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How to get kids to pay attention

670 points by bkohlmann 8y ago

eezurr 8y ago
TL;DR: Autonomy; which holds true for adults and children.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  Adults don't have to be any different from children in terms of autonomy. We get these weird ideas of what gives us personal security, what keeps our lives from devolving into chaos, what we are able to do and what we were never good at. Those ideas are what take away autonomy for adults, because the opposite is often demoted to a triviality like 'the innocence of children', brain plasticity (mind like sponge), etc.
Forge36 8y ago
Autonomy, What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else? Then create space in their schedule for this activity and the time to focus on their interests. I'm curious if their measurement of paying attention to an unrelated task performed by someone else is a measurement of attention or curiosity.
- goodJobWalrus 8y ago
  I am so grateful my parents didn't need to "create space in my schedule" for anything. I created my own schedule (outside of school). That is autonomy, not your parents creating spaces in your schedule.
  - Forge36 8y ago
    Can you explain the difference? to me both statements appear the same with the difference a matter of perspective. Your parents scheduled some of your time as your time outside of your schedule for school. You scheduled that time and your parents respected that.
    - barrkel 8y ago
      Well, I think first you need autonomy without direction before you can figure out what you want to do. Without space to be bored, it's hard to find the time to be creative, IMO.
maltalex 8y ago
> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive activity such as playing video games, or watching videos on youtube.
- Strive 8y ago
  The question confuses me right away because most Americans are not keeping their kids' schedules full all the time. "Go play, I have to work/cook/shop/whatever." Kids are doing "what they would do if they don't have to do anything else," because they don't have to do anything else. Maybe the question is more about the behavior of the adult than the child? Parents need to enable their children's interests. Maybe your child really wants to roller skate but can't do it unless you enable them by watching them, because it's a dangerous neighborhood. It's your responsibility to foster their interest by making the time to help them. Or maybe the idea is that parents sometimes don't actually know the interests of their children? So the point of the question is not to open time in the kid's schedule for their activity (because they're doing that activity already). It's to make the parent more aware of what the activity is?
  - electricEmu 8y ago
    It was my understanding purposely filling your child's schedule is a mixed bag. It could help a child or hurt them significantly. That kind of filled schedule adds stress and removes exploration time. I never would have been a programmer if my parents filled my schedule with football, like they wanted to.
  - thedudemabry 8y ago
    I would second this. Enabling your child's interests takes observation and work. One of the more surprising things I've discovered as a recent parent is how prominent tablets are as a distraction or learning tool. I'm no exception. We bought our son a cheap, bulletproof Amazon Fire tablet, ratcheted the parental controls to the roof, and let him watch videos or play with it when he requests it (and use it as a helpful distraction when he gets bored in restaurants.) I'm split on how to approach this. On one hand, I would have done anything to have this magical infinite learning device when I found myself bored as a child, but I also recognize that the content on it is more often than not designed for addiction. Our son is not yet old enough to understand even rough warnings of addictive behaviors, so we're kind of watch-and-waiting. We limit screen time per day, but as he gets older, and gets access to a web browser, I'm not sure how I feel about those limits in relation to traditional information sources.
nickjj 8y ago
What's really interesting to me is this same thing can be applied to adults too. The article writes: > For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living".
- Filligree 8y ago
  >I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living". Shorter. As much as I'd love to follow my heart, I also know that the things I find personally interesting aren't the same ones I'm good at. Alas, it's also in a field where only the very best make any money at all.
  - abhiminator 8y ago
    I agree. What the invisible hand of the market and society at large value rarely align with what an individual values (and enjoys) -- a cosmic joke of the human condition imo.
  - MrStonedOne 8y ago
    There was this old zenn diagram of the four factors to life that comes to mind. https://i.imgur.com/i52vIDj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/i52vIDj.jpg
    - ainar-g 8y ago
      Did you mean to write "Venn diagram", or this was the joke?
- maltalex 8y ago
  > I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living". I imagine we'd have an abundance of pilots, and actors and a severe lack of toilet cleaners.
projectramo 8y ago
I guess my follow up is: which is better? Is it better not to pay attention to tasks and imagine other stuff or is it better to focus on the task no matter how trivial? In other words, should the Maya kids be learning from the Americans?
- SerLava 8y ago
  That highlights an interesting aspect of American culture. Whenever America is different from the rest of the world, most americans' default position is to assume it is worse. The only exceptions are behaviors with some kind of cultural identity behind them.
- 2trill2spill 8y ago
  Interesting question. I certainly have had many great ideas while not paying attention and being bored out of my mind in school.
  - TeMPOraL 8y ago
    I agree. Personally, I don't remember what boredom is. I stop paying attention whenever I can get away with it, happy that I just reclaimed some time from a bullshit situation - time which I can use to think about problems that interest me.
- brightball 8y ago
  I had the same question. I’ve always been able to focus to the point of obsessiveness on things that interest me and I see the same qualities in my son now. For him it’s Bey Blades and Pokémon right now. Career wise, the trick has always been learning to aim my obsession at the problem.
seibelj 8y ago
My father was short tempered, very loud, and an unusually large man in stature and presence. Additionally he worked nights, got a couple hours of sleep, and then woke up and took care of my brother and I for breakfast / school before sleeping more. He was not someone to mess with in general, let alone at 630am on a Tuesday. I think the threat of being screamed at and intimidated made my brother and I two of the most well behaved kids I knew. I would see my friends going bananas and think, “are you guys out of your minds?” I’m not advocating this style of parenting, and I won’t replicate it, but I can’t deny that the old school mechanism of raising kids was basically “sit down, shut up, or else!” and it made kids much more likely to listen. And the view of children as mini adults who could be useful, if properly trained, has been the default parenting style for thousands of years.
- colecut 8y ago
  Out of curiosity, what were your feelings like towards your dad at this time? Was there a lot of fear around him? Did you "like" him?
  - seibelj 8y ago
    My parents divorced when I was 10, and now my dad is married to his third wife. Age has mellowed him and his third wife has whipped him into a more submissive role, which was a good change in his personality. I don’t hate my dad, he is a flawed man but I love him. We both like NFL, boxing, and movies so we talk a lot about that. My brother is mostly estranged from my dad and they talk rarely, but we all do get together most thanksgivings.
    - Kluny 8y ago
      So his methods worked, but it damaged his relationships with his kids. Seems too high a price to pay.
      - inimino 8y ago
        Seems too snap a judgment to make.
jankotek 8y ago
> The other kid was told to wait. > One little boy started making explosive noises, pretending a toy on the table was a bomb Hm, perhaps some Ritalin could fix this? Perfectly normal behavior; little boy waits and plays small games to pass time. Incompetent teachers blame kids and "fix the problem".
- watwut 8y ago
  Depends on age whether normal. For 5 years old, yes. For 8 years old, absolutely no. Normal 8 years old should be able to wait two minutes without being disruptive when teacher is focused on somebody else. The kids who can't should absolutely get special help and assistance. However, if the healthy kid can't, then the solution is not to excuse it, but rather teach them patience and less egoism.
  - Forge36 8y ago
    But what's the range? Maturity isn't a hard line
    - watwut 8y ago
      No, it is not exact line. I would have to check the exact lines in studies, but basically expectations rise with age. But largely, I think that the goal should be to teach kids to have abilities like patience and functioning when you are not center of attention instead of categorizing them into "good enough" and "bad" categories. Ultimately, don't blame child. That teaching won't happen if adults knee jerk to wave everything away.
- kevmo 8y ago
  It seems rather foolhardy to presume that a teacher who wants order in their classroom is "incompetent".
amelius 8y ago
> "If you do better on the task, it would end sooner," Esterman says. "And you can get out of the lab sooner." My boss never tells me this :(
- pasta1212 8y ago
  I have a friend (a programmer) whose employer decided to try shortening the work day to 6 hours as long as the work still got done at the same pace. The owner was under the assumption that work will expand to take the time allotted. The experiment worked, and they still have 6 hour work days a couple years later. I think the theory that work will expand to take the time allotted is true, and I bet the motivation of getting done early is a big contributor as well. Maybe you can pitch it to your boss :)
  - amelius 8y ago
    The problem is really that I'm the one making the time-estimations. So if I can get the work done faster, I could (in theory) go home earlier, but if it takes more time than expected, then to be fair I'd have to do night-work.
    - bostonvaulter2 8y ago
      Honestly if you get your work done faster, you will probably just get more work until your schedule is full again.
tomohawk 8y ago
This is pretty much how I was raised in a small midwestern farming community. I was in charge of the laundry by the time I was 6, and the lawn when I was 8 or 9, and summers were pretty much filled with activities that my friends and I could organize. Moving to the burbs where play was organized sports and kids had everything done for them was a really big shock. It was hard to believe how inept at life most of my peers were when I went off to University. They only things they knew were what was on tv or from school.
- lgregg 8y ago
  I can relate, I was born/grew up overseas and was raised this way before my parents moved back to the states. I moved back with them, and it was surprising how little my friends had in life skills. I had learned to cook (from watching/learning) already and would cook for myself after school for example, while most of my friends would have zero ideas on what to do. It's sad how the U.S. Government prevents native American kids to have this experience in populated areas. There's a cultural vibe of individualism preventing overwatch of kids by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive autonomy that I had as a kid. I was told by my mom that at the age of 4 years old, I hailed a taxi cab alone in the Philippines while she went to the bathroom in a McDonalds. That would never happen here in America.
  - microcolonel 8y ago
    Not really sure about your terms here, you seem to be glorifying individualism in practice, but blaming it in name? What could be more individualistic than doing something on your own?
    - lgregg 8y ago
      I disagree, I'm glorifying autonomy in relation to self-determination theory but critiquing individualism as a cultural ideology or orientation. I used different words because I wasn't expecting a response like yours. If you want a deep dive, this is a good paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12518973 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12518973
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jeroenhd 8y ago
Text-only link because NPR couldn't be bothered to make their GDPR compliance page link to the correct page: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789
- jonnytran 8y ago
  How did you find this? I looked all over but was unable to find it after declining and going the the plaintext site. I would love the text-only site... if it worked.
  - akavel 8y ago
    You can copy the story ID from the original URL. It's the "long" number just after the date — e.g. in the following URL: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost-secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/6217527... it's 621752789. I would then click any random story on the default "plain text site" (https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/), to quickly get a base URL for a story, and then replace the sId in the URL with the copied number. Thus: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789
rahimnathwani 8y ago
> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' Wow. I don't have to do anything else right now, and I'm reading HN :(
deleted 8y ago
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monocularvision 8y ago
These sorts of stories should require every commenter to disclose how many children they have. Nothing like parenting stories bring out the parenting experts with zero experience.
mmt 8y ago
I'm disappointed to see this article trot out the "unsafe" trope, especially after, earlier in the article, citing the Maya mother stating her child knows how to avoid traffic. > Now, many parents in the U.S. can't go full-on Maya to motivate kids. It's often not practical — or safe — to give kids that much autonomy in many places, for instance. I'm not asserting that traffic is the only US safety concern (or that it's even comparable for that example), but I would have hoped the authors would at least put in a link to an article regarding safety concerns or the controversy, without implicitly taking sides.
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  Traffic safety is the main reason that US kids aren't out there playing. Because we're "rich" we've created a car-choked hellscape where nobody can be outside. We're so much more "rich" than those backwards people who have to walk to the store or ride a filthy bus.
  - mmt 8y ago
    This is not supported by, at least, this chart, comparing the US and Guatemala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... Now, it may still be true that pedestrians or child pedestrians are killed at a higher rate (per capita, per car, and/or per mile driven) in the US than in Guatemala (or other countries that are not "rich"). However, for that possibility to be plausible, there would need to be at least a credible, substantive explanation.
    - ebikelaw 8y ago
      It's more about the perception than the reality. People won't let their kids out because it appears to be rather dangerous. They drive them everywhere instead. The dig at Americans' self image as "rich" is a reference to the famous line by Enrique Peñalosa: a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars; it's a place where the wealthy ride the bus. I live part-time in Switzerland where the traffic violence rate is a small fraction of what it is here in the US. I let my kids roam the city because it's safe. I won't let them roam around in Oakland where we don't even have sidewalks. My neighbors consider themselves to be very rich compared to my neighbors in Zurich. They have a huge tacky mansion and two Porsche SUVs, and their kids are stupid and fat and have diabetes.
wu-ikkyu 8y ago
It's amazing how so many in our society wonder why kids naturally don't want to be forced to sit down, shut up, and passively consume arbitrary, impractical, and obsolete information. Our teaching and testing methods are stuck in the 19th century. Children who don't fit the mold of a cog in the industrial machine are drugged into submission. >We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. -Buckminster Fuller
qznc 8y ago
So it comes down to the choice of the kids. Apparently, making an origami jumping mouse is interesting for mayan kids, but not for american ones. The article doesn't even try to convince me that autonomy is the critical factor. When a professor starts a sentence with "It may be the case that" it is clearly just personal opinion and not published scientific fact. The professor intentionally makes the disclaimer that she has no proof for the hypothesis.
- empath75 8y ago
  Yeah the reason is that they can’t afford to buy talking Paw patrol toys. I’ve handed a bunch of Mayan kids my iPad and they didn’t give it back to me for hours. They totally forgot their beautiful handmade toys in an instant.
sjclemmy 8y ago
I have so many problems with these kind of articles / studies. For starters, does any of this matter? There seems to be a moral assumption that more motivated kids are somehow better. I also dislike the ‘more autonomy’ argument - somewhere in the article it says something like ‘ we can’t give kids that much autonomy because it would be dangerous’. So it’s setting up a morally superior scenario and parenting approach and then discounting it as inapplicable in the modern context. What does that tell you about kids? Nothing. But it tells you a lot about society’s priorities. I’ve got a counter conclusion; the American kids have seen the toys before and they’re just not that interesting. The Mayan kids have fewer toys so are interested in playing with them.
empath75 8y ago
As someone who has spent a bit of time traveling in the Mayan parts of Guatemala and Mexico, it seems difficult to me to compare parenting styles without also considering the fact that quite a few of the Maya in general are living in abject poverty with very little social mobility and with often 3+ generations of family living in close proximity, and I suspect as their financial situation improves and they have better access to distractions like tv or internet, the differences will fade away. I’d be very surprised if it even survived one generation of living in Guatemala City, let alone after moving to the US. It’s one thing to let your kids free roam in a village that has a single dirt road going through it and almost everyone around you is a cousin or has known your family for generations. It’s quite another in the suburbs where you have only had a 5 minute chat with one neighbor in 3 months. I’m also sort of skeptical of applying a value judgement to one or the other — I’m not sure that it would be beneficial to raise your kids that way in the developed world, although it sounds nice in the abstract.
mbateman 8y ago
For what it's worth, what the Maya families are doing is a version of the central principle of Montessori early education (and what my company is trying to scale). That is, build a capacity for deep concentration in early childhood using (1) high autonomy pedagogical practices and (2) an environment with a structure that makes it possible for children to contribute to practical life.
unit91 8y ago
I have 6 kids, and I've found it's pretty simple to get kids to pay attention (or anything else). Be consistent, and willing to discipline if necessary. Here's the order I follow: 1. Polite request 2. Polite command 3. Stern command 4. Warning 5. Push-ups 6. Spanking They know I love them and because of that love obedience is required. Situations rarely escalate past step 2, and step 6 is memorable. ETA: for anything past the polite stages, I try to always follow-up with gentle counseling after they've had a couple minutes to think about it. "Do you know why you got into trouble? How could you have handled the situation better?". Complete amnesty is the rule during counseling, i.e., no matter what they confess, they will NOT receive punishment. I want them to learn by reflection.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  Obedience is not the same as paying attention. My son can make coffee and an omelette not because I told him but because he thinks it’s fun.
  - unit91 8y ago
    Sure it is. "Son, pay attention please." Kids are capable of much more than we give them credit for. Often people "can't" pay attention because they don't want to. Obvious exceptions apply (mental handicap, fatigue, etc).
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      Or because you shouldn't have to pay attention, if you don't want to. For adults (or maybe just the nature of internet conversations), it can seem like a power dynamic. I demand you reflect me back to me, speak my language, concepts, awareness - not your own, etc. That's what it can feel like, being required to pay attention at all times, like one person is the programmer, and the other is the computer. It's nice to have a mind that sucks up everything but it's also nice to have a mind that is self directed. As we age, we get stuck in ways of thinking, knowing, understanding just because we accumulate personal identity. These things are much more fluid if one allows them to be, that's what paying attention can mean. The idea of obedience, eek. Mental handicap, mental fatigue - without concrete proof, I think it's wise to not apply labels to individuals one must interact with. People sometimes have difficulty paying attention because they need to come to their own understanding independently, and if you are always trying to shove information in - making sure they can output that information in the correct format, one isn't letting them get there as an individual. Capable, sure they are. Sometimes they can be much more aware than they appear to be too, and the only difference that capacity doesn't manifest itself is because in a system where the only options are - reflect information in these correct formats, otherwise adult observation implies 'no attention paid', I mean... Can you be capable and feel as though you got there as an individual if those are the rules of the system? Simplified, give people time, have patience. The reasons why they aren't 'getting it' is because you are trying to give the whole thing to them. Sometimes people want to get there independently, and once that gets boring, they probably can develop a greater desire to get there with others.
baxtr 8y ago
Be aware that the conclusion is not rock solid: So maybe the Maya children are more attentive in the origami/toy experiment — not because they have better attention spans — but because they are more motivated to pay attention. Their parents have somehow motivated them to pay attention even without being told. They say maybe... I can think of other reasons why Maya children seem to be more interested in anything happening in a western lab, than western kids. I don’t know the details because I haven’t read the original paper, but reading the article I’m not sure this effect has been ruled out.
pnathan 8y ago
It's very hard to compare a hunter gatherer / traditional village society to the modern urban & educated society and have meaningful takeaways. The crux of the matter is the requirement for responsibility. Rather than have this goofy teenagehood that runs from 13-25, forcing the matter of responsibility at an earlier age and accepting the failures is a critical difference. Protecting children and ensuring they are not morally damaged runs exactly counter this reality. There's a good deal of cognitive dissonance and parental self-delusion going on here as well. I have generally grown to have a dislike of child labor laws that prohibit or limit working after 14. It's doing a great disservice to the young adults who could be doing something constructive in character. Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet litter, etc.
- fb03 8y ago
  > Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet litter, etc. It is insane that some parents I know would like to reply to this part of your answer like this: "Kids should be kids you shouldn't force them to be adults too soon or you might steal their childhood". I've literally heard that.
  - kzrdude 8y ago
    You might steal from their adulthood if you refuse to teach them life skills, maybe something to reply with.
  - insulanian 8y ago
    Well, maybe they feel that someone stole their childhood, and don't want the same to happen to their children.
  - pnathan 8y ago
    Adulting is not evil; it is a consequence of discharging your responsibility and functioning as a human being. Kids will be kids, that has nothing to do with responsibility. I could ask my child to go to work - he'll be completely inept at it. He would be, truly and genuinely, childish. I view my kid as a roommate - one I have responsibility for. As they become capable, they obtain agency and will be asked to deliver on that agency, within the limits of their capacity. Sometime around 16, I will expect them to execute the full tasks of an adult, barring rent. In turn, I will operate as a counselor and guide at that point, giving them a cushion when their attempts fail; the cushion will be mostly removed when are 18. Childhood in the WEIRD view is a recent innovation, dreamt up by the middle & upper middle class in the 1800s, much like teenagers in the 1900s. These ideas of what constitutes normative behavior for specific ages are contingent on our cultural matrix and are not hardcoded.
jinfiesto 8y ago
I often wonder whether this has a lot to do with how we treat our kids. I often catch myself acting uninterested in my daughter's interests (she's two and often wants to show me things for the 50th time that were pretty boring in the first place.) She doesn't have any attention or behavioral issues in general, but I was amazed when a friend of mine came to visit who is an early music educator. They didn't do anything music related, but watching her interact with my daughter was eye-opening. She was very present and respectful with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I guess more or less she treated my daughter more or less like an adult. Thinking about it, it's so easy to be flippant or dismissive about what our kids are doing or are interested in without even noticing. I was really amazed to see how much my daughter reciprocated the attention and my friend was able to get her to pay attention to this or that or be much more engaged than I usually can. This is obviously a very small sample, but it really made me think about the ways that we don't treat our children like adults (and how maybe they act like children because we treat them that way.)
- usaphp 8y ago
  > She was very present and respectful with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I am sure if she came over to your place for 50+ times she would also act different than the first time. I think It’s ok to be bored with a 2 year old request to show the same book or the same picture over and over and over again.
  - ryan-allen 8y ago
    Or Fortnite, or Minecraft. I'm not sure how to solve for this, but I'm trying to instill that conversations and interactions have to be two way, so just because "you are interested in X" doesn't mean that talking at someone over and over about things they are not interested in isn't a way to foster satisfying interactions for all parties involved. A parent might placate and be always "oh that's so interesting!", but their peers? Their peers might ignore them leaving the kid confused as to the response.
    - imesh 8y ago
i_love_jc 8y ago
"The parents intentionally give their children this autonomy and freedom because they believe it's the best way to motivate kids." This is basically the philosophy behind self-directed learning: unschooling as well as learning communities like Sudbury schools, liberated learners centers, and agile learning centers. I work at one of these schools, and our kids are really good at paying attention. ADD is a real thing and still affects some of them, but we also have a lot of kids who were diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal.
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  "diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal." Of course the problem is that, even when something is interesting to the person at a high level, there may be subsets of that activity which are dead boring.
icc97 8y ago
> "Of course she can go shopping," Tun Burgos says. "She can buy some eggs or tomatoes for us. She knows the way and how to stay out of traffic." I wonder how much this has to do with the value of child life. What are the statistics of Mayan children being run over / kidnapped? I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico, just somehow parents are more willing / less informed to take this risk.
- vickychijwani 8y ago
  I don't have the stats you're looking for, but I would guess the prior probability of accidents and foul play in smaller communities is also going to be lower than it is for large urban communities, because these communities are more tightly-knit, and people drive less rashly to begin with, etc. Or maybe they drive more rashly - I don't know. The point is, there are a lot of factors to consider. So it's going to be hard to draw conclusions from stats. In other words, how much of those numbers is explained by said lower probability, and how much by parents' willingness to trust their kids?
- Tepix 8y ago
  If people believed in statistics they would let their kids roam free like their parents and grandparents did. It's much safer than it used to be. Alas, US parents are overly protective.
  - icc97 8y ago
    I believe it's because parents and grandparents never looked at statistics and so because in communities where there wasn't a story of children getting kidnapped or being killed on the road then they just never thought about the chance happening.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico It's far less safe in Mexico than in the US, though it's probably still safer in Mexico than Americans perceive it to be in the US. > just somehow parents are more willing / less informed to take this risk. You seem to presume Americans are well informed here; they are not. They consistently vastly overestimate the current risk and incorrectly perceive it as increasing when statistics does it is decreasing. Mexicans could be more willing to let their kids out because they are better informed (at least, have a more accurate perception of the risks) rather than less informed.
yy77 8y ago
The genereal idea is to let the children themselves want something with passion and they will pay attention. (not only to child in fact). However, one of the simple way to do that is NOT autonomy as the article suggest, but to make that thing sparse, precious and difficult to get. The children does not have the right to be well educated, will pay more attention comparing to those who have plenty already.
bengrunfeld 8y ago
Forcing female gender pronouns on children of unknown gender, just to make a broader political point is simply pathetic. Left-wing media has lost any right to moral authority, and since their impartiality has been lost on this issue, you must assume that they tweak the facts to suit their own political agenda. Fox News is truer to journalism these days than NPR, which seems to think that the "Great Satan" is a white non-Muslim male who asserts HIMself in very binary terms as a man.
Aissen 8y ago
Text version for EU users https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 , since declining tracking does not redirect to the correct article. It should work well with your browser's reading mode.
- arendtio 8y ago
  Thanks, now I understand what reading mode is for :-)
xstartup 8y ago
I and my wife discuss programming matters in front of our kids. And my kids listen to the discussions and want to be part of it. Then I start teaching the basics, they are a bit more willing to hear. Here the incentive for them is to be part of the club where interesting things are happening. We laugh at coding jokes which kids don't appear to understand which leaves them confused. So, it seems they are aware they lack some understanding because of which they are unable to understand us. The same idea has worked for math, playing musical instruments like keyboard/ukelele, physical exercises like skipping ropes or air pushups. If I simply give them a computer or ukelele, they won't be interested as they don't know how to hold a ukulele or have no one to tell them how to hold it right and how to fuse a chord progression with the strumming pattern. These things are not obvious by just watching or hits and trials on a guitar/ukelele.
- mncharity 8y ago
  Thanks for an idea. As part of developing a rough-quantitative feel for physical properties, I like associating measures with real-life adult-world examples. Eg, a Newton-meter torque is reopening a 2L plastic soda bottle.[1] But my mindset was 'make the associations transparent and low-barrier', and do 'number->example, to allow easily exploring the measure space"'. But what if there was more mystery, struggle, challenge, tease? An adaptively tuned barrier. Instead of 'touching a thermometer scale at some temperature instantly yields a video about making chocolate', or a video clip of a tv news weather report, what if instead a video had temperatures bleeped/blurred out, and required an act of effort - "give me the temperature, d*mnit! it should be around here somewhere...". Then maybe related videos (of similar temperature or topic) aren't just more surfing, but payoff? An unlocking. "Ohhh, change the temperature of that step and you get a different kind of chocolate!" Maybe a little animated critter that watches videos with you, and cheers for temperatures, or jumps on them, and sometimes makes it so you cant hear/see them, unless you shush the critter, or move it. Anyway, random brainstorming - I'm exploring maybe doing a temperature education app. Thanks for your comment. [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torque http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...
b1daly 8y ago
The way my step sons live strikes me as having much less autonomy than I had at their age. I’m still boggles that young kids aren’t allowed to walk to school by themselves. Most of the time, I tend to think as long as good basic care is taken of kids, they can work out all sorts of weird child rearing environments just fine. Something that has given me pause though is the astonishing addictive power of the various “screen” which occupy so much attention. Unibiquitous telecommunication is something new in human history, and it really grabs hold of people, the young as much as anyone. My concern is that our highly tuned psycho-physiology has not evolved to handle the type of activity, and it’s distorting our consciousnesses, and ability to pay attention, in ways that are unhealthy. (Similarly to how humans have a hard time with too much access to processed food with high calorie amounts.)
known 8y ago
"You are a product of your environment" --Clement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect
mac01021 8y ago
This is the second article on HN in the last few weeks from NPR praising the virtues of traditional Central American child rearing.
jpadkins 8y ago
Control-F 'montessori' ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education The conclusions are not new. Maria Montessori researched this 100 years ago. - Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options. - Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours. - A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. -
jvvw 8y ago
If anybody is interested in this, then it's worth looking at the RIE approach for babies and toddlers (Janet Lansbury's blog is a good place to start http://www.janetlansbury.com/ http://www.janetlansbury.com/). A large part of it is about allow babies and toddlers to choose what they pay attention to. Anecdotally, I very loosely followed it with our two and they have amazing attention spans compared with most kids their age - certainly both their teachers have commented on it. It's also much more relaxing as a parent I found, letting your children be in charge of what they want to pay attention to most of the time.
santoshmaharshi 8y ago
At https://www.schoolze.com https://www.schoolze.com - we are looking at the problems faced by Schools from all these angles. From Attention, to engagement, to fundraising, to measure all the aspects of a successfull K-12 classrooms. That's why looking at the participant of the education system is very important. Be it Kids, Schools, Teachers or PTAs. All will have to work towards this success.

670 points by bkohlmann 8y ago

eezurr 8y ago

TL;DR: Autonomy; which holds true for adults and children.

s-shellfish 8y ago
Adults don't have to be any different from children in terms of autonomy. We get these weird ideas of what gives us personal security, what keeps our lives from devolving into chaos, what we are able to do and what we were never good at. Those ideas are what take away autonomy for adults, because the opposite is often demoted to a triviality like 'the innocence of children', brain plasticity (mind like sponge), etc.

Forge36 8y ago

Autonomy, What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else? Then create space in their schedule for this activity and the time to focus on their interests. I'm curious if their measurement of paying attention to an unrelated task performed by someone else is a measurement of attention or curiosity.

goodJobWalrus 8y ago
I am so grateful my parents didn't need to "create space in my schedule" for anything. I created my own schedule (outside of school). That is autonomy, not your parents creating spaces in your schedule.
- Forge36 8y ago
  Can you explain the difference? to me both statements appear the same with the difference a matter of perspective. Your parents scheduled some of your time as your time outside of your schedule for school. You scheduled that time and your parents respected that.
  - barrkel 8y ago
    Well, I think first you need autonomy without direction before you can figure out what you want to do. Without space to be bored, it's hard to find the time to be creative, IMO.

maltalex 8y ago

> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive activity such as playing video games, or watching videos on youtube.

Strive 8y ago
The question confuses me right away because most Americans are not keeping their kids' schedules full all the time. "Go play, I have to work/cook/shop/whatever." Kids are doing "what they would do if they don't have to do anything else," because they don't have to do anything else. Maybe the question is more about the behavior of the adult than the child? Parents need to enable their children's interests. Maybe your child really wants to roller skate but can't do it unless you enable them by watching them, because it's a dangerous neighborhood. It's your responsibility to foster their interest by making the time to help them. Or maybe the idea is that parents sometimes don't actually know the interests of their children? So the point of the question is not to open time in the kid's schedule for their activity (because they're doing that activity already). It's to make the parent more aware of what the activity is?
- electricEmu 8y ago
  It was my understanding purposely filling your child's schedule is a mixed bag. It could help a child or hurt them significantly. That kind of filled schedule adds stress and removes exploration time. I never would have been a programmer if my parents filled my schedule with football, like they wanted to.
- thedudemabry 8y ago
  I would second this. Enabling your child's interests takes observation and work. One of the more surprising things I've discovered as a recent parent is how prominent tablets are as a distraction or learning tool. I'm no exception. We bought our son a cheap, bulletproof Amazon Fire tablet, ratcheted the parental controls to the roof, and let him watch videos or play with it when he requests it (and use it as a helpful distraction when he gets bored in restaurants.) I'm split on how to approach this. On one hand, I would have done anything to have this magical infinite learning device when I found myself bored as a child, but I also recognize that the content on it is more often than not designed for addiction. Our son is not yet old enough to understand even rough warnings of addictive behaviors, so we're kind of watch-and-waiting. We limit screen time per day, but as he gets older, and gets access to a web browser, I'm not sure how I feel about those limits in relation to traditional information sources.

nickjj 8y ago

What's really interesting to me is this same thing can be applied to adults too. The article writes: > For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living".

Filligree 8y ago
>I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living". Shorter. As much as I'd love to follow my heart, I also know that the things I find personally interesting aren't the same ones I'm good at. Alas, it's also in a field where only the very best make any money at all.
- abhiminator 8y ago
  I agree. What the invisible hand of the market and society at large value rarely align with what an individual values (and enjoys) -- a cosmic joke of the human condition imo.
- MrStonedOne 8y ago
  There was this old zenn diagram of the four factors to life that comes to mind. https://i.imgur.com/i52vIDj.jpg https://i.imgur.com/i52vIDj.jpg
  - ainar-g 8y ago
    Did you mean to write "Venn diagram", or this was the joke?
maltalex 8y ago
> I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead of being pressured into "making a living". I imagine we'd have an abundance of pilots, and actors and a severe lack of toilet cleaners.

projectramo 8y ago

I guess my follow up is: which is better? Is it better not to pay attention to tasks and imagine other stuff or is it better to focus on the task no matter how trivial? In other words, should the Maya kids be learning from the Americans?

SerLava 8y ago
That highlights an interesting aspect of American culture. Whenever America is different from the rest of the world, most americans' default position is to assume it is worse. The only exceptions are behaviors with some kind of cultural identity behind them.
2trill2spill 8y ago
Interesting question. I certainly have had many great ideas while not paying attention and being bored out of my mind in school.
- TeMPOraL 8y ago
  I agree. Personally, I don't remember what boredom is. I stop paying attention whenever I can get away with it, happy that I just reclaimed some time from a bullshit situation - time which I can use to think about problems that interest me.
brightball 8y ago
I had the same question. I’ve always been able to focus to the point of obsessiveness on things that interest me and I see the same qualities in my son now. For him it’s Bey Blades and Pokémon right now. Career wise, the trick has always been learning to aim my obsession at the problem.

seibelj 8y ago

My father was short tempered, very loud, and an unusually large man in stature and presence. Additionally he worked nights, got a couple hours of sleep, and then woke up and took care of my brother and I for breakfast / school before sleeping more. He was not someone to mess with in general, let alone at 630am on a Tuesday. I think the threat of being screamed at and intimidated made my brother and I two of the most well behaved kids I knew. I would see my friends going bananas and think, “are you guys out of your minds?” I’m not advocating this style of parenting, and I won’t replicate it, but I can’t deny that the old school mechanism of raising kids was basically “sit down, shut up, or else!” and it made kids much more likely to listen. And the view of children as mini adults who could be useful, if properly trained, has been the default parenting style for thousands of years.

colecut 8y ago
Out of curiosity, what were your feelings like towards your dad at this time? Was there a lot of fear around him? Did you "like" him?
- seibelj 8y ago
  My parents divorced when I was 10, and now my dad is married to his third wife. Age has mellowed him and his third wife has whipped him into a more submissive role, which was a good change in his personality. I don’t hate my dad, he is a flawed man but I love him. We both like NFL, boxing, and movies so we talk a lot about that. My brother is mostly estranged from my dad and they talk rarely, but we all do get together most thanksgivings.
  - Kluny 8y ago
    So his methods worked, but it damaged his relationships with his kids. Seems too high a price to pay.
    - inimino 8y ago
      Seems too snap a judgment to make.

jankotek 8y ago

> The other kid was told to wait. > One little boy started making explosive noises, pretending a toy on the table was a bomb Hm, perhaps some Ritalin could fix this? Perfectly normal behavior; little boy waits and plays small games to pass time. Incompetent teachers blame kids and "fix the problem".

watwut 8y ago
Depends on age whether normal. For 5 years old, yes. For 8 years old, absolutely no. Normal 8 years old should be able to wait two minutes without being disruptive when teacher is focused on somebody else. The kids who can't should absolutely get special help and assistance. However, if the healthy kid can't, then the solution is not to excuse it, but rather teach them patience and less egoism.
- Forge36 8y ago
  But what's the range? Maturity isn't a hard line
  - watwut 8y ago
    No, it is not exact line. I would have to check the exact lines in studies, but basically expectations rise with age. But largely, I think that the goal should be to teach kids to have abilities like patience and functioning when you are not center of attention instead of categorizing them into "good enough" and "bad" categories. Ultimately, don't blame child. That teaching won't happen if adults knee jerk to wave everything away.
kevmo 8y ago
It seems rather foolhardy to presume that a teacher who wants order in their classroom is "incompetent".

amelius 8y ago

> "If you do better on the task, it would end sooner," Esterman says. "And you can get out of the lab sooner." My boss never tells me this :(

pasta1212 8y ago
I have a friend (a programmer) whose employer decided to try shortening the work day to 6 hours as long as the work still got done at the same pace. The owner was under the assumption that work will expand to take the time allotted. The experiment worked, and they still have 6 hour work days a couple years later. I think the theory that work will expand to take the time allotted is true, and I bet the motivation of getting done early is a big contributor as well. Maybe you can pitch it to your boss :)
- amelius 8y ago
  The problem is really that I'm the one making the time-estimations. So if I can get the work done faster, I could (in theory) go home earlier, but if it takes more time than expected, then to be fair I'd have to do night-work.
  - bostonvaulter2 8y ago
    Honestly if you get your work done faster, you will probably just get more work until your schedule is full again.

tomohawk 8y ago

This is pretty much how I was raised in a small midwestern farming community. I was in charge of the laundry by the time I was 6, and the lawn when I was 8 or 9, and summers were pretty much filled with activities that my friends and I could organize. Moving to the burbs where play was organized sports and kids had everything done for them was a really big shock. It was hard to believe how inept at life most of my peers were when I went off to University. They only things they knew were what was on tv or from school.

lgregg 8y ago
I can relate, I was born/grew up overseas and was raised this way before my parents moved back to the states. I moved back with them, and it was surprising how little my friends had in life skills. I had learned to cook (from watching/learning) already and would cook for myself after school for example, while most of my friends would have zero ideas on what to do. It's sad how the U.S. Government prevents native American kids to have this experience in populated areas. There's a cultural vibe of individualism preventing overwatch of kids by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive autonomy that I had as a kid. I was told by my mom that at the age of 4 years old, I hailed a taxi cab alone in the Philippines while she went to the bathroom in a McDonalds. That would never happen here in America.
- microcolonel 8y ago
  Not really sure about your terms here, you seem to be glorifying individualism in practice, but blaming it in name? What could be more individualistic than doing something on your own?
  - lgregg 8y ago
    I disagree, I'm glorifying autonomy in relation to self-determination theory but critiquing individualism as a cultural ideology or orientation. I used different words because I wasn't expecting a response like yours. If you want a deep dive, this is a good paper: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12518973 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12518973

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jeroenhd 8y ago

Text-only link because NPR couldn't be bothered to make their GDPR compliance page link to the correct page: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789

jonnytran 8y ago
How did you find this? I looked all over but was unable to find it after declining and going the the plaintext site. I would love the text-only site... if it worked.
- akavel 8y ago
  You can copy the story ID from the original URL. It's the "long" number just after the date — e.g. in the following URL: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost-secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/6217527... it's 621752789. I would then click any random story on the default "plain text site" (https://text.npr.org/ https://text.npr.org/), to quickly get a base URL for a story, and then replace the sId in the URL with the copied number. Thus: https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789

rahimnathwani 8y ago

> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?' Wow. I don't have to do anything else right now, and I'm reading HN :(

deleted 8y ago

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monocularvision 8y ago

These sorts of stories should require every commenter to disclose how many children they have. Nothing like parenting stories bring out the parenting experts with zero experience.

mmt 8y ago

I'm disappointed to see this article trot out the "unsafe" trope, especially after, earlier in the article, citing the Maya mother stating her child knows how to avoid traffic. > Now, many parents in the U.S. can't go full-on Maya to motivate kids. It's often not practical — or safe — to give kids that much autonomy in many places, for instance. I'm not asserting that traffic is the only US safety concern (or that it's even comparable for that example), but I would have hoped the authors would at least put in a link to an article regarding safety concerns or the controversy, without implicitly taking sides.

ebikelaw 8y ago
Traffic safety is the main reason that US kids aren't out there playing. Because we're "rich" we've created a car-choked hellscape where nobody can be outside. We're so much more "rich" than those backwards people who have to walk to the store or ride a filthy bus.
- mmt 8y ago
  This is not supported by, at least, this chart, comparing the US and Guatemala: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-related_death_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... Now, it may still be true that pedestrians or child pedestrians are killed at a higher rate (per capita, per car, and/or per mile driven) in the US than in Guatemala (or other countries that are not "rich"). However, for that possibility to be plausible, there would need to be at least a credible, substantive explanation.
  - ebikelaw 8y ago
    It's more about the perception than the reality. People won't let their kids out because it appears to be rather dangerous. They drive them everywhere instead. The dig at Americans' self image as "rich" is a reference to the famous line by Enrique Peñalosa: a developed country is not a place where the poor have cars; it's a place where the wealthy ride the bus. I live part-time in Switzerland where the traffic violence rate is a small fraction of what it is here in the US. I let my kids roam the city because it's safe. I won't let them roam around in Oakland where we don't even have sidewalks. My neighbors consider themselves to be very rich compared to my neighbors in Zurich. They have a huge tacky mansion and two Porsche SUVs, and their kids are stupid and fat and have diabetes.

wu-ikkyu 8y ago

It's amazing how so many in our society wonder why kids naturally don't want to be forced to sit down, shut up, and passively consume arbitrary, impractical, and obsolete information. Our teaching and testing methods are stuck in the 19th century. Children who don't fit the mold of a cog in the industrial machine are drugged into submission. >We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living. -Buckminster Fuller

qznc 8y ago

So it comes down to the choice of the kids. Apparently, making an origami jumping mouse is interesting for mayan kids, but not for american ones. The article doesn't even try to convince me that autonomy is the critical factor. When a professor starts a sentence with "It may be the case that" it is clearly just personal opinion and not published scientific fact. The professor intentionally makes the disclaimer that she has no proof for the hypothesis.

empath75 8y ago
Yeah the reason is that they can’t afford to buy talking Paw patrol toys. I’ve handed a bunch of Mayan kids my iPad and they didn’t give it back to me for hours. They totally forgot their beautiful handmade toys in an instant.

sjclemmy 8y ago

I have so many problems with these kind of articles / studies. For starters, does any of this matter? There seems to be a moral assumption that more motivated kids are somehow better. I also dislike the ‘more autonomy’ argument - somewhere in the article it says something like ‘ we can’t give kids that much autonomy because it would be dangerous’. So it’s setting up a morally superior scenario and parenting approach and then discounting it as inapplicable in the modern context. What does that tell you about kids? Nothing. But it tells you a lot about society’s priorities. I’ve got a counter conclusion; the American kids have seen the toys before and they’re just not that interesting. The Mayan kids have fewer toys so are interested in playing with them.

empath75 8y ago

As someone who has spent a bit of time traveling in the Mayan parts of Guatemala and Mexico, it seems difficult to me to compare parenting styles without also considering the fact that quite a few of the Maya in general are living in abject poverty with very little social mobility and with often 3+ generations of family living in close proximity, and I suspect as their financial situation improves and they have better access to distractions like tv or internet, the differences will fade away. I’d be very surprised if it even survived one generation of living in Guatemala City, let alone after moving to the US. It’s one thing to let your kids free roam in a village that has a single dirt road going through it and almost everyone around you is a cousin or has known your family for generations. It’s quite another in the suburbs where you have only had a 5 minute chat with one neighbor in 3 months. I’m also sort of skeptical of applying a value judgement to one or the other — I’m not sure that it would be beneficial to raise your kids that way in the developed world, although it sounds nice in the abstract.

mbateman 8y ago

For what it's worth, what the Maya families are doing is a version of the central principle of Montessori early education (and what my company is trying to scale). That is, build a capacity for deep concentration in early childhood using (1) high autonomy pedagogical practices and (2) an environment with a structure that makes it possible for children to contribute to practical life.

unit91 8y ago

I have 6 kids, and I've found it's pretty simple to get kids to pay attention (or anything else). Be consistent, and willing to discipline if necessary. Here's the order I follow: 1. Polite request 2. Polite command 3. Stern command 4. Warning 5. Push-ups 6. Spanking They know I love them and because of that love obedience is required. Situations rarely escalate past step 2, and step 6 is memorable. ETA: for anything past the polite stages, I try to always follow-up with gentle counseling after they've had a couple minutes to think about it. "Do you know why you got into trouble? How could you have handled the situation better?". Complete amnesty is the rule during counseling, i.e., no matter what they confess, they will NOT receive punishment. I want them to learn by reflection.

marmaduke 8y ago
Obedience is not the same as paying attention. My son can make coffee and an omelette not because I told him but because he thinks it’s fun.
- unit91 8y ago
  Sure it is. "Son, pay attention please." Kids are capable of much more than we give them credit for. Often people "can't" pay attention because they don't want to. Obvious exceptions apply (mental handicap, fatigue, etc).
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Or because you shouldn't have to pay attention, if you don't want to. For adults (or maybe just the nature of internet conversations), it can seem like a power dynamic. I demand you reflect me back to me, speak my language, concepts, awareness - not your own, etc. That's what it can feel like, being required to pay attention at all times, like one person is the programmer, and the other is the computer. It's nice to have a mind that sucks up everything but it's also nice to have a mind that is self directed. As we age, we get stuck in ways of thinking, knowing, understanding just because we accumulate personal identity. These things are much more fluid if one allows them to be, that's what paying attention can mean. The idea of obedience, eek. Mental handicap, mental fatigue - without concrete proof, I think it's wise to not apply labels to individuals one must interact with. People sometimes have difficulty paying attention because they need to come to their own understanding independently, and if you are always trying to shove information in - making sure they can output that information in the correct format, one isn't letting them get there as an individual. Capable, sure they are. Sometimes they can be much more aware than they appear to be too, and the only difference that capacity doesn't manifest itself is because in a system where the only options are - reflect information in these correct formats, otherwise adult observation implies 'no attention paid', I mean... Can you be capable and feel as though you got there as an individual if those are the rules of the system? Simplified, give people time, have patience. The reasons why they aren't 'getting it' is because you are trying to give the whole thing to them. Sometimes people want to get there independently, and once that gets boring, they probably can develop a greater desire to get there with others.

baxtr 8y ago

Be aware that the conclusion is not rock solid: So maybe the Maya children are more attentive in the origami/toy experiment — not because they have better attention spans — but because they are more motivated to pay attention. Their parents have somehow motivated them to pay attention even without being told. They say maybe... I can think of other reasons why Maya children seem to be more interested in anything happening in a western lab, than western kids. I don’t know the details because I haven’t read the original paper, but reading the article I’m not sure this effect has been ruled out.

pnathan 8y ago

It's very hard to compare a hunter gatherer / traditional village society to the modern urban & educated society and have meaningful takeaways. The crux of the matter is the requirement for responsibility. Rather than have this goofy teenagehood that runs from 13-25, forcing the matter of responsibility at an earlier age and accepting the failures is a critical difference. Protecting children and ensuring they are not morally damaged runs exactly counter this reality. There's a good deal of cognitive dissonance and parental self-delusion going on here as well. I have generally grown to have a dislike of child labor laws that prohibit or limit working after 14. It's doing a great disservice to the young adults who could be doing something constructive in character. Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet litter, etc.

fb03 8y ago
> Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet litter, etc. It is insane that some parents I know would like to reply to this part of your answer like this: "Kids should be kids you shouldn't force them to be adults too soon or you might steal their childhood". I've literally heard that.
- kzrdude 8y ago
  You might steal from their adulthood if you refuse to teach them life skills, maybe something to reply with.
- insulanian 8y ago
  Well, maybe they feel that someone stole their childhood, and don't want the same to happen to their children.
- pnathan 8y ago
  Adulting is not evil; it is a consequence of discharging your responsibility and functioning as a human being. Kids will be kids, that has nothing to do with responsibility. I could ask my child to go to work - he'll be completely inept at it. He would be, truly and genuinely, childish. I view my kid as a roommate - one I have responsibility for. As they become capable, they obtain agency and will be asked to deliver on that agency, within the limits of their capacity. Sometime around 16, I will expect them to execute the full tasks of an adult, barring rent. In turn, I will operate as a counselor and guide at that point, giving them a cushion when their attempts fail; the cushion will be mostly removed when are 18. Childhood in the WEIRD view is a recent innovation, dreamt up by the middle & upper middle class in the 1800s, much like teenagers in the 1900s. These ideas of what constitutes normative behavior for specific ages are contingent on our cultural matrix and are not hardcoded.

jinfiesto 8y ago

I often wonder whether this has a lot to do with how we treat our kids. I often catch myself acting uninterested in my daughter's interests (she's two and often wants to show me things for the 50th time that were pretty boring in the first place.) She doesn't have any attention or behavioral issues in general, but I was amazed when a friend of mine came to visit who is an early music educator. They didn't do anything music related, but watching her interact with my daughter was eye-opening. She was very present and respectful with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I guess more or less she treated my daughter more or less like an adult. Thinking about it, it's so easy to be flippant or dismissive about what our kids are doing or are interested in without even noticing. I was really amazed to see how much my daughter reciprocated the attention and my friend was able to get her to pay attention to this or that or be much more engaged than I usually can. This is obviously a very small sample, but it really made me think about the ways that we don't treat our children like adults (and how maybe they act like children because we treat them that way.)

usaphp 8y ago
> She was very present and respectful with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I am sure if she came over to your place for 50+ times she would also act different than the first time. I think It’s ok to be bored with a 2 year old request to show the same book or the same picture over and over and over again.
- ryan-allen 8y ago
  Or Fortnite, or Minecraft. I'm not sure how to solve for this, but I'm trying to instill that conversations and interactions have to be two way, so just because "you are interested in X" doesn't mean that talking at someone over and over about things they are not interested in isn't a way to foster satisfying interactions for all parties involved. A parent might placate and be always "oh that's so interesting!", but their peers? Their peers might ignore them leaving the kid confused as to the response.
  - imesh 8y ago

i_love_jc 8y ago

"The parents intentionally give their children this autonomy and freedom because they believe it's the best way to motivate kids." This is basically the philosophy behind self-directed learning: unschooling as well as learning communities like Sudbury schools, liberated learners centers, and agile learning centers. I work at one of these schools, and our kids are really good at paying attention. ADD is a real thing and still affects some of them, but we also have a lot of kids who were diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal.

jonhendry18 8y ago
"diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal." Of course the problem is that, even when something is interesting to the person at a high level, there may be subsets of that activity which are dead boring.

icc97 8y ago

> "Of course she can go shopping," Tun Burgos says. "She can buy some eggs or tomatoes for us. She knows the way and how to stay out of traffic." I wonder how much this has to do with the value of child life. What are the statistics of Mayan children being run over / kidnapped? I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico, just somehow parents are more willing / less informed to take this risk.

vickychijwani 8y ago
I don't have the stats you're looking for, but I would guess the prior probability of accidents and foul play in smaller communities is also going to be lower than it is for large urban communities, because these communities are more tightly-knit, and people drive less rashly to begin with, etc. Or maybe they drive more rashly - I don't know. The point is, there are a lot of factors to consider. So it's going to be hard to draw conclusions from stats. In other words, how much of those numbers is explained by said lower probability, and how much by parents' willingness to trust their kids?
Tepix 8y ago
If people believed in statistics they would let their kids roam free like their parents and grandparents did. It's much safer than it used to be. Alas, US parents are overly protective.
- icc97 8y ago
  I believe it's because parents and grandparents never looked at statistics and so because in communities where there wasn't a story of children getting kidnapped or being killed on the road then they just never thought about the chance happening.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico It's far less safe in Mexico than in the US, though it's probably still safer in Mexico than Americans perceive it to be in the US. > just somehow parents are more willing / less informed to take this risk. You seem to presume Americans are well informed here; they are not. They consistently vastly overestimate the current risk and incorrectly perceive it as increasing when statistics does it is decreasing. Mexicans could be more willing to let their kids out because they are better informed (at least, have a more accurate perception of the risks) rather than less informed.

yy77 8y ago

The genereal idea is to let the children themselves want something with passion and they will pay attention. (not only to child in fact). However, one of the simple way to do that is NOT autonomy as the article suggest, but to make that thing sparse, precious and difficult to get. The children does not have the right to be well educated, will pay more attention comparing to those who have plenty already.

bengrunfeld 8y ago

Forcing female gender pronouns on children of unknown gender, just to make a broader political point is simply pathetic. Left-wing media has lost any right to moral authority, and since their impartiality has been lost on this issue, you must assume that they tweak the facts to suit their own political agenda. Fox News is truer to journalism these days than NPR, which seems to think that the "Great Satan" is a white non-Muslim male who asserts HIMself in very binary terms as a man.

Aissen 8y ago

Text version for EU users https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789 , since declining tracking does not redirect to the correct article. It should work well with your browser's reading mode.

arendtio 8y ago
Thanks, now I understand what reading mode is for :-)

xstartup 8y ago

I and my wife discuss programming matters in front of our kids. And my kids listen to the discussions and want to be part of it. Then I start teaching the basics, they are a bit more willing to hear. Here the incentive for them is to be part of the club where interesting things are happening. We laugh at coding jokes which kids don't appear to understand which leaves them confused. So, it seems they are aware they lack some understanding because of which they are unable to understand us. The same idea has worked for math, playing musical instruments like keyboard/ukelele, physical exercises like skipping ropes or air pushups. If I simply give them a computer or ukelele, they won't be interested as they don't know how to hold a ukulele or have no one to tell them how to hold it right and how to fuse a chord progression with the strumming pattern. These things are not obvious by just watching or hits and trials on a guitar/ukelele.

mncharity 8y ago
Thanks for an idea. As part of developing a rough-quantitative feel for physical properties, I like associating measures with real-life adult-world examples. Eg, a Newton-meter torque is reopening a 2L plastic soda bottle.[1] But my mindset was 'make the associations transparent and low-barrier', and do 'number->example, to allow easily exploring the measure space"'. But what if there was more mystery, struggle, challenge, tease? An adaptively tuned barrier. Instead of 'touching a thermometer scale at some temperature instantly yields a video about making chocolate', or a video clip of a tv news weather report, what if instead a video had temperatures bleeped/blurred out, and required an act of effort - "give me the temperature, d*mnit! it should be around here somewhere...". Then maybe related videos (of similar temperature or topic) aren't just more surfing, but payoff? An unlocking. "Ohhh, change the temperature of that step and you get a different kind of chocolate!" Maybe a little animated critter that watches videos with you, and cheers for temperatures, or jumps on them, and sometimes makes it so you cant hear/see them, unless you shush the critter, or move it. Anyway, random brainstorming - I'm exploring maybe doing a temperature education app. Thanks for your comment. [1] http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torque http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...

b1daly 8y ago

The way my step sons live strikes me as having much less autonomy than I had at their age. I’m still boggles that young kids aren’t allowed to walk to school by themselves. Most of the time, I tend to think as long as good basic care is taken of kids, they can work out all sorts of weird child rearing environments just fine. Something that has given me pause though is the astonishing addictive power of the various “screen” which occupy so much attention. Unibiquitous telecommunication is something new in human history, and it really grabs hold of people, the young as much as anyone. My concern is that our highly tuned psycho-physiology has not evolved to handle the type of activity, and it’s distorting our consciousnesses, and ability to pay attention, in ways that are unhealthy. (Similarly to how humans have a hard time with too much access to processed food with high calorie amounts.)

known 8y ago

"You are a product of your environment" --Clement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect

mac01021 8y ago

This is the second article on HN in the last few weeks from NPR praising the virtues of traditional Central American child rearing.

jpadkins 8y ago

Control-F 'montessori' ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education The conclusions are not new. Maria Montessori researched this 100 years ago. - Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options. - Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours. - A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction. -

jvvw 8y ago

If anybody is interested in this, then it's worth looking at the RIE approach for babies and toddlers (Janet Lansbury's blog is a good place to start http://www.janetlansbury.com/ http://www.janetlansbury.com/). A large part of it is about allow babies and toddlers to choose what they pay attention to. Anecdotally, I very loosely followed it with our two and they have amazing attention spans compared with most kids their age - certainly both their teachers have commented on it. It's also much more relaxing as a parent I found, letting your children be in charge of what they want to pay attention to most of the time.

santoshmaharshi 8y ago

At https://www.schoolze.com https://www.schoolze.com - we are looking at the problems faced by Schools from all these angles. From Attention, to engagement, to fundraising, to measure all the aspects of a successfull K-12 classrooms. That's why looking at the participant of the education system is very important. Be it Kids, Schools, Teachers or PTAs. All will have to work towards this success.