social workers in some countries (including my own) think otherwise. When we got our child there were heaps of "how to bond with children" guides given to us. Giving such things to everybody is an easy way to make sure that people who will benefit from them will get them.

webkike 11y ago

Teenagers go out of their way to do dangerous things. This is mostly anecdotal; I've been a teenager until pretty recently. But one thing I simply don't understand is the notion that safer playgrounds leads to a poorly calibrated sense of danger. What real life dangers truly appear in the playground? I haven't recently gotten a nosebleed from being hit on the nose with a rubber ball. What has mirrored the real world is all the diseases I've gotten.

setpatchaddress 11y ago

But what explanation is required? I find the entire article disturbing, in the sense that they're describing the behavior of a subset of kids of every generation that ever lived. If anything, adults now have the tools to witness how their children behave -- they can now monitor the child's Gmail and Facebook accounts, and read chat logs in some cases. Other than improved monitoring, there's really nothing new being described here. Just pop psych parenting du jour.