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I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to b

by hrktb 8y ago

I wonder how much time in average we got playing with our parents. I was in primary schoold in the 80s and I remember seeing my father 10 min before going to bed, my mother was mostly dealing with stuff (administrative tasks, house keeping, shopping, cooking, checking homeworks) and outside of Scrabble I don’t remember playing anything with her. We’d watch tv news or vapid tv drama together at best, rest of time I’d do whatever I wanted as long as it wasn’t hurting anyone nor illegal. Compared to that it seems to me parents nowadays are a lot more feeling guilty of not spending enough time with their kids, even as they spend a ton more in my opinion.

jacobolus 8y ago
I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.
mrhappyunhappy 8y ago
I’m about same age as you and I don’t remember spending much if any time with my parents. The same goes for all the kids I knew. Most of us kids played with each other or toys we had around the house. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents but even there nobody played with me. We did go to parks often so there was joint activities but they were very hands off. These days I am a father to a 1 year old and I’ve been spending a lot of time with him (work from home on my own schedule). My worry is that I will spend too much time with him as he grows up, and not leave enough space for him to develop on his own through exploration and individuality. Of course I haven’t had to deal with screen time yet and I realize that will be a serious challenge. My goal is to get rid of any smart devices by the time he is curious about them. We don’t own iPads or tablets in general and I don’t plan on buying any. I have no doubts I can curtail my own phone browsing usage but say the same for my wife who is constantly on hers.

by hrktb 8y ago

jacobolus 8y ago

I imagine this varies a bit from person to person. My impression is that the best way to learn anything is with at least a significant amount of time spent deliberately practicing under expert supervision/tutoring. You want to be working at just the right difficulty, neither mindlessly repeating stuff that is too easy nor stuck on a project with too large a scope or too difficult prerequisites. Lots of “our time” (i.e. yours and mine) growing up in the 80s was surely wasted. I know I could have learned a whole lot more working 1:1 with an expert tutor/mentor instead of in an above average school class of 30 kids. I know some kids who had very high-touch mentorship and turned into real prodigies. (Of course, some others are pushed by controlling parents and feel resentful.) Even when it comes to extracurricular activities (like building stuff out of Legos, solving logic puzzles, cooking, playing sports, or whatever), I could have learned a whole lot more than I did if I wasn’t left mostly to my own devices, but had someone occasionally suggest challenging projects or show me some new ideas at my current level or fix up my misconceptions. And my parents surely spent far more time with me than average, especially in the first few years. I learned a great many things just fiddling around for hours and hours by myself, but most of that learning was grossly inefficient.

mrhappyunhappy 8y ago

I’m about same age as you and I don’t remember spending much if any time with my parents. The same goes for all the kids I knew. Most of us kids played with each other or toys we had around the house. I spent a lot of time at my grandparents but even there nobody played with me. We did go to parks often so there was joint activities but they were very hands off. These days I am a father to a 1 year old and I’ve been spending a lot of time with him (work from home on my own schedule). My worry is that I will spend too much time with him as he grows up, and not leave enough space for him to develop on his own through exploration and individuality. Of course I haven’t had to deal with screen time yet and I realize that will be a serious challenge. My goal is to get rid of any smart devices by the time he is curious about them. We don’t own iPads or tablets in general and I don’t plan on buying any. I have no doubts I can curtail my own phone browsing usage but say the same for my wife who is constantly on hers.