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Of all the "weird" things we do as parents in euro/anglo nations, sleeping arrangements seems nowhere near the top. IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling

Of all the "weird" things we do as parents in euro/anglo nations, sleeping arrangements seems nowhere near the top. IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid. Edit - and this isn't really a western thing, "Tiger Mom" and similar probably pre-dates this behavior in the US.

meowster 6y ago
I volunteer with a U.S. Scout troop. I see boys that don't know whether or not they can go on an activity/campout because they have to ask their parents if they're free that day/weekend. I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in. Most all of them just seem apathetic. I'm sure their parents are trying to do what is best for their children, but it doesn't seem to be working.
- threatofrain 6y ago
  I don’t know what it means for kids to be free nowadays. Free to visit a friend’s home seems like the only thing, because everything else is a home that’s an anonymous unit or a commercial establishment that’s gated by money. It’s not like you’re releasing your child to be raised by the experiences of the village. With that in mind, many parents are probably struggling to not have their kids consumed by the web during free time, esp during COVID lockdowns.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    We raised my son in the DC suburbs (Herndon, VA). There is still a "town center" of sorts, with several parks nearby. So, free for him meant a combo of going to friends (mostly in the same large subdivision), getting to school on his own (bike, board, foot, bus), and running around after school (parks, downtown, whatever - I know a few of his common haunts, but didn't track his every waking moment).
  - agent008t 6y ago
    Skateboarding? Climbing trees? Taking apart a toy? Messing around with a computer and a programming language? Inventing a game?
  - timerol 6y ago
    There are plenty of areas open to the public that are accessible to children: playgrounds, libraries, schoolyards, skateparks, large underused parking lots, malls, public pools. Some places have great nature nearby: beaches, creeks, rivers, hills, and mountains. Some of those are more dangerous than others, but they are all accessible if the parent allows it.
    - Clewza313 6y ago
      In the US, if the children in question are under 12 and going to any of those places unsupervised, they're likely to get the police and/or CPS called on them.
      - alistairSH 6y ago
        Sadly true. And part of the problem. There's now an expectation (at least in upper middle class areas) that kids be in formal, supervised activities 24/7. I still remember growing up, playing around the neighborhood, and a parent would call out the front door "Danny, dinner time!" and all the kids would scatter to get home for dinner. #getoffmylawn #wheresmycane
        deleted 6y ago
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      - bkav 6y ago
        It depends on where. A few years ago, I lived in a falling-down house in a family neighborhood of mainly immigrants. There was a school a few blocks away, and kids used to come hang out in our trees (I’m pretty sure they thought the place was abandoned) and occasionally set off fireworks by the creek we lived next to. I wouldn’t have called the cops on them since they weren’t causing any real trouble, but if my neighbors did, no one ever came. There are bigger problems in that town (like the feral fucking dogs) that the cops refused to do anything about. But honestly, most of the neighbors were familiar with each other and let their kids roam pretty free. It was nice to see that places like that still exist.
      - 6y ago
- alistairSH 6y ago
  It's all so strange to me. My son (now 26) always had summers free at minimum. While he was younger, he did go to a YMCA outdoor "adventure" day camp at a nearby lake park. Once he was in middle school, he stayed home. Sports 2-3 seasons, but he got to pick which one he played and never the crazy travel league stuff. In high school, he was free to do what he wanted (football for 2 years, guitar all 4, and a mix of rec league basketball and volleyball when he felt like it). Always plenty of time to ride his bike, play at the park, run around with friends. Starting in middle school, he'd often disappear across town on bike of skateboard for hours at a time. School was 2.5 miles away and he often opted to ride his skateboard instead of the bus. I see kids today where every free moment is booked with stuff. All in some sisyphean effort to get into Harvard or something. I mean, sure, I get a desire to go to a top name uni, but the changes of little Johnnie getting in, regardless of extra-curricular, is so small that all the effort seems mostly wasted to me. I "only" went to UVA and turned out fine, IMO, so maybe I'm biased. I dunno.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - caddemon 6y ago
    I don't disagree with your premise, I'm strongly against parents trying to game college admissions for their 13 year old. But getting into UVA is not easy at all. Especially out of state, the admit rate is like 15% - so while not as crazy as Harvard it's in line with a few of the Ivies. IMO a lot of the admissions-centered thinking has propagated down the rankings further and further in recent years too. Anecdotally I've seen people over-scheduling their children for target schools in a tier below UVA. This attitude of course creates a terrible feedback cycle, as admissions gets more and more competitive. At some point I'd like to think the admit offices are sick of seeing so many prototypical candidates, but still you need to do something to stand out. Ideally the parent should advise the kid on this meta-info, without literally telling them what to pursue.
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago
  > Most all of them just seem apathetic. Which seems the other side of helicopter parenting; kids don't get much of a say in deciding what they fill their free time with, so they don't develop an opinion in things like that. Plus (and I'm going to sound old here, give me my cane so I can shake it), there's a lot more casual entertainment lying around the house nowadays to fill the voids in people's time. "doing nothing" is not much of a thing anymore, because people will casually browse their phone or turn on the TV or something. (I'm guilty of that as well). In the previous generation, there would be a TV but not everything on there would catch the interest of everyone.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    I wonder if browsing your phone is really much different from channel surfing. I suppose by sheer volume you never run out of "channels" on the internet.
- fossuser 6y ago
  It gets beaten out of you and the easiest response is to just give up and wait it out. “You don’t want to do this anymore? You need this for college, you shouldn’t quit everything you do, I wish I could have done this” etc. Eventually it’s just easier to passively suffer whatever activity you dislike and just recognize the starting cost to trying new things is extreme. > “ I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in.” I’d start with asking them about what their parents are like.
  - meowster 6y ago
    I know what they're parents are like during meetings and campouts. I have to manage them as much as I manage the boys. Some of them try to helicopter during meetings. There was one Scout that I've only seen smile when his dad wasn't around. They don't seem to like the idea that Scouts is supposed to be youth-run/led and that it's okay to fail as long as they learn from it and improve. The parents just don't want them to fail or be uncomfortable at all (it's not always dry and warm outside).
    - fossuser 6y ago
      Cool - sounds like you have the context. I just remember adults yelling at me as a kid for things like this. “You should take responsibility.” Etc. At the time I didn’t know what to do. I wish I had just said, “I have no control over my life”. I think other adults can sometimes be clueless about what a kid’s family life is like.
      - deleted 6y ago
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  - leetcrew 6y ago
    it can be sort of futile. as a kid, you can argue, resist, or break the rules, but until you can support yourself financially, your parents get the final say on most important matters. reminds me of my first meeting with my advisor at college to pick courses for freshman year. I came in with a few ideas for courses/majors that my dad thought were practical. my advisor picked up on this almost immediately and asked "okay, but what are you interested in?". we had a nice talk, but at the end I went back to picking from the list my dad approved of. my advisor was disappointed and insisted that I needed to chart my own path through college. my response: "yeah, but I need my dad to write the check".
- brudgers 6y ago
  These days, there aren't many kids who only do Scouting...it's an over-scheduling comorbidity. For kids who resist over-scheduling, scouting seems to be one of the first things to go...because den and pack meetings are by and for adults, they never make it to a troop. Or to put it another way, teenage apathy prevalence is probably pre-teen survivor bias.
  - meowster 6y ago
    I wonder what the rate of dropping out during Cub Scouts is vs Scouts BSA, vs how many don't cross over from Cubs to Scouts. The crossover happens around age 11, so I would imagine most of the dropouts happen later.
    - brudgers 6y ago
      Anecdotal observation from my child's experience is nearly everyone who dropped out dropped out as a cub scout. That was a very large fraction. Those who crossed over are typically Eagle Scouts. But for one of those kids, they were all highly scheduled. But for a different one, they were each complying with parental wishes. My child was over Cub Scouts by Bears. But more than a decade later, my grown-ass child hangs out with several of the Eagles. They are close friends.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The scouting, at least here, is very time consuming. It seems to want to be your whole lifestyle.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Most actives do. Commitment is the way to win championships, so any one moment you are not practicing your sport is a chance to lose the award. That things can/should be fun is lost. Scouting is a bit better than sports, but they still want your life.
      - watwut 6y ago
- jkubicek 6y ago
  That seems normal to me? I'm well-past the teenage years, and I wouldn't commit to a weekend activity without double-checking with the rest of my family first.
  - meowster 6y ago
    I think it's "normal" only in the sense that most everyone behaves this way today, but I don't think it should be that way. By the time I was older in Scouts, my siblings were in college and my parent could drive me to wherever, or at least to the meeting place where I could carpool. The times when my parent wasn't available, I took the city bus. I imagine if one of my siblings was was the same age and our parent could only drive one of us, the other would take the bus. The first time I took the bus, my parent went with me to show me how, and then let me do it myself going forward.
    - watwut 6y ago
      I dont think the person you responded to was thinking about driving vs busses. Basically, you are 16 and want to spend whole weekend out of house including during the night. Not doing it without parental permission seems normal to me. Nor it seems new. My gradma or grandpa definitely could not just spend whole night and weekend away just by own decision. They would expect my parents to ask them for permission. I was expected the same.
      - meowster 6y ago
        Mine was default allow, his was default block. I had to inform, he had to get permission. Perhaps same result, but one feels more autonomous than the other. From another one of my comments: > I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school). > I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person
        6y ago
- leto_ii 6y ago
  I don't think attitudes to infant care translate in any way to how older kids or teenagers are treated in different cultures. I'm not a parent, but I was a child and teenager at some point, so I can say from personal experience that parents who are extremely present at a young age can actually give you more leeway later in life. On a more general note, I can recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' - it covers similar topics to the bbc article and more.
- watwut 6y ago
  There is nothing new in that? When I was pre teen and teen, I definitely had to get parents permission for weekend campout. It seems to me normal that parent have a say in whether the non-adult child sleep at home. Plus there were weekend activities woth familly I was expected to participate in - trips, familly visits, grandpa birthsday, etc. So I would ask. I mean, idea that 16-17 years old goes for campout without asking parents strikes me as wtf.
  - deleted 6y ago
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  - meowster 6y ago
    I don't know, my parents always asked me if I wanted to go to my Grandmother's house or other trips (I did). I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school). I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person, because they need to be to have any chance at being successful.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
> and this isn't really a western thing For real, I've heard some horror stories about e.g. Chinese parents pulling their kids through the grinder.
standardUser 6y ago
"So many kids in my area have their days booked solid" Sounds like a wealthy thing, not a Western thing.
- ajmadesc 6y ago
  Queue the Doctor / Lawyer married couple with 2.5 kids who vacation twice a year, lease German cars, and have positive net worth crying about 'only being middle class'.
  - derivagral 6y ago
    Technically, aren't they right? Middle class typically means you still have to work, strictly speaking. I'm going off of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Three-level_economic_class_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Three-level_econo...
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      Depends who you ask, or the context. Anecdotally, software developers, being more math-minded than average, tend to think of middle-class literally - the middle third or middle quintile of income distribution.
      - opportune 6y ago
        That has never been the meaning of the term historically and doesn’t capture the magnitudes-difference between the middle and upper classes.
        alistairSH 6y ago
        I agree. I was just pointing out that there is a portion of the HN readership that tends to use the strictly economic definition (rightly or wrongly). Also, the meaning has shifted over time. As used in the early 1900s - I realize the term was coined even earlier than that - it referred to what today we'd likely call upper-middle-class (or if you're a fan of Engles, the bourgeoisie). White-collar, professional, well-educated, but not rich/powerful/nobility. It excluded almost the entirety of the working-class (even those who, by income, were well above poverty). More recently, usage in the US has trended towards anybody above poverty but not quite rich (and choose your own definition of rich to suit your point). Which itself includes a massive span of incomes and lifestyles.
sdevonoes 6y ago
Best decision my parents made for me when I was kid: no extra activities after school, no summer camps, no music lessons, etc, no soccer teams, etc. I did have "unofficial summer camps", I did play some music instruments (without teachers), I did play a lot of soccer (without teams, just in the street)... I (and the kids in my neighbourhood) did all of these without adults.
- polishdude20 6y ago
  Yeah me too! I had the occasional swimming lesson once per week or something but other than that, if the weather was good, you'd find me and all the neighborhood kids running around playing tag or riding our bikes everywhere. I grew up at a co-op so all of the houses were close together and there were a lot of families and other kids my age. I think the number one thing you can do for your kid is to live in a neighborhood with lots of other kids.
- meowster 6y ago
  I went to art class once a week because I liked it, but stopped at a young age when I didn't se any classes in the course catalog that I was interested in. The only summer camp I did was one week a summer with Scouts. I'm guessing "summer camp" for most other kids is of a longer duration?
- thebigman433 6y ago
  Did you not have any desire to do these things? This strikes me as an odd "rule" to have since a lot of people genuinely enjoy these activities. Playing football in high school was one of my favorite parts of the time period, and going to a summer camp legitimately changed my life path. I think these things can be extremely good if the child wants to participate. I couldnt imagine not letting my own child not do these things if they wanted to.
- asdff 6y ago
  Not everyone grows up in a neighborhood with kids their age.
lqet 6y ago
Not so sure this is necessarily a western thing. When I was a kid in Germany in the 90ies, school started at 7:30, and ended at 13:00. Once a week you had afternoon school from 14:30 to 16:00, and my parents wanted me to have piano lessons once a week. But after 13:00, and on weekends, I was generally free to do whatever I wanted. I played computer games excessively and watched a lot of movies, of course, but I also explored the nearby forest, build tree houses, taught myself how to build a computer, BASIC, Delphi, HTML, CSS and JS, and drew a comic series with a friend (of course we were the only readers). Except for math, everything that helped my through university and my professional life so far I learned in this free time, just by playing.
- thombee 6y ago
  Isn't Germany western?
  - Someone1234 6y ago
    Yes, thus their point.
  - NullPrefix 6y ago
    Are we talking about west Germany?
carabiner 6y ago
My coworker did this with her son. She was spread thin with afterschool programs, sports, projects and so on. Well, the kid got into Caltech. Where he'll probably meet amazing people and receive an excellent education. So maybe it worked? How many YC founders had this overbooked childhood? I'd guess over 70%.
- SamuelAdams 6y ago
  And there's plenty of students at Caltech who were not overbooked in their free time.
- notsureaboutpg 6y ago
  I think your guess would be wrong, but I also don't think overbooking is a problem. As a child who had lots of free time due to living in a place with a lack of structured activities for kids, I really envy kids who can take advantage of such resources enough to have a packed daily schedule.
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    It's not so much that kids shouldn't have structured activities; it's that these activities shouldn't be thrust upon them by parents. Yeah, the smaller the kid, the more direction they're going to need. But a 5th grader should be able to pick their activities within reason. I mentioned it in another thread, but when I was coaching youth sports, I saw two huge (IMO) problems... first, kids specializing at a young age - 5th and 6th graders playing a single sport 9+ months of the year (vs mixing it up). Related to that was a disturbing frequency of overuse injuries in younger athletes. Baseball players coming back from summer with stress fractures in their spines from too much pitching practice and things like that. And also a whole lot of straight-A students being forced to attend extra-curricular tutoring. I'm sure in some regions, it might be necessary to learn advanced subjects, but Fairfax County schools have robust GT/AP/honors programs and allow dual enrollment at the local community college - very few kids are running out of available maths classes, etc. And with a robust state college system (UVA, W&M, VT, GMU, JMU, and on and on), the "penalty" for not getting into Stanford isn't much (for the majority of subjects). Anyways, all anecdotal, but of my son's peers, the kids with the overbooked schedules didn't really go to colleges any more prestigious than anybody else. Most just ended up at one of the several excellent state colleges.
rsync 6y ago
"IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid." It's a weird and tricky balance that one has to strike, in the US, in 2021 ... On the one hand, I feel strongly that kids should have free time and energy to explore and experiment and I am reinforced daily in my instinct that a "bored" kid is just another 10 minutes away from doing something interesting and magical. On the other hand, as my oldest children reach pre-teen age, and I pay more attention to their pre-teen peers, I find myself agreeing with the "idle hands are the devils playground" heuristic. I want my teenage children busy doing constructive and healthy things. But it gets complicated ... you can't just plug your kid onto a age 12 or age 13 baseball or hockey team. Those kids have been playing the sport (and playing the sport together) since they were 4 or 5. Your kid will not make the team or will be conspicuously out of place. So if you've been free-ranging it for their first ten years you're going to need to get more creative as you transition to the teenage years... I have seen things like mountain biking and BJJ be good options...
- kar5pt 6y ago
  Exactly. I tried joining sports for the first time when I was 14 (around 15 years ago). And it was honestly a humiliating experience. I was so far behind the other kids in skill level it was just sad. And I was the ONLY one on the team that couldn't keep up. Everyone else had been practicing for 5-10 years. You're a good parent to notice and think about these things.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  Yeah, totally agree on sports. But, that's part of the problem - kids specializing in a single sport before high school? That's bonkers to m. When I was in school, very few kids specialized, even through high school. The top football players were also the best wrestlers or basketball players, and most also played baseball or track or lacrosse. Few of them did school basketball and then AAU the remainder of the year. My son stuck to club/rec basketball (instead of the school team) and volleyball (school team, but mens volleyball prior to high school isn't really a thing in DC). And, like you said, there's always cycling, martial arms, or track/field (typically takes all interested). I also agree with keeping kids active/engaged. But, to me, that means supporting them as they pick their own activities, not scheduling every second of their non-school time. Edit - many of the kids specializing before high school are pretty obviously NOT destined for scholarship athletics. There's really no point to it, IMO. I coached football and basketball for much of my son's youth. Of all the kids I coached, 1 went on to NCAA D1 sports (and that was to W&M, where he still had to meet stringent academic standards).
kar5pt 6y ago
I'd argue that romanticizing children's free time is more weird and more western than anything else. My free time as a kid usually just involved being bored and lonely while watching TV or playing video games.

meowster 6y ago

I volunteer with a U.S. Scout troop. I see boys that don't know whether or not they can go on an activity/campout because they have to ask their parents if they're free that day/weekend. I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in. Most all of them just seem apathetic. I'm sure their parents are trying to do what is best for their children, but it doesn't seem to be working.

threatofrain 6y ago
I don’t know what it means for kids to be free nowadays. Free to visit a friend’s home seems like the only thing, because everything else is a home that’s an anonymous unit or a commercial establishment that’s gated by money. It’s not like you’re releasing your child to be raised by the experiences of the village. With that in mind, many parents are probably struggling to not have their kids consumed by the web during free time, esp during COVID lockdowns.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  We raised my son in the DC suburbs (Herndon, VA). There is still a "town center" of sorts, with several parks nearby. So, free for him meant a combo of going to friends (mostly in the same large subdivision), getting to school on his own (bike, board, foot, bus), and running around after school (parks, downtown, whatever - I know a few of his common haunts, but didn't track his every waking moment).
- agent008t 6y ago
  Skateboarding? Climbing trees? Taking apart a toy? Messing around with a computer and a programming language? Inventing a game?
- timerol 6y ago
  There are plenty of areas open to the public that are accessible to children: playgrounds, libraries, schoolyards, skateparks, large underused parking lots, malls, public pools. Some places have great nature nearby: beaches, creeks, rivers, hills, and mountains. Some of those are more dangerous than others, but they are all accessible if the parent allows it.
  - Clewza313 6y ago
    In the US, if the children in question are under 12 and going to any of those places unsupervised, they're likely to get the police and/or CPS called on them.
    - alistairSH 6y ago
      Sadly true. And part of the problem. There's now an expectation (at least in upper middle class areas) that kids be in formal, supervised activities 24/7. I still remember growing up, playing around the neighborhood, and a parent would call out the front door "Danny, dinner time!" and all the kids would scatter to get home for dinner. #getoffmylawn #wheresmycane
      - deleted 6y ago
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    - bkav 6y ago
      It depends on where. A few years ago, I lived in a falling-down house in a family neighborhood of mainly immigrants. There was a school a few blocks away, and kids used to come hang out in our trees (I’m pretty sure they thought the place was abandoned) and occasionally set off fireworks by the creek we lived next to. I wouldn’t have called the cops on them since they weren’t causing any real trouble, but if my neighbors did, no one ever came. There are bigger problems in that town (like the feral fucking dogs) that the cops refused to do anything about. But honestly, most of the neighbors were familiar with each other and let their kids roam pretty free. It was nice to see that places like that still exist.
    - 6y ago
alistairSH 6y ago
It's all so strange to me. My son (now 26) always had summers free at minimum. While he was younger, he did go to a YMCA outdoor "adventure" day camp at a nearby lake park. Once he was in middle school, he stayed home. Sports 2-3 seasons, but he got to pick which one he played and never the crazy travel league stuff. In high school, he was free to do what he wanted (football for 2 years, guitar all 4, and a mix of rec league basketball and volleyball when he felt like it). Always plenty of time to ride his bike, play at the park, run around with friends. Starting in middle school, he'd often disappear across town on bike of skateboard for hours at a time. School was 2.5 miles away and he often opted to ride his skateboard instead of the bus. I see kids today where every free moment is booked with stuff. All in some sisyphean effort to get into Harvard or something. I mean, sure, I get a desire to go to a top name uni, but the changes of little Johnnie getting in, regardless of extra-curricular, is so small that all the effort seems mostly wasted to me. I "only" went to UVA and turned out fine, IMO, so maybe I'm biased. I dunno.
- deleted 6y ago
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- caddemon 6y ago
  I don't disagree with your premise, I'm strongly against parents trying to game college admissions for their 13 year old. But getting into UVA is not easy at all. Especially out of state, the admit rate is like 15% - so while not as crazy as Harvard it's in line with a few of the Ivies. IMO a lot of the admissions-centered thinking has propagated down the rankings further and further in recent years too. Anecdotally I've seen people over-scheduling their children for target schools in a tier below UVA. This attitude of course creates a terrible feedback cycle, as admissions gets more and more competitive. At some point I'd like to think the admit offices are sick of seeing so many prototypical candidates, but still you need to do something to stand out. Ideally the parent should advise the kid on this meta-info, without literally telling them what to pursue.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
> Most all of them just seem apathetic. Which seems the other side of helicopter parenting; kids don't get much of a say in deciding what they fill their free time with, so they don't develop an opinion in things like that. Plus (and I'm going to sound old here, give me my cane so I can shake it), there's a lot more casual entertainment lying around the house nowadays to fill the voids in people's time. "doing nothing" is not much of a thing anymore, because people will casually browse their phone or turn on the TV or something. (I'm guilty of that as well). In the previous generation, there would be a TV but not everything on there would catch the interest of everyone.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  I wonder if browsing your phone is really much different from channel surfing. I suppose by sheer volume you never run out of "channels" on the internet.
fossuser 6y ago
It gets beaten out of you and the easiest response is to just give up and wait it out. “You don’t want to do this anymore? You need this for college, you shouldn’t quit everything you do, I wish I could have done this” etc. Eventually it’s just easier to passively suffer whatever activity you dislike and just recognize the starting cost to trying new things is extreme. > “ I try to tell them their old enough (most are teenagers) that they should start deciding for themselves what activities they participate in.” I’d start with asking them about what their parents are like.
- meowster 6y ago
  I know what they're parents are like during meetings and campouts. I have to manage them as much as I manage the boys. Some of them try to helicopter during meetings. There was one Scout that I've only seen smile when his dad wasn't around. They don't seem to like the idea that Scouts is supposed to be youth-run/led and that it's okay to fail as long as they learn from it and improve. The parents just don't want them to fail or be uncomfortable at all (it's not always dry and warm outside).
  - fossuser 6y ago
    Cool - sounds like you have the context. I just remember adults yelling at me as a kid for things like this. “You should take responsibility.” Etc. At the time I didn’t know what to do. I wish I had just said, “I have no control over my life”. I think other adults can sometimes be clueless about what a kid’s family life is like.
    - deleted 6y ago
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- leetcrew 6y ago
  it can be sort of futile. as a kid, you can argue, resist, or break the rules, but until you can support yourself financially, your parents get the final say on most important matters. reminds me of my first meeting with my advisor at college to pick courses for freshman year. I came in with a few ideas for courses/majors that my dad thought were practical. my advisor picked up on this almost immediately and asked "okay, but what are you interested in?". we had a nice talk, but at the end I went back to picking from the list my dad approved of. my advisor was disappointed and insisted that I needed to chart my own path through college. my response: "yeah, but I need my dad to write the check".
brudgers 6y ago
These days, there aren't many kids who only do Scouting...it's an over-scheduling comorbidity. For kids who resist over-scheduling, scouting seems to be one of the first things to go...because den and pack meetings are by and for adults, they never make it to a troop. Or to put it another way, teenage apathy prevalence is probably pre-teen survivor bias.
- meowster 6y ago
  I wonder what the rate of dropping out during Cub Scouts is vs Scouts BSA, vs how many don't cross over from Cubs to Scouts. The crossover happens around age 11, so I would imagine most of the dropouts happen later.
  - brudgers 6y ago
    Anecdotal observation from my child's experience is nearly everyone who dropped out dropped out as a cub scout. That was a very large fraction. Those who crossed over are typically Eagle Scouts. But for one of those kids, they were all highly scheduled. But for a different one, they were each complying with parental wishes. My child was over Cub Scouts by Bears. But more than a decade later, my grown-ass child hangs out with several of the Eagles. They are close friends.
- watwut 6y ago
  The scouting, at least here, is very time consuming. It seems to want to be your whole lifestyle.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Most actives do. Commitment is the way to win championships, so any one moment you are not practicing your sport is a chance to lose the award. That things can/should be fun is lost. Scouting is a bit better than sports, but they still want your life.
    - watwut 6y ago
jkubicek 6y ago
That seems normal to me? I'm well-past the teenage years, and I wouldn't commit to a weekend activity without double-checking with the rest of my family first.
- meowster 6y ago
  I think it's "normal" only in the sense that most everyone behaves this way today, but I don't think it should be that way. By the time I was older in Scouts, my siblings were in college and my parent could drive me to wherever, or at least to the meeting place where I could carpool. The times when my parent wasn't available, I took the city bus. I imagine if one of my siblings was was the same age and our parent could only drive one of us, the other would take the bus. The first time I took the bus, my parent went with me to show me how, and then let me do it myself going forward.
  - watwut 6y ago
    I dont think the person you responded to was thinking about driving vs busses. Basically, you are 16 and want to spend whole weekend out of house including during the night. Not doing it without parental permission seems normal to me. Nor it seems new. My gradma or grandpa definitely could not just spend whole night and weekend away just by own decision. They would expect my parents to ask them for permission. I was expected the same.
    - meowster 6y ago
      Mine was default allow, his was default block. I had to inform, he had to get permission. Perhaps same result, but one feels more autonomous than the other. From another one of my comments: > I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school). > I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person
      - 6y ago
leto_ii 6y ago
I don't think attitudes to infant care translate in any way to how older kids or teenagers are treated in different cultures. I'm not a parent, but I was a child and teenager at some point, so I can say from personal experience that parents who are extremely present at a young age can actually give you more leeway later in life. On a more general note, I can recommend Jared Diamond's 'The World Until Yesterday' - it covers similar topics to the bbc article and more.
watwut 6y ago
There is nothing new in that? When I was pre teen and teen, I definitely had to get parents permission for weekend campout. It seems to me normal that parent have a say in whether the non-adult child sleep at home. Plus there were weekend activities woth familly I was expected to participate in - trips, familly visits, grandpa birthsday, etc. So I would ask. I mean, idea that 16-17 years old goes for campout without asking parents strikes me as wtf.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- meowster 6y ago
  I don't know, my parents always asked me if I wanted to go to my Grandmother's house or other trips (I did). I always just told my parent that I was doing something just so they knew where I was - not necessarily asking for permission, but that gave them the chance to veto it (which they only did one time as punishment when I got in trouble at school). I think that parents need to teach their kids how to be responsible and autonomous, and treat them like they are their own person, because they need to be to have any chance at being successful.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

> and this isn't really a western thing For real, I've heard some horror stories about e.g. Chinese parents pulling their kids through the grinder.

standardUser 6y ago

"So many kids in my area have their days booked solid" Sounds like a wealthy thing, not a Western thing.

ajmadesc 6y ago
Queue the Doctor / Lawyer married couple with 2.5 kids who vacation twice a year, lease German cars, and have positive net worth crying about 'only being middle class'.
- derivagral 6y ago
  Technically, aren't they right? Middle class typically means you still have to work, strictly speaking. I'm going off of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Three-level_economic_class_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class#Three-level_econo...
  - alistairSH 6y ago
    Depends who you ask, or the context. Anecdotally, software developers, being more math-minded than average, tend to think of middle-class literally - the middle third or middle quintile of income distribution.
    - opportune 6y ago
      That has never been the meaning of the term historically and doesn’t capture the magnitudes-difference between the middle and upper classes.
      - alistairSH 6y ago
        I agree. I was just pointing out that there is a portion of the HN readership that tends to use the strictly economic definition (rightly or wrongly). Also, the meaning has shifted over time. As used in the early 1900s - I realize the term was coined even earlier than that - it referred to what today we'd likely call upper-middle-class (or if you're a fan of Engles, the bourgeoisie). White-collar, professional, well-educated, but not rich/powerful/nobility. It excluded almost the entirety of the working-class (even those who, by income, were well above poverty). More recently, usage in the US has trended towards anybody above poverty but not quite rich (and choose your own definition of rich to suit your point). Which itself includes a massive span of incomes and lifestyles.

sdevonoes 6y ago

Best decision my parents made for me when I was kid: no extra activities after school, no summer camps, no music lessons, etc, no soccer teams, etc. I did have "unofficial summer camps", I did play some music instruments (without teachers), I did play a lot of soccer (without teams, just in the street)... I (and the kids in my neighbourhood) did all of these without adults.

polishdude20 6y ago
Yeah me too! I had the occasional swimming lesson once per week or something but other than that, if the weather was good, you'd find me and all the neighborhood kids running around playing tag or riding our bikes everywhere. I grew up at a co-op so all of the houses were close together and there were a lot of families and other kids my age. I think the number one thing you can do for your kid is to live in a neighborhood with lots of other kids.
meowster 6y ago
I went to art class once a week because I liked it, but stopped at a young age when I didn't se any classes in the course catalog that I was interested in. The only summer camp I did was one week a summer with Scouts. I'm guessing "summer camp" for most other kids is of a longer duration?
thebigman433 6y ago
Did you not have any desire to do these things? This strikes me as an odd "rule" to have since a lot of people genuinely enjoy these activities. Playing football in high school was one of my favorite parts of the time period, and going to a summer camp legitimately changed my life path. I think these things can be extremely good if the child wants to participate. I couldnt imagine not letting my own child not do these things if they wanted to.
asdff 6y ago
Not everyone grows up in a neighborhood with kids their age.

lqet 6y ago

Not so sure this is necessarily a western thing. When I was a kid in Germany in the 90ies, school started at 7:30, and ended at 13:00. Once a week you had afternoon school from 14:30 to 16:00, and my parents wanted me to have piano lessons once a week. But after 13:00, and on weekends, I was generally free to do whatever I wanted. I played computer games excessively and watched a lot of movies, of course, but I also explored the nearby forest, build tree houses, taught myself how to build a computer, BASIC, Delphi, HTML, CSS and JS, and drew a comic series with a friend (of course we were the only readers). Except for math, everything that helped my through university and my professional life so far I learned in this free time, just by playing.

thombee 6y ago
Isn't Germany western?
- Someone1234 6y ago
  Yes, thus their point.
- NullPrefix 6y ago
  Are we talking about west Germany?

carabiner 6y ago

My coworker did this with her son. She was spread thin with afterschool programs, sports, projects and so on. Well, the kid got into Caltech. Where he'll probably meet amazing people and receive an excellent education. So maybe it worked? How many YC founders had this overbooked childhood? I'd guess over 70%.

SamuelAdams 6y ago
And there's plenty of students at Caltech who were not overbooked in their free time.
notsureaboutpg 6y ago
I think your guess would be wrong, but I also don't think overbooking is a problem. As a child who had lots of free time due to living in a place with a lack of structured activities for kids, I really envy kids who can take advantage of such resources enough to have a packed daily schedule.
- alistairSH 6y ago
  It's not so much that kids shouldn't have structured activities; it's that these activities shouldn't be thrust upon them by parents. Yeah, the smaller the kid, the more direction they're going to need. But a 5th grader should be able to pick their activities within reason. I mentioned it in another thread, but when I was coaching youth sports, I saw two huge (IMO) problems... first, kids specializing at a young age - 5th and 6th graders playing a single sport 9+ months of the year (vs mixing it up). Related to that was a disturbing frequency of overuse injuries in younger athletes. Baseball players coming back from summer with stress fractures in their spines from too much pitching practice and things like that. And also a whole lot of straight-A students being forced to attend extra-curricular tutoring. I'm sure in some regions, it might be necessary to learn advanced subjects, but Fairfax County schools have robust GT/AP/honors programs and allow dual enrollment at the local community college - very few kids are running out of available maths classes, etc. And with a robust state college system (UVA, W&M, VT, GMU, JMU, and on and on), the "penalty" for not getting into Stanford isn't much (for the majority of subjects). Anyways, all anecdotal, but of my son's peers, the kids with the overbooked schedules didn't really go to colleges any more prestigious than anybody else. Most just ended up at one of the several excellent state colleges.

rsync 6y ago

"IMO, the top "offender" is over-scheduling kid's activities. So many kids in my area have their days booked solid with sports, academic tutoring, music lessons. Approaching zero free time to enjoy being a kid." It's a weird and tricky balance that one has to strike, in the US, in 2021 ... On the one hand, I feel strongly that kids should have free time and energy to explore and experiment and I am reinforced daily in my instinct that a "bored" kid is just another 10 minutes away from doing something interesting and magical. On the other hand, as my oldest children reach pre-teen age, and I pay more attention to their pre-teen peers, I find myself agreeing with the "idle hands are the devils playground" heuristic. I want my teenage children busy doing constructive and healthy things. But it gets complicated ... you can't just plug your kid onto a age 12 or age 13 baseball or hockey team. Those kids have been playing the sport (and playing the sport together) since they were 4 or 5. Your kid will not make the team or will be conspicuously out of place. So if you've been free-ranging it for their first ten years you're going to need to get more creative as you transition to the teenage years... I have seen things like mountain biking and BJJ be good options...

kar5pt 6y ago
Exactly. I tried joining sports for the first time when I was 14 (around 15 years ago). And it was honestly a humiliating experience. I was so far behind the other kids in skill level it was just sad. And I was the ONLY one on the team that couldn't keep up. Everyone else had been practicing for 5-10 years. You're a good parent to notice and think about these things.
alistairSH 6y ago
Yeah, totally agree on sports. But, that's part of the problem - kids specializing in a single sport before high school? That's bonkers to m. When I was in school, very few kids specialized, even through high school. The top football players were also the best wrestlers or basketball players, and most also played baseball or track or lacrosse. Few of them did school basketball and then AAU the remainder of the year. My son stuck to club/rec basketball (instead of the school team) and volleyball (school team, but mens volleyball prior to high school isn't really a thing in DC). And, like you said, there's always cycling, martial arms, or track/field (typically takes all interested). I also agree with keeping kids active/engaged. But, to me, that means supporting them as they pick their own activities, not scheduling every second of their non-school time. Edit - many of the kids specializing before high school are pretty obviously NOT destined for scholarship athletics. There's really no point to it, IMO. I coached football and basketball for much of my son's youth. Of all the kids I coached, 1 went on to NCAA D1 sports (and that was to W&M, where he still had to meet stringent academic standards).

kar5pt 6y ago

I'd argue that romanticizing children's free time is more weird and more western than anything else. My free time as a kid usually just involved being bored and lonely while watching TV or playing video games.