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I think the real secret of many advice books, baby or otherwise, is that nobody knows what they're doing. It's especially hard for baby and other parenting advi

I think the real secret of many advice books, baby or otherwise, is that nobody knows what they're doing. It's especially hard for baby and other parenting advice, though, because the goals are so varied. What is the aim? A quiet baby? A happy baby? A hard working child, a smart child, a well-behaved child, a happy child? A well-adjusted (whatever that means) adult? A driven and successful adult? A good relationship with the kid? Any of thousands of others? It's impossible for any scientific study to address all possible outcomes and the relationships between them.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago
In my view, its even misguided to try and 'make' your baby into any of these things. You can help them develop, but its largely up to them to be smart or hard-working or happy later in life. We can at most give them good examples, and try to socialize them?
- tartuffe78 9y ago
  You try that, I'll try the other way and we'll see whose baby gets into Harvard!
  - titanix2 9y ago
    That does not takes the genetic lottery into account.
  - JoeAltmaier 9y ago
    My three Eagle Scouts are respectively a Sargeant, an Engineer and a Musician. The Engineer went to CMU and works at a startup in Redwood City. The Sargent did his tour of Iraq in transportation (doing vehicle recovery) and returned a little busted up; now has a MechE degree and is a process Engineer. The Musician studied at Cleveland Institute, but turned to the dark side and now works IT.
    - opwieurposiu 9y ago
      Great work dad!
  - toomanybeersies 9y ago
    My brothers and I were brought up in much the same way. However, we have not all ended up in the same place. One of my brothers managed to spend over half a decade in and out of odd jobs, spending all his money on drugs (thank fuck none of the hard stuff). Me and my other brother have managed to carve out a good life for ourselves, at least by society's external measure. People will go their own direction in life. You can prod them and help them on their journey, but you can't fundamentally change who they are.
    - cm2012 9y ago
      On a tangent, the ability to delay reward is largely determined by the time you are 5ish years old, but unlike height and IQ, people don't think of it that way. See the Marshmallow experiment, which has been succesfully replicated a few times. It is a big reason why life is unfair.
  - unit91 9y ago
    You've assumed that Harvard is, or should be, the goal of healthy parenting. If you have kids, stop doing this to them. You're their father/mother. Love, nurture, train, and instruct them to be good people. If they go to Harvard, good for them. If not, Harvard be damned, they're your kids. If you don't have kids yet, mature before you do.
    - tartuffe78 9y ago
      My comment was meant as a joke, I needed the /s tag I guess. I've got a 3 month old, and we went through the experience of reading the very contradictory child raising books. We're not going to try to manipulate our kids every moment or be tiger parents.
      - mcv 9y ago
        I guess it's a dangerous thing to joke about. Some parents really to try to push their children to what the parents want them to become. On the other hand, my son aspires to become a lazy couch potato and gamer. He's actually quite successful on that front, but I admit I was hoping for something more.
- Swizec 9y ago
  > up to them to be smart or hard-working or happy later in life > give them good examples As far as I’ve heard, the former largely depends on the latter. You can do a lot of shaping of what someone will become through the examples you expose them to. I remember ads when I was a kid: “Always obey traffic signals when walking. Your child is learning from you”. This was on every pedestrian traffic light around the first few weeks of school when it is encouraged to teach your first grader how to walk to school every morning. There’s also that famous anti smoking ad based on the same principle.
- orev 9y ago
  One of the primary struggles of modern humanity is the battle against our base instincts. We instinctively seek out sugar, fat, and salt. We instinctively do things that give us dopamine hits. We instinctively want to do things that are fun and easy and avoid things that are dull and hard. Modern parenting is largely a battle against these things, as modern society makes them so easily accessible. The very concept of allowing kids to choose what they want is so completely flawed, as kids are driven more by instincts as they don’t have other more modern mental structures to rely on. Learning stuff is hard because it actually changes the brain, and kids need to be pushed because they will avoid it otherwise, as per the instincts mentioned above.
  - jdmichal 9y ago
    My experiment with my son will be to take advantage of lack of understanding of false dichotomy. Allow him to choose from preselected options with controlled outcomes. Then hold him accountable for that choice, whatever it means. I base this on the idea that decision making is a skill, and you build skills by practicing. Well, not necessarily decision making itself, but rather the mental constructs that surround decisions -- weighing alternatives, short- vs long-term planning, etc. Hopefully, then, when he starts coming up with his own options and breaking the false dichotomy, they'll be well-considered.
    - softawre 9y ago
      Like a variation on the marshmallow experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
      - laumars 9y ago
        We do this all the time with our kids. eg Halloween: you can eat <large percentage> your sweets now but we will eat the rest when you've gone to bed, or you can have <smaller percentage> now but have some left for tomorrow and the rest of the week. Our eldest (he's 4 now but we've been doing it for a couple of years) responds really well to that. In fact a 100% pass rate so far. Which is unusual for a boy of that age from what I've read.
jandrese 9y ago
My wife was given/bought at least a dozen baby books when she got pregnant. Skimming through several of them it became clear that everybody was making it up as they went along. Some were far more neurotic than others for sure, but even among the ones with the same temperament and written around the same time the advice varied wildly. The one constant was an underlying fear that if you get this wrong you're going to ruin your child somehow, maybe even kill them. In the end I took their advice with a grain of salt and mostly went about figuring it out as I went, like most parents do. The one piece of advice I can give is to not worry so much. Kids won't be ruined because you didn't pay attention to them once, or did pay attention to soon, or attempted to engage, or were disengaged, or whatever. Also, every kid is different so blanket advice is of only marginal utility. Final bit of advice is to try not to bring up the subject of breastfeeding. Everybody knows it is the best, but some people are absolutely nuts about it and will go as far as tell you you're poisoning your child if you ever try to bottle feed them, practical concerns be damned.
- laumars 9y ago
  > Kids won't be ruined because you didn't pay attention to them once, or did pay attention to soon, or attempted to engage, or were disengaged, or whatever. That depends on who you ask. Pretty much every kid will claim their parents have "fucked them up" and it will be in totally unpredictable ways. Either a specific toy you refused to buy them or that time you didn't let them play in the park. Ultimately the most you can hope for is that they have kids themselves one day so they can watch themselves make the same "mistakes" you made.
  - creep 9y ago
    That's also one of the beauties of parenting. One does everything one thinks is right, considering various limits, and accidentally makes a mistake the child will always remember. The child grows up, perhaps has his/her own children, and tries not to make what he/she thought were their parents' mistakes. Depending on what kind of mistake that happened to be, parenting should evolve from generation to generation, in a non-linear way of course. I also really ascribe to the idea that when a person decides to be an adult, they decide to begin taking full responsibility for their actions and thoughts. This means that, even if a person were in an abusive situation as a child, it's fundamentally their responsibility to find help and take care of themselves. This is empowering and healing, for anyone, and one of the most important reasons I believe that parents who are loving have nothing to worry about. One day your child will be free, and on that day he or she will take on the responsibility of their own life. You are there for your child as a learning and growing being yourself, and you are there up to the moments you see them off as they release themselves into the world. You can instill in them your values, but in the end they get to choose. All you have to do is let them know they get to choose, and let them know they are loved for existing. How the child best understands those lessons is the grand experiment.
tremendulo 9y ago
>It's impossible for any scientific study to address all possible outcomes and the relationships between them Yes and even if there somehow were credible, reproducible studies that addressed all aspects of parenting and all childhood outcomes then these still couldn't tell one how to parent because there's a moral component.

JoeAltmaier 9y ago

In my view, its even misguided to try and 'make' your baby into any of these things. You can help them develop, but its largely up to them to be smart or hard-working or happy later in life. We can at most give them good examples, and try to socialize them?

tartuffe78 9y ago
You try that, I'll try the other way and we'll see whose baby gets into Harvard!
- titanix2 9y ago
  That does not takes the genetic lottery into account.
- JoeAltmaier 9y ago
  My three Eagle Scouts are respectively a Sargeant, an Engineer and a Musician. The Engineer went to CMU and works at a startup in Redwood City. The Sargent did his tour of Iraq in transportation (doing vehicle recovery) and returned a little busted up; now has a MechE degree and is a process Engineer. The Musician studied at Cleveland Institute, but turned to the dark side and now works IT.
  - opwieurposiu 9y ago
    Great work dad!
- toomanybeersies 9y ago
  My brothers and I were brought up in much the same way. However, we have not all ended up in the same place. One of my brothers managed to spend over half a decade in and out of odd jobs, spending all his money on drugs (thank fuck none of the hard stuff). Me and my other brother have managed to carve out a good life for ourselves, at least by society's external measure. People will go their own direction in life. You can prod them and help them on their journey, but you can't fundamentally change who they are.
  - cm2012 9y ago
    On a tangent, the ability to delay reward is largely determined by the time you are 5ish years old, but unlike height and IQ, people don't think of it that way. See the Marshmallow experiment, which has been succesfully replicated a few times. It is a big reason why life is unfair.
- unit91 9y ago
  You've assumed that Harvard is, or should be, the goal of healthy parenting. If you have kids, stop doing this to them. You're their father/mother. Love, nurture, train, and instruct them to be good people. If they go to Harvard, good for them. If not, Harvard be damned, they're your kids. If you don't have kids yet, mature before you do.
  - tartuffe78 9y ago
    My comment was meant as a joke, I needed the /s tag I guess. I've got a 3 month old, and we went through the experience of reading the very contradictory child raising books. We're not going to try to manipulate our kids every moment or be tiger parents.
    - mcv 9y ago
      I guess it's a dangerous thing to joke about. Some parents really to try to push their children to what the parents want them to become. On the other hand, my son aspires to become a lazy couch potato and gamer. He's actually quite successful on that front, but I admit I was hoping for something more.
Swizec 9y ago
> up to them to be smart or hard-working or happy later in life > give them good examples As far as I’ve heard, the former largely depends on the latter. You can do a lot of shaping of what someone will become through the examples you expose them to. I remember ads when I was a kid: “Always obey traffic signals when walking. Your child is learning from you”. This was on every pedestrian traffic light around the first few weeks of school when it is encouraged to teach your first grader how to walk to school every morning. There’s also that famous anti smoking ad based on the same principle.
orev 9y ago
One of the primary struggles of modern humanity is the battle against our base instincts. We instinctively seek out sugar, fat, and salt. We instinctively do things that give us dopamine hits. We instinctively want to do things that are fun and easy and avoid things that are dull and hard. Modern parenting is largely a battle against these things, as modern society makes them so easily accessible. The very concept of allowing kids to choose what they want is so completely flawed, as kids are driven more by instincts as they don’t have other more modern mental structures to rely on. Learning stuff is hard because it actually changes the brain, and kids need to be pushed because they will avoid it otherwise, as per the instincts mentioned above.
- jdmichal 9y ago
  My experiment with my son will be to take advantage of lack of understanding of false dichotomy. Allow him to choose from preselected options with controlled outcomes. Then hold him accountable for that choice, whatever it means. I base this on the idea that decision making is a skill, and you build skills by practicing. Well, not necessarily decision making itself, but rather the mental constructs that surround decisions -- weighing alternatives, short- vs long-term planning, etc. Hopefully, then, when he starts coming up with his own options and breaking the false dichotomy, they'll be well-considered.
  - softawre 9y ago
    Like a variation on the marshmallow experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experimen...
    - laumars 9y ago
      We do this all the time with our kids. eg Halloween: you can eat <large percentage> your sweets now but we will eat the rest when you've gone to bed, or you can have <smaller percentage> now but have some left for tomorrow and the rest of the week. Our eldest (he's 4 now but we've been doing it for a couple of years) responds really well to that. In fact a 100% pass rate so far. Which is unusual for a boy of that age from what I've read.

jandrese 9y ago

My wife was given/bought at least a dozen baby books when she got pregnant. Skimming through several of them it became clear that everybody was making it up as they went along. Some were far more neurotic than others for sure, but even among the ones with the same temperament and written around the same time the advice varied wildly. The one constant was an underlying fear that if you get this wrong you're going to ruin your child somehow, maybe even kill them. In the end I took their advice with a grain of salt and mostly went about figuring it out as I went, like most parents do. The one piece of advice I can give is to not worry so much. Kids won't be ruined because you didn't pay attention to them once, or did pay attention to soon, or attempted to engage, or were disengaged, or whatever. Also, every kid is different so blanket advice is of only marginal utility. Final bit of advice is to try not to bring up the subject of breastfeeding. Everybody knows it is the best, but some people are absolutely nuts about it and will go as far as tell you you're poisoning your child if you ever try to bottle feed them, practical concerns be damned.

laumars 9y ago
> Kids won't be ruined because you didn't pay attention to them once, or did pay attention to soon, or attempted to engage, or were disengaged, or whatever. That depends on who you ask. Pretty much every kid will claim their parents have "fucked them up" and it will be in totally unpredictable ways. Either a specific toy you refused to buy them or that time you didn't let them play in the park. Ultimately the most you can hope for is that they have kids themselves one day so they can watch themselves make the same "mistakes" you made.
- creep 9y ago
  That's also one of the beauties of parenting. One does everything one thinks is right, considering various limits, and accidentally makes a mistake the child will always remember. The child grows up, perhaps has his/her own children, and tries not to make what he/she thought were their parents' mistakes. Depending on what kind of mistake that happened to be, parenting should evolve from generation to generation, in a non-linear way of course. I also really ascribe to the idea that when a person decides to be an adult, they decide to begin taking full responsibility for their actions and thoughts. This means that, even if a person were in an abusive situation as a child, it's fundamentally their responsibility to find help and take care of themselves. This is empowering and healing, for anyone, and one of the most important reasons I believe that parents who are loving have nothing to worry about. One day your child will be free, and on that day he or she will take on the responsibility of their own life. You are there for your child as a learning and growing being yourself, and you are there up to the moments you see them off as they release themselves into the world. You can instill in them your values, but in the end they get to choose. All you have to do is let them know they get to choose, and let them know they are loved for existing. How the child best understands those lessons is the grand experiment.

tremendulo 9y ago

>It's impossible for any scientific study to address all possible outcomes and the relationships between them Yes and even if there somehow were credible, reproducible studies that addressed all aspects of parenting and all childhood outcomes then these still couldn't tell one how to parent because there's a moral component.