8 ms·

I definitely did things as a teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, detrimental to my physical or mental health, etc. etc. I don't have kids, but I would pr

by cmckn 5y ago

I definitely did things as a teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, detrimental to my physical or mental health, etc. etc. I don't have kids, but I would probably make some effort to dissuade my kids from doing the same things I did. How do you approach that, without heavy surveillance? Did you just get lucky with good kids? Is having conversations about it enough?

ethbr0 5y ago
I look at it the other way around: I did things as a kid and teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, detrimental to my physical or mental health... and those things made me... me. So why should I, or do I have a right to, keep my kids from doing the same? We aren't only the product of our positive lessons. A lot of life is learned through burning yourself on the hot stove. And by and large, it usually doesn't kill you. IMHO, no humans are self-actualized enough to possess omniscience and act ethically. We have too many neuroses. And, at the more obvious end of the spectrum, all of the suburban crowd complaining about how their children fail to launch, lack initiative in life, and aren't independent. After their entire childhood was spent being monitored and constantly corrected by the parent. The mind boggles.
- majormajor 5y ago
  I have a lot of coworkers who are bigger self-starters than I am despite growing up with far more type-A parents than I did. Even to the point of there being stereotypes about the people who can't relax cause their parents drove them so hard for some Asian immigrant groups. So I think a claim that "controlling parents" -> "adrift young adults" would be hard to support. Kids need to learn from mistakes, but if not monitored, you can hit the opposite end where the lesson isn't learned because there are no real consequences. For instance, goofing off in high school won't give you consequences until you graduate high school at the earliest, and possibly not until you graduate collect (still goofing off) and suddenly hit a wall in terms of what you can get employment-wise.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I'm not advocating for no consequences. I'm advocating for no pre-consequences. And yes, sometimes kids get away with things if they aren't monitored 24/7. They're supposed to. Figuring out the boundaries of attempting that, and dealing with the consequences when you fail, is a very important lesson for children.
- coffeefirst 5y ago
  Yep. Literally every prior generation, including ours, went through this process. If anything the world is safer: everyone has cell phones in an emergency, cars are made to handle accidents better, and there's winder cultural awareness about how to spot abuse. And frankly, the kids have the upper hand. Monitor texts and they'll switch to "Finsta"—or whatever came after that. All it's going to do is mess up their ability to understand trust or cause them to avoid taking any sort of basic social risks.
- yurishimo 5y ago
  This is how I feel about it too. In some cases, I can look back at times when I did something that my parents would have considered bad and I felt like it helped me rather than hurt. Those are learning experiences too.
dbt00 5y ago
In my case by talking to my teens about choices, consequences, and how to plan for good outcomes. It helped to start having that conversation long before they were teens. We had an ios family group set up with location sharing enabled, which was great when they were 12 and losing things all the time (using a phone as backpack lojack isn't necessarily cost efficient, but it was a nice accidental outcome). When they got a little older, they figured out how not to share with us. I was peeved, but proud. Privacy respected.
mlac 5y ago
Before my daughter starts driving, I'm going to take her around where I grew up and show her the places where people I knew died in car accidents / other issues, and explain why they died: - These two girls were speeding to make it home by curfew, ran off the road, and died in a car fire over the side of this hill - don't speed if you're running late. Let me know, and get home safely. - This is where a guy was on drugs and ran into a telephone pole. - don't do drugs. If you do drink and no longer feel comfortable in the situation, call me and I will pick you up to get you home. Don't try to drive. - Here's the parking lot where my friend OD'd on Heroin. Don't try it. Not even once. There is a huge difference between weed and harder drugs, even though weed and harder drugs are sold by the same people. Stay clear of all of them if you can. - Here's the cliff where my friend fell 60 feet and died trying to showboat his climbing skills. So many things today have been made extremely safe (car driving assistance, etc.) - you need to know which activities have real consequences and treat them accordingly. - Here's the parking lot where my friend and I almost flipped his truck trying to do slides on snow at 60 mph. Don't do that. It will be a rough day, but driving is a serious responsibility and learning from others' mistakes is better than making your own.
- jorgesborges 5y ago
  What I like about this approach is where you say hey don’t do that, but if you do, just call me, don’t worry about getting in “trouble”, I just want you to be safe and I’m here for you. I don’t have kids but my parents were like this and I valued it immensely. They never wanted us to be in a position where we needed help but thought we couldn’t ask.
- thewebcount 5y ago
  My father did something like this. He wasn’t even trying to teach us a lesson or anything. We had gone back to his hometown to see some relatives and we took a drive around. He told us all those stories you mentioned above. It did not make me think about being safer. It just made me think, “Wow, now I know why my father is such a @#$% downer all the time. Note to self: Dad is broken, don’t take anything he says seriously.” So be careful how you present it because your kids’ thought process is not the same as yours.
- 5y ago
technothrasher 5y ago
I definitely also did things as a teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, etc. And my parents were good parents, were involved in my life, had open communication with me, and tried hard to teach me the right things. But I was a teenager; I did it anyway. And I suspect that if I were being monitored like the kids today seem to be, I would just learn how to hide my activities more. > How do you approach that, without heavy surveillance? Did you just get lucky with good kids? I think partly I got lucky that my son is somewhat risk averse, which rules out a lot of bad stuff he could do. But I also am not fooling myself into thinking he isn't doing dumb things and not telling me about it. I certainly understand the desire to heavily surveil your kids to protect them, but it just doesn't sit right with me. I think it sends the wrong message that he doesn't have to take responsibility and can always just rely on me to bail him out. So I'm willing to take the risk in order to give him a sense of personal responsibility. I don't know that I'm making the right choice, parenting seems to be mostly doing the best you can and having your kids usually turn out ok in spite of you.
grujicd 5y ago
There's an excellent Black Mirror episode about tracking a child, looking through their eyes using implant, and even blocking stuff that could be scary or upsetting for them. Needless to say, it turned our quite bad for both child and parent. Black Mirror is great in exposing how ideas which look good on the first look can have very dark side. I even thought some of these things would be great (e.g. recording everything you see) before watching BM, I didn't think at all about all the negative consequences. It's sobering. That said, I share location with my wife and also monitoring our children. If you have full mutual trust with other person, there are no drawbacks but there are positive sides. Full trust implies that one doesn't monitor location constantly, that there's no jealousy or stalking, that's it's used basically when you're worried that something bad happened. If someone is late from school or work it's a relief if you see they're moving towards home or that they are at known location.
amoorthy 5y ago
The approach I'm trying to take with my kids is make mistakes while your mom and I are here to watch over you. Get this all out of the way now. Because after 18 we might not be around as much and that is not when you want the bulk of your stupidity to be tested.

by cmckn 5y ago

ethbr0 5y ago

I look at it the other way around: I did things as a kid and teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, detrimental to my physical or mental health... and those things made me... me. So why should I, or do I have a right to, keep my kids from doing the same? We aren't only the product of our positive lessons. A lot of life is learned through burning yourself on the hot stove. And by and large, it usually doesn't kill you. IMHO, no humans are self-actualized enough to possess omniscience and act ethically. We have too many neuroses. And, at the more obvious end of the spectrum, all of the suburban crowd complaining about how their children fail to launch, lack initiative in life, and aren't independent. After their entire childhood was spent being monitored and constantly corrected by the parent. The mind boggles.

majormajor 5y ago
I have a lot of coworkers who are bigger self-starters than I am despite growing up with far more type-A parents than I did. Even to the point of there being stereotypes about the people who can't relax cause their parents drove them so hard for some Asian immigrant groups. So I think a claim that "controlling parents" -> "adrift young adults" would be hard to support. Kids need to learn from mistakes, but if not monitored, you can hit the opposite end where the lesson isn't learned because there are no real consequences. For instance, goofing off in high school won't give you consequences until you graduate high school at the earliest, and possibly not until you graduate collect (still goofing off) and suddenly hit a wall in terms of what you can get employment-wise.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I'm not advocating for no consequences. I'm advocating for no pre-consequences. And yes, sometimes kids get away with things if they aren't monitored 24/7. They're supposed to. Figuring out the boundaries of attempting that, and dealing with the consequences when you fail, is a very important lesson for children.
coffeefirst 5y ago
Yep. Literally every prior generation, including ours, went through this process. If anything the world is safer: everyone has cell phones in an emergency, cars are made to handle accidents better, and there's winder cultural awareness about how to spot abuse. And frankly, the kids have the upper hand. Monitor texts and they'll switch to "Finsta"—or whatever came after that. All it's going to do is mess up their ability to understand trust or cause them to avoid taking any sort of basic social risks.
yurishimo 5y ago
This is how I feel about it too. In some cases, I can look back at times when I did something that my parents would have considered bad and I felt like it helped me rather than hurt. Those are learning experiences too.

dbt00 5y ago

In my case by talking to my teens about choices, consequences, and how to plan for good outcomes. It helped to start having that conversation long before they were teens. We had an ios family group set up with location sharing enabled, which was great when they were 12 and losing things all the time (using a phone as backpack lojack isn't necessarily cost efficient, but it was a nice accidental outcome). When they got a little older, they figured out how not to share with us. I was peeved, but proud. Privacy respected.

mlac 5y ago

Before my daughter starts driving, I'm going to take her around where I grew up and show her the places where people I knew died in car accidents / other issues, and explain why they died: - These two girls were speeding to make it home by curfew, ran off the road, and died in a car fire over the side of this hill - don't speed if you're running late. Let me know, and get home safely. - This is where a guy was on drugs and ran into a telephone pole. - don't do drugs. If you do drink and no longer feel comfortable in the situation, call me and I will pick you up to get you home. Don't try to drive. - Here's the parking lot where my friend OD'd on Heroin. Don't try it. Not even once. There is a huge difference between weed and harder drugs, even though weed and harder drugs are sold by the same people. Stay clear of all of them if you can. - Here's the cliff where my friend fell 60 feet and died trying to showboat his climbing skills. So many things today have been made extremely safe (car driving assistance, etc.) - you need to know which activities have real consequences and treat them accordingly. - Here's the parking lot where my friend and I almost flipped his truck trying to do slides on snow at 60 mph. Don't do that. It will be a rough day, but driving is a serious responsibility and learning from others' mistakes is better than making your own.

jorgesborges 5y ago
What I like about this approach is where you say hey don’t do that, but if you do, just call me, don’t worry about getting in “trouble”, I just want you to be safe and I’m here for you. I don’t have kids but my parents were like this and I valued it immensely. They never wanted us to be in a position where we needed help but thought we couldn’t ask.
thewebcount 5y ago
My father did something like this. He wasn’t even trying to teach us a lesson or anything. We had gone back to his hometown to see some relatives and we took a drive around. He told us all those stories you mentioned above. It did not make me think about being safer. It just made me think, “Wow, now I know why my father is such a @#$% downer all the time. Note to self: Dad is broken, don’t take anything he says seriously.” So be careful how you present it because your kids’ thought process is not the same as yours.
5y ago

technothrasher 5y ago

I definitely also did things as a teenager that were dangerous, unnecessary, etc. And my parents were good parents, were involved in my life, had open communication with me, and tried hard to teach me the right things. But I was a teenager; I did it anyway. And I suspect that if I were being monitored like the kids today seem to be, I would just learn how to hide my activities more. > How do you approach that, without heavy surveillance? Did you just get lucky with good kids? I think partly I got lucky that my son is somewhat risk averse, which rules out a lot of bad stuff he could do. But I also am not fooling myself into thinking he isn't doing dumb things and not telling me about it. I certainly understand the desire to heavily surveil your kids to protect them, but it just doesn't sit right with me. I think it sends the wrong message that he doesn't have to take responsibility and can always just rely on me to bail him out. So I'm willing to take the risk in order to give him a sense of personal responsibility. I don't know that I'm making the right choice, parenting seems to be mostly doing the best you can and having your kids usually turn out ok in spite of you.

grujicd 5y ago

There's an excellent Black Mirror episode about tracking a child, looking through their eyes using implant, and even blocking stuff that could be scary or upsetting for them. Needless to say, it turned our quite bad for both child and parent. Black Mirror is great in exposing how ideas which look good on the first look can have very dark side. I even thought some of these things would be great (e.g. recording everything you see) before watching BM, I didn't think at all about all the negative consequences. It's sobering. That said, I share location with my wife and also monitoring our children. If you have full mutual trust with other person, there are no drawbacks but there are positive sides. Full trust implies that one doesn't monitor location constantly, that there's no jealousy or stalking, that's it's used basically when you're worried that something bad happened. If someone is late from school or work it's a relief if you see they're moving towards home or that they are at known location.

amoorthy 5y ago

The approach I'm trying to take with my kids is make mistakes while your mom and I are here to watch over you. Get this all out of the way now. Because after 18 we might not be around as much and that is not when you want the bulk of your stupidity to be tested.