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I've got five kids. The more I loosen up and let the kids take risks and learn for mistakes the better. The challenge is when the adults inject a ridiculous lev

I've got five kids. The more I loosen up and let the kids take risks and learn for mistakes the better. The challenge is when the adults inject a ridiculous level of risk to something that should be a learning experience. For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records. When risk is too high, learning stops and risk avoidance takes over.

mumblemumble 5y ago
I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself. It seems that nowadays we have an extremely interventionist culture, and it leaves us ill-equipped to recognize situations where the best thing to do is nothing at all. It's not just around child-rearing. I have chronic pain from a decades-old sports injury, and well-meaning people frequently advise me to get surgery to fix it. There's a tacit assumption that, by choosing to live with it, I'm simply being complacent. (There's also, for that matter, a tacit assumption that an appropriate procedure exists in the first place.) If I point out that the surgery for my sort of thing tends to have much worse long-term outcomes than choosing not to pick at it, then I'm generally told that I just haven't found the right surgeon. Similar for my nearsightedness - I have one family member who thinks I'm crazy for not getting LASIK surgery. My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device, while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated, so the risk/reward balance just isn't right for me. But that's not how they see it. What they see is that I'm just being weak-willed, because I'm opting not to do something when there's something that could be done. But it upsets me more when it's child-rearing, because then it's adults choosing to screw up the life of another person who doesn't have any say in the matter. Ostensibly for their own good, but, more accurately, I think, because the adult feels like this is how they need to perform their role.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device Like what? >while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated The numbers behind LASIK (and PRK) are pretty solid such that one can make an objective claim that it is a low risk endeavor unless you have some specific conditions. Here is one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7727822/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7727822/
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    It completely depends on the severity of your myopia. If it's mild, yeah, it's pretty safe. If it's moderate or severe, then things start looking a lot more dicey. The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place. The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      Of course, but an unstated assumption for claiming any procedure is safe that you qualify as a safe candidate for it.
      - mumblemumble 5y ago
        I think, more to the point, this advice is typically being offered by people who aren't even thinking in those terms in the first place. They're just operating from a tacit bias toward interventionism.
        lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Well people who are not ophthalmologists who have not diagnosed your eyes should not be commenting on whether or not you are a good candidate for refractive eye surgery.
908B64B197 5y ago
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records. Just send them to a private school where matters are handled privately.
- indymike 5y ago
  I have. Not everyone has the money or lives in a voucher state.
- Broken_Hippo 5y ago
  1) Private schools can be expensive, and a few have participation requirements for parents that folks working non-traditional hours can't adhere to. 2) Every private school I lived around growing up was religious, and I'd rather children not have religion forced on them.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- SilverRed 5y ago
  Handled meaning being expelled for bad behavior.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Are there any examples of this happening? I do not recall reading about any incident where police responded to a school where the cause was not due to physical violence. If I was managing a school (or any other establishment), I would instruct staff that no one is to touch anyone outside of administering medical aid, for obvious liability reasons. In such cases, I can see it being necessary to call police if a child has to be physically moved or restrained.
- indymike 5y ago
  Using shady url from yesterday's HN topic: Students arrested for social media posts: http://www.5z8.info/openme.exe_bknq http://www.5z8.info/openme.exe_bknq Student arrested for burping: http://www.5z8.info/peepshow_jxbr http://www.5z8.info/peepshow_jxbr Student referred to judge and jailed for not doing homework: http://www.5z8.info/foodporn_axiz http://www.5z8.info/foodporn_axiz School cops arrest more kids of color, too: http://www.5z8.info/aohell.exe_zane http://www.5z8.info/aohell.exe_zane
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Thanks, those are sad and ridiculous.
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > Are there any examples of this happening? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/orlando-6-year-old-arrested.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/orlando-6-year-old-arr... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-police-5-year-old-boy-handcuffed-berated/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-police-5-year-old-boy-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDTPxpjDhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDTPxpjDhk
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    The top two might be good examples, but the YouTube link says the kid was punching a teacher, which is a good example of what I meant by punting that to someone with better legal resources than me (if I am a worker at the school).
golemotron 5y ago
This will sound terrible, but one theory why parents are so risk-averse with their kids is that 1-2 kids per family is the norm today. When it was more like 3-5 it was harder to keep track of all of them and they (the kids) inevitably did risker things. Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.
- lnwlebjel 5y ago
  There might actually be something to this. My child #3 gets more freedom (and is much more self sufficient!) just because I am often too busy with the many other things to interfere with her learning process.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  My parents had/have about 9 siblings each. There is no way in hell my grand parents could have raised those many kids without letting them be free most of the time. Of course the times were different (between 1930s - 1970s) and in India the definition/threshold of risk is, let's just say, different compared to the west :-)
- ibizaman 5y ago
  > Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more. Let me tell you you’re very wrong here. Loosing a kid is the worst thing ever and is independent on the number of kids you have. I have 5 kids and I can’t imagine losing one. The biggest reason IMO for kids having more freedom is not that we have less time for them but that they play more together instead of with us. This emulation leads to more risk taken.

mumblemumble 5y ago

I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself. It seems that nowadays we have an extremely interventionist culture, and it leaves us ill-equipped to recognize situations where the best thing to do is nothing at all. It's not just around child-rearing. I have chronic pain from a decades-old sports injury, and well-meaning people frequently advise me to get surgery to fix it. There's a tacit assumption that, by choosing to live with it, I'm simply being complacent. (There's also, for that matter, a tacit assumption that an appropriate procedure exists in the first place.) If I point out that the surgery for my sort of thing tends to have much worse long-term outcomes than choosing not to pick at it, then I'm generally told that I just haven't found the right surgeon. Similar for my nearsightedness - I have one family member who thinks I'm crazy for not getting LASIK surgery. My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device, while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated, so the risk/reward balance just isn't right for me. But that's not how they see it. What they see is that I'm just being weak-willed, because I'm opting not to do something when there's something that could be done. But it upsets me more when it's child-rearing, because then it's adults choosing to screw up the life of another person who doesn't have any say in the matter. Ostensibly for their own good, but, more accurately, I think, because the adult feels like this is how they need to perform their role.

lotsofpulp 5y ago
> My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device Like what? >while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated The numbers behind LASIK (and PRK) are pretty solid such that one can make an objective claim that it is a low risk endeavor unless you have some specific conditions. Here is one study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7727822/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7727822/
- mumblemumble 5y ago
  It completely depends on the severity of your myopia. If it's mild, yeah, it's pretty safe. If it's moderate or severe, then things start looking a lot more dicey. The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place. The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    Of course, but an unstated assumption for claiming any procedure is safe that you qualify as a safe candidate for it.
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      I think, more to the point, this advice is typically being offered by people who aren't even thinking in those terms in the first place. They're just operating from a tacit bias toward interventionism.
      - lotsofpulp 5y ago
        Well people who are not ophthalmologists who have not diagnosed your eyes should not be commenting on whether or not you are a good candidate for refractive eye surgery.

908B64B197 5y ago

> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records. Just send them to a private school where matters are handled privately.

indymike 5y ago
I have. Not everyone has the money or lives in a voucher state.
Broken_Hippo 5y ago
1) Private schools can be expensive, and a few have participation requirements for parents that folks working non-traditional hours can't adhere to. 2) Every private school I lived around growing up was religious, and I'd rather children not have religion forced on them.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
SilverRed 5y ago
Handled meaning being expelled for bad behavior.

lotsofpulp 5y ago

> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Are there any examples of this happening? I do not recall reading about any incident where police responded to a school where the cause was not due to physical violence. If I was managing a school (or any other establishment), I would instruct staff that no one is to touch anyone outside of administering medical aid, for obvious liability reasons. In such cases, I can see it being necessary to call police if a child has to be physically moved or restrained.

indymike 5y ago
Using shady url from yesterday's HN topic: Students arrested for social media posts: http://www.5z8.info/openme.exe_bknq http://www.5z8.info/openme.exe_bknq Student arrested for burping: http://www.5z8.info/peepshow_jxbr http://www.5z8.info/peepshow_jxbr Student referred to judge and jailed for not doing homework: http://www.5z8.info/foodporn_axiz http://www.5z8.info/foodporn_axiz School cops arrest more kids of color, too: http://www.5z8.info/aohell.exe_zane http://www.5z8.info/aohell.exe_zane
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Thanks, those are sad and ridiculous.
heavyset_go 5y ago
> Are there any examples of this happening? https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/orlando-6-year-old-arrested.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/27/us/orlando-6-year-old-arr... https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-police-5-year-old-boy-handcuffed-berated/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/maryland-police-5-year-old-boy-... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDTPxpjDhk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEDTPxpjDhk
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  The top two might be good examples, but the YouTube link says the kid was punching a teacher, which is a good example of what I meant by punting that to someone with better legal resources than me (if I am a worker at the school).

golemotron 5y ago

This will sound terrible, but one theory why parents are so risk-averse with their kids is that 1-2 kids per family is the norm today. When it was more like 3-5 it was harder to keep track of all of them and they (the kids) inevitably did risker things. Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.

lnwlebjel 5y ago
There might actually be something to this. My child #3 gets more freedom (and is much more self sufficient!) just because I am often too busy with the many other things to interfere with her learning process.
vishnugupta 5y ago
My parents had/have about 9 siblings each. There is no way in hell my grand parents could have raised those many kids without letting them be free most of the time. Of course the times were different (between 1930s - 1970s) and in India the definition/threshold of risk is, let's just say, different compared to the west :-)
ibizaman 5y ago
> Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more. Let me tell you you’re very wrong here. Loosing a kid is the worst thing ever and is independent on the number of kids you have. I have 5 kids and I can’t imagine losing one. The biggest reason IMO for kids having more freedom is not that we have less time for them but that they play more together instead of with us. This emulation leads to more risk taken.