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One thing to understand though (and people who don't have kids don't understand this at all) is that kids are not robots: they're gonna do what they're gonna do

by m0zg 5y ago

One thing to understand though (and people who don't have kids don't understand this at all) is that kids are not robots: they're gonna do what they're gonna do, they will (once they grow up a bit) think you're "out of touch" and "don't understand anything". Any effect you have as a parent is not as huge as non-parents think, even if you do a good job. Conversations do sink in, temporarily, but then a hit of dopamine kids get from doing the things you told them not to do (or not doing things you told them to do) washes it all away from their mind and you have to start over. Ex: soda, sweets, brushing their teeth, watching YouTube for 10 hours a day, exercise, schoolwork, and so on. Some kids are better behaved than others, and you don't know ahead of time which you're going to get. It's the hardest debugging problem in the world, and a significant fraction of well meaning adults completely fail at it.

BLKNSLVR 5y ago
I heard that 'personality' (whatever that means) is kinda set in stone by age three or four. Not 'set in stone' but it becomes much harder to change beyond that point. So we made sure that, right from scratch, our kids were disciplined as consistently as possible, so that their 'personality' boundaries at age three / four were pretty close to where we'd like them to be (this is all very vague, but, fundamentally, we'd done what we could to have them 'set in stone' from a good base). This may just coincide with the age bracket at which kids make friends and start spending increasing amounts of time with other people and therefore having 'outside' influence. The lesson being: set them up to know good / bad / appropriate / inappropriate by this time. Allowing some time to involve yourself in their interests (which equates to their friends' interests), rather than forcing them to conform with your own interests, should keep you somewhat more relevant in their eyes. This is much easier said than done - I've struggled with this the whole time, but Minecraft was a great phase :) Learn to laugh at what they find funny, just to connect. Look at it through their naive eyes rather than your own broken-by-the-world cynical life experience.

by m0zg 5y ago

BLKNSLVR 5y ago

I heard that 'personality' (whatever that means) is kinda set in stone by age three or four. Not 'set in stone' but it becomes much harder to change beyond that point. So we made sure that, right from scratch, our kids were disciplined as consistently as possible, so that their 'personality' boundaries at age three / four were pretty close to where we'd like them to be (this is all very vague, but, fundamentally, we'd done what we could to have them 'set in stone' from a good base). This may just coincide with the age bracket at which kids make friends and start spending increasing amounts of time with other people and therefore having 'outside' influence. The lesson being: set them up to know good / bad / appropriate / inappropriate by this time. Allowing some time to involve yourself in their interests (which equates to their friends' interests), rather than forcing them to conform with your own interests, should keep you somewhat more relevant in their eyes. This is much easier said than done - I've struggled with this the whole time, but Minecraft was a great phase :) Learn to laugh at what they find funny, just to connect. Look at it through their naive eyes rather than your own broken-by-the-world cynical life experience.