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It's very simple. As a parent, your job is to help your children become the best people they can be, not the people they'd turn out by default. I would much r

It's very simple. As a parent, your job is to help your children become the best people they can be, not the people they'd turn out by default. I would much rather my son hate me now and thank me later than the other way around. To use this example - if your choice is to raise a child who is organized vs one who is a slob: aim for organized because it will help them down the road in many ways. It's not the most important thing, but leaving the kid to their own devices is just lazy. Funny example - every woman I ever dated has a story of coming to a guy's apartment, seeing that it's gross, and turning around. So these men are literally missing out on sex/partnership opportunities because their parents didn't teach them to clean up their room. Thanks a lot mom and dad.

nmfisher 6y ago
> I would much rather my son hate me now and thank me later than the other way around. Well put.
closeparen 6y ago
I'm sure those men could clean their rooms perfectly well if someone made them. Their problem isn't using the wrong solvents or mixing light and dark laundry. It's lacking the conscientiousness to do boring/unpleasant life admin work consistently when no one is making them. There may be ways for parents to impart this trait, but just making them is probably not it. Boys who clean because their mothers are angry become men who clean because their wives are angry. FWIW my parents were 100% diligent about bedtime, nutrition, cleaning my room, etc. I threw it all to the wind as soon as I moved out for college. Predictably I felt like shit. But I had to go through those experiences of feeling like shit, and then noticing that the "responsible" behaviors helped, before I cared enough to prioritize them. In other words, I see what my parents were trying to do. I see what so many parents are trying to do when they get into huge conflicts with their kids. Teach lessons that they learned firsthand, so that the kids can skip the unpleasant parts (being sleep deprived, living in filth, bad breakups, whatever) and just do everything right the first time. But it doesn't work that way. Everyone has to find out for themselves.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  > There may be ways for parents to impart this trait, but just making them is probably not it. Boys who clean because their mothers are angry become men who clean because their wives are angry. This is the point I was trying to make in my downvoted post - thank you for stating it more clearly than I was able to.
- runsWphotons 6y ago
  It's a good point. But did it help that when you decided to prioritise those things, you actually had some idea how to execute?
  - DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
    Not if you have any kind of executive-function disorder, which is one of the common traits of ASD and ADD/ADHD.
  - closeparen 6y ago
    I don’t think I ever found the information or techniques challenging. I do think that having the prior experience of a “wholesome” life made it occur to me as a potential solution to malaise. It’s very sad that some kids never experience that baseline.

nmfisher 6y ago

> I would much rather my son hate me now and thank me later than the other way around. Well put.

closeparen 6y ago

I'm sure those men could clean their rooms perfectly well if someone made them. Their problem isn't using the wrong solvents or mixing light and dark laundry. It's lacking the conscientiousness to do boring/unpleasant life admin work consistently when no one is making them. There may be ways for parents to impart this trait, but just making them is probably not it. Boys who clean because their mothers are angry become men who clean because their wives are angry. FWIW my parents were 100% diligent about bedtime, nutrition, cleaning my room, etc. I threw it all to the wind as soon as I moved out for college. Predictably I felt like shit. But I had to go through those experiences of feeling like shit, and then noticing that the "responsible" behaviors helped, before I cared enough to prioritize them. In other words, I see what my parents were trying to do. I see what so many parents are trying to do when they get into huge conflicts with their kids. Teach lessons that they learned firsthand, so that the kids can skip the unpleasant parts (being sleep deprived, living in filth, bad breakups, whatever) and just do everything right the first time. But it doesn't work that way. Everyone has to find out for themselves.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
> There may be ways for parents to impart this trait, but just making them is probably not it. Boys who clean because their mothers are angry become men who clean because their wives are angry. This is the point I was trying to make in my downvoted post - thank you for stating it more clearly than I was able to.
runsWphotons 6y ago
It's a good point. But did it help that when you decided to prioritise those things, you actually had some idea how to execute?
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Not if you have any kind of executive-function disorder, which is one of the common traits of ASD and ADD/ADHD.
- closeparen 6y ago
  I don’t think I ever found the information or techniques challenging. I do think that having the prior experience of a “wholesome” life made it occur to me as a potential solution to malaise. It’s very sad that some kids never experience that baseline.