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I write a parenting advice column (or how I became famous in my neighborhood)
- shireboy 5y ago> Above all, I read to my children. I did it every night without fail, except when I had to travel. This is the single most important thing I did for their intellectual development I second this. I'm pretty sure I'm getting a lot wrong as a parent, but I've done this and think it's done wonders. Their imaginary worlds are a mix of Tolkien, Star Wars, Harry Potter and their own creations.
- SamvitJ 5y agoIs this the author: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Gioia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Gioia? Seems he omitted a major factor in his kids' success, which is his own educational pedigree :)
- Cerium 5y agoThanks for sharing this. It's great writing and personally relevant as I'm currently en route to starting my own parenting journey. I didn't go to Harvard (and didn't even want to), but did enjoy much of the environment described by the author from my parents. Everyday my dad would drop me off for school and say to me: "be careful out there, it's an institution". And he is a teacher himself!
- redis_mlc 5y ago> "be careful out there, it's an institution". And he is a teacher himself! My dad was cynical, but that's next level. Love it! :) It's very timely too - after each Biden speech, people are posting quotes from "Animal Farm" and "1984", and saying, "They weren't supposed to be playbooks."
- 30minAdayHN 5y ago>You must get an education, but you also should do well in school This is a great point. It applies to the current software engineering world. One should learn engineering, but also should learn to do well in interviews. From my experience, people often mix these two. And it often leads to frustration resulting in either not getting education due to frustration of not doing well. Of course, we should strive to reduce the gap between those two. But we should acknowledge that reduction of that gap is a slow process with good number of external dependencies.
- zz865 5y agoAre Ivy league universities worth it for undergrad? I get his point that high pressure childhood and aggressive parenting isn't the best way to educate children - but then he sent his kids to Harvard where most of the people there are just like that, care more about prestige rather than learning.
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- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoIf you can get in and can easily afford whatever cost you have to pay, they'll unlikely do any harm, and there's some reason to believe they'll help. High quality data on this is hard to come by, but what data I am aware of is inconclusive, and that if there is an effect of going to an elite university, it's not that large at the median. https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322 https://www.nber.org/papers/w7322
- zz865 5y agoThanks, that's an interesting paper: > We find that students who attended more selective colleges do not earn more than other students who were accepted and rejected by comparable schools but attended less selective colleges. However, the average tuition charged by the school is significantly related to the students’ subsequent earnings. Indeed, we find a substantial internal rate of return from attending a more costly college. Lastly, the payoff to attending an elite college appears to be greater for students from more disadvantaged family backgrounds.
- zz865 5y agoWow its a 1999 paper on 1976 grads, not sure how well the lessons continue.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoAs I mentioned in my original comment, solid information on this question is hard to come by. I think someone could reasonably believe a number of different things about the effects of elite colleges. But what one cannot reasonably do is be confident in those beliefs, especially a belief that the elite colleges have a strong, positive, causal effect at the median.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 5y agoThe number one rule of parenting advice is that what worked for one kid may not work for another. Pretty much the sum of what you can say about kids that works universally is making sure they have food, clothes, and shelter. Being kind and wanting the best for them is also almost always helpful. Beyond that . . . beware of blindly applying advice that worked for two children from the same genetic, environmental, and economic stock. I don't mean that you shouldn't consider or even try whatever advice this author has. I mean that you shouldn't feel guilty if it doesn't work. If it always worked, it would be common knowledge, and you wouldn't need anyone to tell it to you on a relatively unknown Substack.
- gregwebs 5y agoTo figure out what has worked univerally for kids, I recommend the book Hunt, Gather, Parent. However, there is a gap between applying what worked universally for thousands of years to our modern world. I think the linked article is a nice attempt at bringing universals of autonomy and intrinsic motivation to the modern world.
- blowski 5y agoBest bit of advice I got when becoming a new parent was from a retired teacher in my church. “When you see a class of 11 year olds it’s impossible to say who got wooden toys, who was breastfed, who had limited screen-time. But you can always tell who had a loving family.”
- ismail 5y agoRelationships > Everything Else
- mikaraento 5y agoThis is very true. However, it's likely to be correlation rather can causation. Loving parents pass on loving genes. I recommend Judith Rich Harris's book "The Nurture Assumption" on the topic. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption)
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- pitspotter2 5y agoMy parenting tip is: if you're expert at something, teach it to your children.
- iratewizard 5y agoThis is a big one. My dad always talked about how to manage people and I always listened. While he couldn't teach me much about computers, what he did teach me has been far more useful than anything I learned in school.
- makeitdouble 5y agoIt's a good tip, and should come with the warning to not hesitate to back off and give up if you feel it isn't working. Teaching what you best know regularly fails depending on your field and your kids inclinations, with no specific fault of your own or your kids.
- jiggunjer 5y agoThe comment below the article is spot on: this guy is the tigerest of tiger parents. He just didn't care about good grades, but he devoted a lot of time and energy to his kids. As a result they experienced more of life (the humanities in particular) and developed an intrinsic drive to think and learn and perform well.
- nzmsv 5y agoMost people associate tiger parenting with the "you must practice the piano or I will hurt you physically, emotionally, or both" mentality. The original tigress was also incredibly restrictive of who her kids could associate with. In contrast, this article just sounds like a return on a sound investment.
- jimbokun 5y agoThe one difference with Amy Chua Tiger Parent philosophy, is that her version is "no, you WILL practice the piano and I don't care if you want to or not." He at least gives lip service to the idea that he would not have pushed them towards something they weren't interested in. But yeah, as long as his kid at least vocalized agreement to pursue something, he went all in Tiger Parent style with intensely pursuing that goal along with his kid.
- devwastaken 5y agoThe lines about Harvard having "outreach" programs is entirely out of touch. The problem is money. It's always money. In the U.S. we simply don't care about education. It's expensive, time consuming, and heavily unoptimized. Only those with a support system (of money) can accomplish a degree at even the most affordable universities. Scholarships do not exist in tech. The largest tech companies give out the fewest, and they are heavily competed for. Microsoft chooses 4 women a year. Less than 0.1% of students will ever receive any sizeable scholarship, and have to depend on private loans ontop of government student loans. Scholarships are designed against low income students. They depend on good recommendations from teachers, long perfectly written essays, and all manner of ridiculous extra requirements. People in city schools of thousands of students rarely, if ever, can get a legitimate recommendation. Students can rarely even stay after school because their parents can't afford to pick them up later. Meaning they can't participate in after school extra curriculars. I know of multiple women that are going to drop their freshmen degree in CS because of this. Cant afford it. No support network. Nobody cares. Kind of hard to focus on studies when you have to work to even exist at a university if your parents aren't paying for it.
- chrisseaton 5y ago> In the U.S. we simply don't care about education. The US has many of the best educational institutions in the world.
- alistairSH 5y agoThe two statements aren't mutually exclusive. As a society, we do a shit job of ensuring everybody has access to quality education. Its starts young - poor school districts struggle to provide the services they were created to provide. Hell, even relatively wealthy school districts tend to be overcrowded, with faltering infrastructure, and are prone to leaving children behind. This continues into post-secondary, where you need money, and lots of it, to get a degree. Sure, the flagship schools are some of the best int he world. But, take VA's flagship state schools... they average nearly $20k/year for tuition alone. And given their locations (UVA - Charlottesville, W&M - Williamsburg, VT - Blacksburg) the vast majority of students will also be paying full room & board, driving costs beyond $30k/year. And that's just the flagship schools - there are a whole host of mediocre colleges that charge the same or more. And then there's the for-profit schools that are a case study on their own.
- silisili 5y agoHere's my only real parenting advice: anything you tell kids hoping to sink in, they want(or need) to see for themselves. Very frustrating, but, understandable. I've learned to stop making edicts, and instead say what I think will happen, and invite kid to test. YMMV.
- SyzygistSix 5y agoYep. From the article it sounds like Dad was above all a good role model, showing and demonstrating lots of possibilities for life.
- spydum 5y agoInteresting, this is the second article I think I've recently read which suggests more outreach should be happening at the 10-13 year old age range to influence career paths. I had really never given it thought, but I think I agree wholeheartedly. Its during that time most kids are asking themselves what they want to be, and who their role models are. Society says it wants more STEM grads and women in tech and all of these things, but they seem to approach students far too late in the cycle.
- rallemoose 5y agoI typically tell people to not listen to advice and do what feels right.