14 ms·

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of complian

by marcell 10y ago

Quoting the article: > "Sarah, put on the green coat or the red sweater. We're going to go out, okay?" Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. I've gotten this exact advice from so many articles and pop psych pieces. Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier, but it never works for me. My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. I suspect much of this advice depends on your child's temperament. Tips that work for one family will not work for another, and it will even vary between kids in the same family. For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side.

andrewfromx 10y ago
haha exactly. I love when really smart people write articles about dealing with children and then you discover they are non-parents themselves. Or, they are work-a-aholics and never interact with their own kids 24/7 like full time parents do.
- WWLink 10y ago
  I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.
  - andrewfromx 10y ago
    sure, musk has 5 kids! how much time does he get with them vs. work I wonder.
    - coldtea 10y ago
      When you have that kind of money you have 10 babysitters, nannies, assistants, cooks, cleaners, drivers etc. And you can get a day off almost whenever you want too.
      - maxxxxx 10y ago
        I love it when they show on TV how brave some superstar is who manages to raise children while having a busy career. They never show the nannies, cooks and cleaning personnel.
        seanp2k2 10y ago
        Then we try to sell that story to single moms with low-paying jobs, and tell them to suck it up when they're breaking down due to the stress and unattainability of it.
        gedy 10y ago
        And or get yelled at if you suggest that intentionally walking into single parenthood without excellent circumstances is not a great idea.
        lintiness 10y ago
        how about when said brave superstar LEANS IN and delivers a lecture to the planet via book (sheryl sandberg)?
      - andrewfromx 10y ago
        yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! You can't have it both ways. I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all.
        coldtea 10y ago
        >yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! Many rich people do that all the time. If he doesn't think his kids is a "fun project" too, then that's his choice, not something born out of necessity. >You can't have it both ways. You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. It's the poor people who work 2 shifts and barely have the money to provide for their family that can't have both time and money at the same time. >I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all. First of all, nobody mandates that you SHOULD have it all. You can make your own balance and opt to sacrifice maximum work success. Musk is not a slave. If he is a "slave to work success" that's his personal choice. There are rich people that have excellent in-person, relationships with their kids, and can shun work and meetings for their personal time, whether with kids, spouse, other interests, etc. Gates, for one, stepped down as CEO at 45 and went part-time with MS stuff at 50.
  - moron4hire 10y ago
    Turns out most of our concept of being "busy" or "a workaholic" is an illusion. If you sit down and track how you use your time, you'll probably find you don't work anywhere near as much as you think and you use a lot of spare time very inefficiently. I have an infant. I spend a lot of time with him. During the week I probably take care of him more than my wife does, because she goes to work very early. I also work in a VR startup, scrambling to get projects done. Somehow, I still find time to cook dinner with my wife, watch the latest episode of whatever one TV show we are following, get a few house chores done, and waste time on HN and Twitter. The only times it feels like I'm too busy to get everything done is when I'm wasting too much time on HN and Twitter.
    - taneq 10y ago
      It sounds like you are, in fact, not very busy (except with family stuff). Which is a good thing!
      - moron4hire 10y ago
        I'm the engineering lead for all of our VR projects (both software and hardware), I organize two different meetups, one bi-weekly, the other monthly. What I don't do is I don't watch very much television and I don't hang out in bars anymore. I'm married so I don't have to chase girls. I don't play video games anymore (hell, I don't even like non-VR games anymore, but we don't have room in our apartment for a Vive, which is the only VR system I would bother with for personal use). I don't go to the gym every day (only days I take the baby to swim class). I don't have any illusions that I'll be a rock-star, so I'm not in any bands. Every person I know who thinks they are busy are actually just split and confused on their purpose in life. I have a friend who has a boat and a giant home theater system and he has to stay at work for so much overtime to cover the cost of it all he never gets to enjoy either. If he'd admit that he liked watching TV more than he liked fishing, or vice versa, he'd be a lot happier and actually do more. But he doesn't actually do anything extra in that time at work, because overtime is a fallacy and actually anti-productive. So he'd even be getting more done at work if he wasn't... at work all the time! When you want to do a certain something, you necessarily have to choose to give up doing other things. I want to build a company and a happy family. You are right, I'm "not very busy". Because being busy is an illusion. It doesn't matter to how much you get done if your TODO list is 10 items long or 100 items long if you can only get through 9 items in a week (and you will definitely find enough items to replace those 9 in that week). Those 90 extra items don't get done whether or not they are on your list. But if they are on your list, you convince yourself you're "busy". If anything, the anxiety of not being able to make even a 10% dent in a gigantic pile of tasks might even hurt your productivity.
- analog31 10y ago
  Or they are parents, but they're not me. I've got two kids, both teenagers now. In my view it's not just that kids are different, but that parents are different too. My impression is that most parenting advice assumes that the parents themselves have unlimited self discipline, organization, and emotional stamina.
  - Afton 10y ago
    and unlimited time. So much advice of the form: "Really sit down with the child during a tantrum. Listen to their concerns, and make sure they feel heard. Only then engage with them in problem solving.". Uh. Sure. I'll just do that. I mean, dinner is going to burn, we'll be late for swimming, and I was on my way to wipe my other child's butt before helping my _other_ other child with their homework. I can only assume that the people constructing the advice have a nanny and/or a housekeeper.
    - icc97 10y ago
      Yeah - this is often a problem for me. You've got a boundary of getting to work on time. Which means getting kiddo to school on time. You child doesn't want to eat breakfast, but you know that your child will be more difficult for the teacher at school if they haven't eaten. So the simple "just take them without food, 'they won't starve'" doesn't work because you know this is likely to cause problems in the day. You want the best solution. So all the child has to delay and play and it's fun for them to do this. Repeat this process every day for 18 years.
    - sidlls 10y ago
      We have both a nanny and housekeeper (not live-in, part-time), and I would never think to construct this ludicrous advice. It's hard enough even with that help. Kids have their own minds and personalities and methods of coping with a vast world they just don't understand and can be overwhelming. One-size-fits-all suggestions such as "never punish" just trivialize how complicated little human beings really are.
    - analog31 10y ago
      I became a better manager after having kids. Not because I'm managing people like they're kids, but just because of dealing with those kinds of impossibly, comically insane situations.
gohrt 10y ago
If some tips work and some tips don't, then nurture matters, but it is correlated to nature. If nurture didn't matter, tips would be totally irrelevant.
maxxxxx 10y ago
That's the problem with one-size-fits-all methods. Kids are just different and what worked for one child doesn't necessarily work for another child. Even if you do exactly the same thing. My girlfriend used to train dogs for a living. She always said "it's the owner's fault, not the dog's". Now we have a Chihuahua who won't listen, doesn't respond to rewards, doesn't respond to punishment. She just does her own thing. My girlfriend is much more humble now. I wish a lot of these child psychologists would have to deal with a difficult child day in and day out, not just once a week. Maybe they would also lose some of the confidence in their advice.
- tw04 10y ago
  I'm not sure why that would humble her. If she trained dogs, then she already knew 99% of the dogs out there with behavioral issues are a direct result of the owner. There are VERY rare circumstances where it's just a genetic defect (for lack of better term) in the dog, and it just has insurmountable issues. After fostering/owning roughly 75 dogs in my life, I can say 9 times out of 10 that consistency and discipline are lacking in households that have a "problem dog". Ironically enough, the exact same consistency and discipline are pretty vital for a child as well. They need a little structure in their lives to feel secure. (No, I'm not talking helicopter parenting or scheduling every second of your child's day).
  - jackmott 10y ago
    9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100?
    - geon 10y ago
      99 % dogs, 9/10 children.
      - eanzenberg 10y ago
        9/10 dermatologists
  - maxxxxx 10y ago
JonoBB 10y ago
There was a TV programme in the UK called The 3 Day Nanny, about a super nanny who would come in and sort out problem children and parents in 3 days. It ran for a few seasons. Fast forward till she had her own child, and I saw an interview with her. She was completely shattered. Like a wreck. She had her own difficult child, and coupled with little available help from others, she couldn't cope. She looked and sounded defeated and expressed that she felt guilty that, of all people, she was not coping. There is a reason some parents "get it right" and, I'm sorry to say, but thats just as likely down to the kid.
- taneq 10y ago
  Exactly this. People compare stories about what they did and try to figure out what was right or wrong, but in the end, so often it's just a matter of what the kid in question is like. Something very similar happens in business, IMO. Managers talk about different styles or techniques but in the end, the success of their team is as much about the team members' skills and dynamics as it is about the manager.
- pavel_lishin 10y ago
  I think it's also different for her because it's different when it's not your kid. Enforcing rules and boundaries is really easy on Monday when you're not going to be there on Thursday.
  - isolli 10y ago
    It's also easier to enforce rules on kids that you don't have a deep, visceral attachment to.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- anonbanker 10y ago
  Is there a link for this? I would love to satiate my need for schadenfreude.
  - 10y ago
userbinator 10y ago
Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. This sounds astoundingly similar to what software developers are doing when they remove features and customisability and then retort "but you can still choose between X and Y"l nevermind the fact that X and Y are still a horrible substitute for the A-to-Z that they replaced --- and more unsettlingly, it seems like it does work on much of the user population.
cheald 10y ago
> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side. Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential. Incentives and punishments that work with one don't work with the others; we have to really become students of our children to understand what they do and don't respond to, and to parent them accordingly. If my sample size of 3 is any indication, trying to fit children through a one-size-fits-all mold is going to fail miserably.
- kbenson 10y ago
  Well, there's also the fact that unless you are homeschooling and preventing your children from experiencing human and media contact, your nurture input is only part of a whole. I learned a lot of what I did and did not want to be like from my parents growing up, but I also learned a lot from my siblings[1] and my friends, and my school experiences. That is, you may provide the same ingredients, but ultimately the kid's the baker, and you're not even really in the kitchen to see what goes on. Who knows what makes it into the final product? 1: Aside from the normal older brother semi-worship for a while, I also witnessed what sounded like him coughing up a lung every morning for a winter or two with chronic bronchitis from smoking. Peer pressure to smoke (and there was quite a bit, most my friends did) isn't quite the hurdle you might think it to be when you have that in mind.
  - bronson 10y ago
    Except the differences start showing up long before school age.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      Well sure. Notice I said homeschooling and preventing most contact (which actually makes homeschooling redundant). Kids likely won't turn out the same even with the exact same environmental inputs, but I'm just pointing out that we often vastly over estimate our ability to control those environmental inputs in the first place, so the point is somewhat moot.
nkozyra 10y ago
> My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. Because children of that age (and younger) have two traits that will always trump logic: 1. Defiance (better described as a need to understand independence) and 2. A lack of long-term thinking When a child - who wishes to experience control - wants a cookie, a choice between a banana and an apple is untenable. Be wary of interpretations that give you broad-reaching advice on how to essentially manipulate children. This - child psychology and help - is a huge industry; interpreting studies to fit a narrative is simple and rarely meets argument.
- WalterSear 10y ago
  More than one four year old of my acquaintance know a bullshit false dichotomy when they see one.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  What's more likely--that you understand children better than people who spend their entire lives working on that, or that you have misunderstood the advice the article gave? The point of the article is not that offering a binary choice is a panacea. The point is that you have to model the behavior you want, and reinforce it with praise. Just saying "no cookie" does not give the kid a positive action they can take. Offering a choice of what they can have gives them something to do. And the few times they do it, you have to be ready to make a big deal about how great that was. Of course a kid who wants a cookie is going to be diappointed if you offer a banana or an apple. No one can change that. What you can train the kid to do is better manage disappointment. As they learn to do that--through positive reinforcement--the drama goes down. That's what the article is about.
  - nkozyra 10y ago
    Your baseless presumption aside, my response was more general than related specifically to this article.
yummybear 10y ago
My personal experience from two young children is that it works, most of the time. Obviously there are still issues - maybe the young one wants to bring some toy to school on a non-toy day - in this case getting to choose the color of sweater isn't going to help. But mostly this approach seems to work. Now we as parents still need to remember to use this approach, which we unfortunately often forget in the morning rush.
- spiderfarmer 10y ago
  My wife is a teacher, she always says poblems need to be fixed where it's easiest to fix them. So if a kid brings a toy to school on a non toy day, she will confiscate it (and give it back at the end of the day). She only needs to set one example for an entire year.
hubert123 10y ago
> And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important i dont understand how this isnt immediately a red flag for dystopian orwellian oppression. I guess u can do it to kids, they cant defend themselves.
marklgr 10y ago
> Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier To be frank, the article tips are pretty sound and well-accepted, including from specialists who deal with much more difficult children then you and me on a daily basis. First point, there's a tendency to see one's kids as special, be it especially gifted, or difficult, or an astonishing critical thinker for their age. It's quite understandable, since we have an infinitely deeper relationship with them than with any other kid. Secondly, it's much more difficult to deal with relationship issues when you are involved in them; that explains why you can often clearly see what's wrong in others' relationships (parent/kids or S.O.), but yours always seem more complicated by several order of magnitude. And thirdly, we can also find it quite irritating to be given some basic tips when we are experiencing hell and we feel like we are so past that kind of "pop psych". It's like, "Do you think we've not tried that already?". Of course, a few tips are no magic bullet (sorry for the cliché), and sometimes the problems are just too serious, but on the whole they just deliver, to the surprise of many parents when they see it used successfully by specialists. I'm not one of them but I know a few, and I personnally use the "give them a choice" tip and if done correctly, I have found it to work very, very well--for parenting and in life in general.
- three14 10y ago
  Sound and well-accepted are very different things - in the area of parenting, appealing to the authority of experts is really asking to be wrong. That said, I do have a bunch of kids, and in my personal limited experience, the particular advice in the article is sound, as far as it goes. If you have enough energy, there's almost always a way to defuse the situation. Real parents with a few kids and too little sleep do not always have enough energy or time to defuse the situation. Given what I see nursery school teachers do every day, I'd be pretty surprised if the experts can't get good results in a clinic, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to home.
- kabouseng 10y ago
  Please humor me, and an honest question. And please be honest. Do you have kids? How many?
  - 10y ago
vidarh 10y ago
If you allow your kid to get away with the 3rd option, then your kid now knows that your choices aren't genuine. None of these kind of methods work if you let them know that when you say there are two alternatives there really are three. And I've seen this work often enough when we've had friends of my son come over that we often see act up around their parents, but that will try that shit once with us and then follow our sons cue once they see that all they achieve is getting ignored, that I tend to think that whether this works or not is more often down to follow-through. That doesn't mean it's a one size fits all solution. You do need to adapt what kind of options you present, and how you respond if they try to push the boundaries - kids are not stupid; if you keep offering "options" when they know there are other alternatives that are on the table if they say the right things, then they'll try to challenge you for it.
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  To me a person who stubbornly presents two choices when there is in fact a reasonable third is an asshole. Maybe don't create contrived situations where a toddler can crush your logic and it becomes a battle of wills.
- jacobr 10y ago
  My oldest son quite often comes up with a third, better alternative. The fact that I consider and sometimes accept them might make some other situations harder, because obviously he often cannot understand more complex situations and then there is a conflict. Saying no to a perfectly reasonable suggestion (because it wasn't mine) might teach him to never argue, but I wouldn't want that.
andrei_says_ 10y ago
This is not a real choice but a simple manipulation aiming to provide the illusion of choice. The purpose of parenting is not to control the children but to support them in learning themselves and the world. Human beings are intelligent and wired for success. It doesn't take long before we start realizing the difference between choices that don't matter to us and ones that do. If you're looking for parenting practices that support self knowledge in a collaborative and respectful environment, I recommend "Raising Our chikdren, Raising Ourselves" by Naomi Alford. Offering fake choices does not respect the intelligence nor dignity of human beings. And, we need to acknowledge that manipulation is probably a better approach than psychological abuse (time outs) and threats to a child's physical safety (spanking).
- ryanmarsh 10y ago
  Yes. Natural consequences and contrived consequences are two very different things.
  - andrei_says_ 10y ago
    Exactly. A good example of natural consequences: You forgot your jacket. It rains. You get wet. A good example of manipulation/constructed "consequences": You didn't write your homework. You don't get to play video games. And, by the way, if you want your kid to hate a specific video game, turn it into (home)work. This is the approach schools take to killing our children's creativity and natural curiosity.
snovv_crash 10y ago
The best advice I've seen is to give them limited responsibility, and then let them deal with the limited consequences. Your job as a parent is to short term care for your children, but long term make them independent and functional in society. If you never let them wear their shorts and tshirt in the snow when they really want to, they will never respect the cold or your advice.
tux1968 10y ago
People don't acknowledge this enough, one size doesn't fit all. It bothers me most when people discuss diet and obesity. "Just don't eat so much!" is often given as slightly condescending advice. Such advice reflects a personal experience where your body isn't screaming in hunger 24 hours a day. Different people have different metabolisms too, turning food into energy to be spent, or locking it away instantly as fat -- makes a huge difference. Calories-In-Calories-Out is a rather limited view of the situation. Our internal experiences differ, it affects who we are and how we behave. We all have to be responsible and deal with our personal realities in an adult manner. But it's rather lame to assume that anyone who is challenged by things you find simple is either stupid or lacking in willpower.
- Evgeny 10y ago
  Different people have different metabolisms too, turning food into energy to be spent, or locking it away instantly as fat -- makes a huge difference This is not true - at least the "huge" part. https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-t... "Metabolic rate does vary, and technically there could be large variance. However, statistically speaking it is unlikely the variance would apply to you. The majority of the population exists in a range of 200-300kcal from each other and do not possess hugely different metabolic rates." Calories-In-Calories-Out is a rather limited view of the situation. https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss/ https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-l... "In conclusion, losing weight requires a negative energy balance, which can be obtained by eating less, as we have seen, but also by exercising more."
  - tux1968 10y ago
    It's like saying, driving a car requires a neutral energy balance, you need to put in just as much gas as you burn. While 100% true. It's not helpful information. It doesn't mention the fact that different cars burn fuel at a different rate. That some drivers can afford a higher octane fuel. And that a poorly tuned vehicle with incorrect tire pressure will require more fuel. The point is, that there are many factors that go into weight gain and loss. And while in terms of basic physics it does indeed boil down to energy balance, that ignores a great many factors that affect both ones internal demand for more energy and ones ability to make use of ingested energy rather than turning it into fat.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
snowwrestler 10y ago
There are 3 additional ideas that are important, but I didn't see you mention in your comment. 1) You praise the heck out of the child when they do accept the choice. This is hard because you have to remember to notice NON-drama, which is typically not noteworthy to people. You over-remember when things went bad and under-remember when things went fine. I do too--everyone does. (Politicians exploit the heck out of this BTW.) 2) You don't defer your whole life to arguing with the child. If it's time to go, you go, sweater or not. The key thing is that it's not punishment. It's just Life... or The Schedule. Don't act mad, just calmly firm. If the kid won't wear a sweater, they get cold. Bring the one you prefer as a backup if you want. 3) (Hardest) You model the behavior you want. Play a pick a sweater game when it's NOT time to go and there is no pressure. If they do it right or sort of right, praise the part they did right and do it again. None of this is easy. FWIW I have a young kid and would grade myself at around 50% or less on these. But it's a model to work toward.
- arkitaip 10y ago
  Re #3: i think it's a very astute observation that parenting should be much more proactive than reactive. If you play the long game and model your kids' behavior in situations when they aren't struggling or you're having a fight, you both seem to learn much easier. Heck, I would say that parenting ultimately starts when we're kids ourselves with the values and experiences we are taught. For instance, most of us don't care for kids until we're in our 30s, which makes parenting that much harder. Imagine how different it must have been historically when older kids care for the younger ones, giving everyone involved experience with parenting. On a personal level I'm fortunate to have three great nieces in various ages and try to learn what I can from them and of course parent them in myriads tiny ways (it's impossible to avoid, I've realized. You either make conscience efforts or not but you can't avoid parenting if you interact with kids).
drieddust 10y ago
> My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. Exactly my situation. My 2 year old just keep on it until she feels otherwise. Though one thing I have seen to work is to employ her into something adult like allow her to stir the liquid while making scrambled eggs :)
arghIdontwantto 10y ago
I can second this. And if I give a 3rd choice, he wants a 4th. I've tried many of the 'common' advices but they don't really seem to work that well with mine. With mine seems a bit of 'indifference' works wonders. 'We are going out now', 'no, I don't want to, scream, etc, etc', 'Ok, stay there, when you are ready to talk to me and go out, I'll start talking to you again, until then, I'll be in the kitchen/bedroom/whatever'. This usually gives him 5 minutes to think a bit, then comes back, apoligises and we go on our way. I've tried pretty much everything before this, and seems it was the only thing that works with mine.
mverwijs 10y ago
Any question ending with '..., okay' is asking for permission. I (as a parent of 2 very easy kids) always avoid those type of permission-asking questions when presenting choice. Instead I offer, not ask: "You can wear the green or the red. What do you choose?"
hysan 10y ago
Having worked in education with a wide range of kids (age, temperament, etc.), my view is that these articles are a good read. However, they are written for the masses. To get views. They distill (I hope) tons of research and case studies into a catchy, generalized piece of advice. It sounds good and is definitely worth trying, but under no means should anyone point to such an article as an end all be all solution to raising children. Your example is exactly why. Matters in life are rarely so simple as to be explained away in a single article. There's always going to be a part of the bell curve that gets left out when writing articles like this. Just something for everyone to keep in mind.
maroonblazer 10y ago
With my kid I adopted the "Parenting with Love and Logic" approach which suggests that we (parents) pick too many battles with our kids and should instead let them learn first hand the consequences of their choices. So in the case of the coat, if the child refuses to wear one then they get to experience what cold feels like. Time outs have worked very well for me too. Some behavior is simply unacceptable and ignoring it only teaches them they can repeat it. Lastly, I think there's a tendency to forget that, with kids, they're basically completely different people every few days/weeks. We've gone through a lot of phases with our son and sometimes the best solution is to simply wait it out. More often than not the behavior changes as his brain changes.
gegtik 10y ago
same - my 3yo will ALWAYS respond to false choice with "NEITHER!"
smrtinsert 10y ago
My kid has rejected false choices from almost as soon as we began offering it to her. Would you like the toy or the book for the car? (Screaming) I don't want car, I want home and show! Makes me giggle how often it fails with her. That said, I've noticed well set patterns work very well with her even if she doesn't like certain aspects of them. She even gets cranky when I forget to do a certain part of the pattern even if she hates what the event is. (Daddy you didn't close the gate!) Every kid is different, totally agree.
wlesieutre 10y ago
This trick popped up as the top post on r/lifeprotips a few days ago. The top comment was someone whose kid figured it out. "Would you like to buy me one set of nunchucks or 2 sets?" https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_motivate_people_by_giving_them_choices_even/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_mot...
mariodiana 10y ago
I've read that when you're instructing a child to do something, whether you're a parent or a teacher, you should never end the instruction with "Okay?".
- schlumpf 10y ago
  In our house the question is used to ascertain whether the child heard his parent and if so, the probability of compliance with the request/observation/dire threat to the well-being of a favored toy. At no time has it been construed by any of the parties as the parent (noun) requesting permission to parent (verb).

by marcell 10y ago

andrewfromx 10y ago

haha exactly. I love when really smart people write articles about dealing with children and then you discover they are non-parents themselves. Or, they are work-a-aholics and never interact with their own kids 24/7 like full time parents do.

WWLink 10y ago
I get the impression most of the people on this site are workaholics.
- andrewfromx 10y ago
  sure, musk has 5 kids! how much time does he get with them vs. work I wonder.
  - coldtea 10y ago
    When you have that kind of money you have 10 babysitters, nannies, assistants, cooks, cleaners, drivers etc. And you can get a day off almost whenever you want too.
    - maxxxxx 10y ago
      I love it when they show on TV how brave some superstar is who manages to raise children while having a busy career. They never show the nannies, cooks and cleaning personnel.
      - seanp2k2 10y ago
        Then we try to sell that story to single moms with low-paying jobs, and tell them to suck it up when they're breaking down due to the stress and unattainability of it.
        gedy 10y ago
        And or get yelled at if you suggest that intentionally walking into single parenthood without excellent circumstances is not a great idea.
      - lintiness 10y ago
        how about when said brave superstar LEANS IN and delivers a lecture to the planet via book (sheryl sandberg)?
    - andrewfromx 10y ago
      yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! You can't have it both ways. I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all.
      - coldtea 10y ago
        >yeah right. I'm sure musk thinks, hmmm today instead of working all day on a fun project I think I'll parent! Many rich people do that all the time. If he doesn't think his kids is a "fun project" too, then that's his choice, not something born out of necessity. >You can't have it both ways. You can, if you have "fuck you money", which Musk has 10000 times over. It's the poor people who work 2 shifts and barely have the money to provide for their family that can't have both time and money at the same time. >I'm sure musk sacrificed father/kid relationships for work success in a major way. It's not possible to have it all. First of all, nobody mandates that you SHOULD have it all. You can make your own balance and opt to sacrifice maximum work success. Musk is not a slave. If he is a "slave to work success" that's his personal choice. There are rich people that have excellent in-person, relationships with their kids, and can shun work and meetings for their personal time, whether with kids, spouse, other interests, etc. Gates, for one, stepped down as CEO at 45 and went part-time with MS stuff at 50.
- moron4hire 10y ago
  Turns out most of our concept of being "busy" or "a workaholic" is an illusion. If you sit down and track how you use your time, you'll probably find you don't work anywhere near as much as you think and you use a lot of spare time very inefficiently. I have an infant. I spend a lot of time with him. During the week I probably take care of him more than my wife does, because she goes to work very early. I also work in a VR startup, scrambling to get projects done. Somehow, I still find time to cook dinner with my wife, watch the latest episode of whatever one TV show we are following, get a few house chores done, and waste time on HN and Twitter. The only times it feels like I'm too busy to get everything done is when I'm wasting too much time on HN and Twitter.
  - taneq 10y ago
    It sounds like you are, in fact, not very busy (except with family stuff). Which is a good thing!
    - moron4hire 10y ago
      I'm the engineering lead for all of our VR projects (both software and hardware), I organize two different meetups, one bi-weekly, the other monthly. What I don't do is I don't watch very much television and I don't hang out in bars anymore. I'm married so I don't have to chase girls. I don't play video games anymore (hell, I don't even like non-VR games anymore, but we don't have room in our apartment for a Vive, which is the only VR system I would bother with for personal use). I don't go to the gym every day (only days I take the baby to swim class). I don't have any illusions that I'll be a rock-star, so I'm not in any bands. Every person I know who thinks they are busy are actually just split and confused on their purpose in life. I have a friend who has a boat and a giant home theater system and he has to stay at work for so much overtime to cover the cost of it all he never gets to enjoy either. If he'd admit that he liked watching TV more than he liked fishing, or vice versa, he'd be a lot happier and actually do more. But he doesn't actually do anything extra in that time at work, because overtime is a fallacy and actually anti-productive. So he'd even be getting more done at work if he wasn't... at work all the time! When you want to do a certain something, you necessarily have to choose to give up doing other things. I want to build a company and a happy family. You are right, I'm "not very busy". Because being busy is an illusion. It doesn't matter to how much you get done if your TODO list is 10 items long or 100 items long if you can only get through 9 items in a week (and you will definitely find enough items to replace those 9 in that week). Those 90 extra items don't get done whether or not they are on your list. But if they are on your list, you convince yourself you're "busy". If anything, the anxiety of not being able to make even a 10% dent in a gigantic pile of tasks might even hurt your productivity.
analog31 10y ago
Or they are parents, but they're not me. I've got two kids, both teenagers now. In my view it's not just that kids are different, but that parents are different too. My impression is that most parenting advice assumes that the parents themselves have unlimited self discipline, organization, and emotional stamina.
- Afton 10y ago
  and unlimited time. So much advice of the form: "Really sit down with the child during a tantrum. Listen to their concerns, and make sure they feel heard. Only then engage with them in problem solving.". Uh. Sure. I'll just do that. I mean, dinner is going to burn, we'll be late for swimming, and I was on my way to wipe my other child's butt before helping my _other_ other child with their homework. I can only assume that the people constructing the advice have a nanny and/or a housekeeper.
  - icc97 10y ago
    Yeah - this is often a problem for me. You've got a boundary of getting to work on time. Which means getting kiddo to school on time. You child doesn't want to eat breakfast, but you know that your child will be more difficult for the teacher at school if they haven't eaten. So the simple "just take them without food, 'they won't starve'" doesn't work because you know this is likely to cause problems in the day. You want the best solution. So all the child has to delay and play and it's fun for them to do this. Repeat this process every day for 18 years.
  - sidlls 10y ago
    We have both a nanny and housekeeper (not live-in, part-time), and I would never think to construct this ludicrous advice. It's hard enough even with that help. Kids have their own minds and personalities and methods of coping with a vast world they just don't understand and can be overwhelming. One-size-fits-all suggestions such as "never punish" just trivialize how complicated little human beings really are.
  - analog31 10y ago
    I became a better manager after having kids. Not because I'm managing people like they're kids, but just because of dealing with those kinds of impossibly, comically insane situations.

gohrt 10y ago

If some tips work and some tips don't, then nurture matters, but it is correlated to nature. If nurture didn't matter, tips would be totally irrelevant.

maxxxxx 10y ago

That's the problem with one-size-fits-all methods. Kids are just different and what worked for one child doesn't necessarily work for another child. Even if you do exactly the same thing. My girlfriend used to train dogs for a living. She always said "it's the owner's fault, not the dog's". Now we have a Chihuahua who won't listen, doesn't respond to rewards, doesn't respond to punishment. She just does her own thing. My girlfriend is much more humble now. I wish a lot of these child psychologists would have to deal with a difficult child day in and day out, not just once a week. Maybe they would also lose some of the confidence in their advice.

tw04 10y ago
I'm not sure why that would humble her. If she trained dogs, then she already knew 99% of the dogs out there with behavioral issues are a direct result of the owner. There are VERY rare circumstances where it's just a genetic defect (for lack of better term) in the dog, and it just has insurmountable issues. After fostering/owning roughly 75 dogs in my life, I can say 9 times out of 10 that consistency and discipline are lacking in households that have a "problem dog". Ironically enough, the exact same consistency and discipline are pretty vital for a child as well. They need a little structure in their lives to feel secure. (No, I'm not talking helicopter parenting or scheduling every second of your child's day).
- jackmott 10y ago
  9 out of 10 or 99 out of 100?
  - geon 10y ago
    99 % dogs, 9/10 children.
    - eanzenberg 10y ago
      9/10 dermatologists
- maxxxxx 10y ago

JonoBB 10y ago

There was a TV programme in the UK called The 3 Day Nanny, about a super nanny who would come in and sort out problem children and parents in 3 days. It ran for a few seasons. Fast forward till she had her own child, and I saw an interview with her. She was completely shattered. Like a wreck. She had her own difficult child, and coupled with little available help from others, she couldn't cope. She looked and sounded defeated and expressed that she felt guilty that, of all people, she was not coping. There is a reason some parents "get it right" and, I'm sorry to say, but thats just as likely down to the kid.

taneq 10y ago
Exactly this. People compare stories about what they did and try to figure out what was right or wrong, but in the end, so often it's just a matter of what the kid in question is like. Something very similar happens in business, IMO. Managers talk about different styles or techniques but in the end, the success of their team is as much about the team members' skills and dynamics as it is about the manager.
pavel_lishin 10y ago
I think it's also different for her because it's different when it's not your kid. Enforcing rules and boundaries is really easy on Monday when you're not going to be there on Thursday.
- isolli 10y ago
  It's also easier to enforce rules on kids that you don't have a deep, visceral attachment to.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
anonbanker 10y ago
Is there a link for this? I would love to satiate my need for schadenfreude.
- 10y ago

userbinator 10y ago

Choice among humans increases the likelihood of compliance. And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important. This sounds astoundingly similar to what software developers are doing when they remove features and customisability and then retort "but you can still choose between X and Y"l nevermind the fact that X and Y are still a horrible substitute for the A-to-Z that they replaced --- and more unsettlingly, it seems like it does work on much of the user population.

cheald 10y ago

> For me personally, having kids has resolved the nature vs nurture debate squarely in the "nature" side. Amen to that. I have 3 boys. We put in the same ingredients and got wildly different results with all three. I'm convinced that parenting is more about working with what comes factory installed than it is about moulding some ideal human from a formless block of potential. Incentives and punishments that work with one don't work with the others; we have to really become students of our children to understand what they do and don't respond to, and to parent them accordingly. If my sample size of 3 is any indication, trying to fit children through a one-size-fits-all mold is going to fail miserably.

kbenson 10y ago
Well, there's also the fact that unless you are homeschooling and preventing your children from experiencing human and media contact, your nurture input is only part of a whole. I learned a lot of what I did and did not want to be like from my parents growing up, but I also learned a lot from my siblings[1] and my friends, and my school experiences. That is, you may provide the same ingredients, but ultimately the kid's the baker, and you're not even really in the kitchen to see what goes on. Who knows what makes it into the final product? 1: Aside from the normal older brother semi-worship for a while, I also witnessed what sounded like him coughing up a lung every morning for a winter or two with chronic bronchitis from smoking. Peer pressure to smoke (and there was quite a bit, most my friends did) isn't quite the hurdle you might think it to be when you have that in mind.
- bronson 10y ago
  Except the differences start showing up long before school age.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    Well sure. Notice I said homeschooling and preventing most contact (which actually makes homeschooling redundant). Kids likely won't turn out the same even with the exact same environmental inputs, but I'm just pointing out that we often vastly over estimate our ability to control those environmental inputs in the first place, so the point is somewhat moot.

nkozyra 10y ago

> My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. Because children of that age (and younger) have two traits that will always trump logic: 1. Defiance (better described as a need to understand independence) and 2. A lack of long-term thinking When a child - who wishes to experience control - wants a cookie, a choice between a banana and an apple is untenable. Be wary of interpretations that give you broad-reaching advice on how to essentially manipulate children. This - child psychology and help - is a huge industry; interpreting studies to fit a narrative is simple and rarely meets argument.

WalterSear 10y ago
More than one four year old of my acquaintance know a bullshit false dichotomy when they see one.
snowwrestler 10y ago
What's more likely--that you understand children better than people who spend their entire lives working on that, or that you have misunderstood the advice the article gave? The point of the article is not that offering a binary choice is a panacea. The point is that you have to model the behavior you want, and reinforce it with praise. Just saying "no cookie" does not give the kid a positive action they can take. Offering a choice of what they can have gives them something to do. And the few times they do it, you have to be ready to make a big deal about how great that was. Of course a kid who wants a cookie is going to be diappointed if you offer a banana or an apple. No one can change that. What you can train the kid to do is better manage disappointment. As they learn to do that--through positive reinforcement--the drama goes down. That's what the article is about.
- nkozyra 10y ago
  Your baseless presumption aside, my response was more general than related specifically to this article.

yummybear 10y ago

My personal experience from two young children is that it works, most of the time. Obviously there are still issues - maybe the young one wants to bring some toy to school on a non-toy day - in this case getting to choose the color of sweater isn't going to help. But mostly this approach seems to work. Now we as parents still need to remember to use this approach, which we unfortunately often forget in the morning rush.

spiderfarmer 10y ago
My wife is a teacher, she always says poblems need to be fixed where it's easiest to fix them. So if a kid brings a toy to school on a non toy day, she will confiscate it (and give it back at the end of the day). She only needs to set one example for an entire year.

hubert123 10y ago

> And choice isn't important, it's the appearance of choice that's important i dont understand how this isnt immediately a red flag for dystopian orwellian oppression. I guess u can do it to kids, they cant defend themselves.

marklgr 10y ago

> Maybe they are written by non-parents or their children are much easier To be frank, the article tips are pretty sound and well-accepted, including from specialists who deal with much more difficult children then you and me on a daily basis. First point, there's a tendency to see one's kids as special, be it especially gifted, or difficult, or an astonishing critical thinker for their age. It's quite understandable, since we have an infinitely deeper relationship with them than with any other kid. Secondly, it's much more difficult to deal with relationship issues when you are involved in them; that explains why you can often clearly see what's wrong in others' relationships (parent/kids or S.O.), but yours always seem more complicated by several order of magnitude. And thirdly, we can also find it quite irritating to be given some basic tips when we are experiencing hell and we feel like we are so past that kind of "pop psych". It's like, "Do you think we've not tried that already?". Of course, a few tips are no magic bullet (sorry for the cliché), and sometimes the problems are just too serious, but on the whole they just deliver, to the surprise of many parents when they see it used successfully by specialists. I'm not one of them but I know a few, and I personnally use the "give them a choice" tip and if done correctly, I have found it to work very, very well--for parenting and in life in general.

three14 10y ago
Sound and well-accepted are very different things - in the area of parenting, appealing to the authority of experts is really asking to be wrong. That said, I do have a bunch of kids, and in my personal limited experience, the particular advice in the article is sound, as far as it goes. If you have enough energy, there's almost always a way to defuse the situation. Real parents with a few kids and too little sleep do not always have enough energy or time to defuse the situation. Given what I see nursery school teachers do every day, I'd be pretty surprised if the experts can't get good results in a clinic, but that doesn't necessarily carry over to home.
kabouseng 10y ago
Please humor me, and an honest question. And please be honest. Do you have kids? How many?
- 10y ago

vidarh 10y ago

If you allow your kid to get away with the 3rd option, then your kid now knows that your choices aren't genuine. None of these kind of methods work if you let them know that when you say there are two alternatives there really are three. And I've seen this work often enough when we've had friends of my son come over that we often see act up around their parents, but that will try that shit once with us and then follow our sons cue once they see that all they achieve is getting ignored, that I tend to think that whether this works or not is more often down to follow-through. That doesn't mean it's a one size fits all solution. You do need to adapt what kind of options you present, and how you respond if they try to push the boundaries - kids are not stupid; if you keep offering "options" when they know there are other alternatives that are on the table if they say the right things, then they'll try to challenge you for it.

ryanmarsh 10y ago
To me a person who stubbornly presents two choices when there is in fact a reasonable third is an asshole. Maybe don't create contrived situations where a toddler can crush your logic and it becomes a battle of wills.
jacobr 10y ago
My oldest son quite often comes up with a third, better alternative. The fact that I consider and sometimes accept them might make some other situations harder, because obviously he often cannot understand more complex situations and then there is a conflict. Saying no to a perfectly reasonable suggestion (because it wasn't mine) might teach him to never argue, but I wouldn't want that.

andrei_says_ 10y ago

This is not a real choice but a simple manipulation aiming to provide the illusion of choice. The purpose of parenting is not to control the children but to support them in learning themselves and the world. Human beings are intelligent and wired for success. It doesn't take long before we start realizing the difference between choices that don't matter to us and ones that do. If you're looking for parenting practices that support self knowledge in a collaborative and respectful environment, I recommend "Raising Our chikdren, Raising Ourselves" by Naomi Alford. Offering fake choices does not respect the intelligence nor dignity of human beings. And, we need to acknowledge that manipulation is probably a better approach than psychological abuse (time outs) and threats to a child's physical safety (spanking).

ryanmarsh 10y ago
Yes. Natural consequences and contrived consequences are two very different things.
- andrei_says_ 10y ago
  Exactly. A good example of natural consequences: You forgot your jacket. It rains. You get wet. A good example of manipulation/constructed "consequences": You didn't write your homework. You don't get to play video games. And, by the way, if you want your kid to hate a specific video game, turn it into (home)work. This is the approach schools take to killing our children's creativity and natural curiosity.

snovv_crash 10y ago

The best advice I've seen is to give them limited responsibility, and then let them deal with the limited consequences. Your job as a parent is to short term care for your children, but long term make them independent and functional in society. If you never let them wear their shorts and tshirt in the snow when they really want to, they will never respect the cold or your advice.

tux1968 10y ago

People don't acknowledge this enough, one size doesn't fit all. It bothers me most when people discuss diet and obesity. "Just don't eat so much!" is often given as slightly condescending advice. Such advice reflects a personal experience where your body isn't screaming in hunger 24 hours a day. Different people have different metabolisms too, turning food into energy to be spent, or locking it away instantly as fat -- makes a huge difference. Calories-In-Calories-Out is a rather limited view of the situation. Our internal experiences differ, it affects who we are and how we behave. We all have to be responsible and deal with our personal realities in an adult manner. But it's rather lame to assume that anyone who is challenged by things you find simple is either stupid or lacking in willpower.

Evgeny 10y ago
Different people have different metabolisms too, turning food into energy to be spent, or locking it away instantly as fat -- makes a huge difference This is not true - at least the "huge" part. https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-two-people/ https://examine.com/nutrition/does-metabolism-vary-between-t... "Metabolic rate does vary, and technically there could be large variance. However, statistically speaking it is unlikely the variance would apply to you. The majority of the population exists in a range of 200-300kcal from each other and do not possess hugely different metabolic rates." Calories-In-Calories-Out is a rather limited view of the situation. https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-loss/ https://examine.com/nutrition/what-should-i-eat-for-weight-l... "In conclusion, losing weight requires a negative energy balance, which can be obtained by eating less, as we have seen, but also by exercising more."
- tux1968 10y ago
  It's like saying, driving a car requires a neutral energy balance, you need to put in just as much gas as you burn. While 100% true. It's not helpful information. It doesn't mention the fact that different cars burn fuel at a different rate. That some drivers can afford a higher octane fuel. And that a poorly tuned vehicle with incorrect tire pressure will require more fuel. The point is, that there are many factors that go into weight gain and loss. And while in terms of basic physics it does indeed boil down to energy balance, that ignores a great many factors that affect both ones internal demand for more energy and ones ability to make use of ingested energy rather than turning it into fat.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

snowwrestler 10y ago

There are 3 additional ideas that are important, but I didn't see you mention in your comment. 1) You praise the heck out of the child when they do accept the choice. This is hard because you have to remember to notice NON-drama, which is typically not noteworthy to people. You over-remember when things went bad and under-remember when things went fine. I do too--everyone does. (Politicians exploit the heck out of this BTW.) 2) You don't defer your whole life to arguing with the child. If it's time to go, you go, sweater or not. The key thing is that it's not punishment. It's just Life... or The Schedule. Don't act mad, just calmly firm. If the kid won't wear a sweater, they get cold. Bring the one you prefer as a backup if you want. 3) (Hardest) You model the behavior you want. Play a pick a sweater game when it's NOT time to go and there is no pressure. If they do it right or sort of right, praise the part they did right and do it again. None of this is easy. FWIW I have a young kid and would grade myself at around 50% or less on these. But it's a model to work toward.

arkitaip 10y ago
Re #3: i think it's a very astute observation that parenting should be much more proactive than reactive. If you play the long game and model your kids' behavior in situations when they aren't struggling or you're having a fight, you both seem to learn much easier. Heck, I would say that parenting ultimately starts when we're kids ourselves with the values and experiences we are taught. For instance, most of us don't care for kids until we're in our 30s, which makes parenting that much harder. Imagine how different it must have been historically when older kids care for the younger ones, giving everyone involved experience with parenting. On a personal level I'm fortunate to have three great nieces in various ages and try to learn what I can from them and of course parent them in myriads tiny ways (it's impossible to avoid, I've realized. You either make conscience efforts or not but you can't avoid parenting if you interact with kids).

drieddust 10y ago

> My 4 year will always ask for a 3rd option that isn't there, or just reject the framing entirely. Exactly my situation. My 2 year old just keep on it until she feels otherwise. Though one thing I have seen to work is to employ her into something adult like allow her to stir the liquid while making scrambled eggs :)

arghIdontwantto 10y ago

I can second this. And if I give a 3rd choice, he wants a 4th. I've tried many of the 'common' advices but they don't really seem to work that well with mine. With mine seems a bit of 'indifference' works wonders. 'We are going out now', 'no, I don't want to, scream, etc, etc', 'Ok, stay there, when you are ready to talk to me and go out, I'll start talking to you again, until then, I'll be in the kitchen/bedroom/whatever'. This usually gives him 5 minutes to think a bit, then comes back, apoligises and we go on our way. I've tried pretty much everything before this, and seems it was the only thing that works with mine.

mverwijs 10y ago

Any question ending with '..., okay' is asking for permission. I (as a parent of 2 very easy kids) always avoid those type of permission-asking questions when presenting choice. Instead I offer, not ask: "You can wear the green or the red. What do you choose?"

hysan 10y ago

Having worked in education with a wide range of kids (age, temperament, etc.), my view is that these articles are a good read. However, they are written for the masses. To get views. They distill (I hope) tons of research and case studies into a catchy, generalized piece of advice. It sounds good and is definitely worth trying, but under no means should anyone point to such an article as an end all be all solution to raising children. Your example is exactly why. Matters in life are rarely so simple as to be explained away in a single article. There's always going to be a part of the bell curve that gets left out when writing articles like this. Just something for everyone to keep in mind.

maroonblazer 10y ago

With my kid I adopted the "Parenting with Love and Logic" approach which suggests that we (parents) pick too many battles with our kids and should instead let them learn first hand the consequences of their choices. So in the case of the coat, if the child refuses to wear one then they get to experience what cold feels like. Time outs have worked very well for me too. Some behavior is simply unacceptable and ignoring it only teaches them they can repeat it. Lastly, I think there's a tendency to forget that, with kids, they're basically completely different people every few days/weeks. We've gone through a lot of phases with our son and sometimes the best solution is to simply wait it out. More often than not the behavior changes as his brain changes.

gegtik 10y ago

same - my 3yo will ALWAYS respond to false choice with "NEITHER!"

smrtinsert 10y ago

My kid has rejected false choices from almost as soon as we began offering it to her. Would you like the toy or the book for the car? (Screaming) I don't want car, I want home and show! Makes me giggle how often it fails with her. That said, I've noticed well set patterns work very well with her even if she doesn't like certain aspects of them. She even gets cranky when I forget to do a certain part of the pattern even if she hates what the event is. (Daddy you didn't close the gate!) Every kid is different, totally agree.

wlesieutre 10y ago

This trick popped up as the top post on r/lifeprotips a few days ago. The top comment was someone whose kid figured it out. "Would you like to buy me one set of nunchucks or 2 sets?" https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_motivate_people_by_giving_them_choices_even/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeProTips/comments/5g9pai/lpt_mot...

mariodiana 10y ago

I've read that when you're instructing a child to do something, whether you're a parent or a teacher, you should never end the instruction with "Okay?".

schlumpf 10y ago
In our house the question is used to ascertain whether the child heard his parent and if so, the probability of compliance with the request/observation/dire threat to the well-being of a favored toy. At no time has it been construed by any of the parties as the parent (noun) requesting permission to parent (verb).