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As a fellow parent of multiple small children, your driving example struck me as odd, too. I think any time you are making a joke that riffs on your own frustra

As a fellow parent of multiple small children, your driving example struck me as odd, too. I think any time you are making a joke that riffs on your own frustration at the expense of somebody else's aspirations to be better, it's likely to fall flat. Maybe just to me and that one other poster. I don't think the advice is to truly let kids do whatever they want with no input. It's to seriously entertain it when a child wants to try something new, even if your first instinct is to think they are too young. You can still say no, but it should be for the reasons you followed up with, not because "they're not ready".

cortesoft 5y ago
My response was under the assumption that when parents don't let their kids try something, it is almost always because the parent thinks it is too dangerous for them. By saying we should let them try stuff parents don't think they are ready for, it sounded to me like they were saying "ignore the danger" or that the danger is not as great as parents think. If they weren't saying that, then the comment seemed meaningless to me... basically the equivalent of saying, "make sure your kids eat the proper amount of food". It is a tautology, without any prescriptive advice. I doubt many parents are just stopping their kids from trying things simply because they don't think they will succeed... it is always because non succeeding would have some negative consequence that is not worth the risk (e.g. the kid could get badly hurt, create a huge mess, destroy valuable property, etc).
- darkerside 5y ago
  I think there are certainly times where there is a negative consequence, and you should rationally say no. I disagree that it is always trivially easy to recognize and classify the situation, and for most parents, being unsure translates to No. Parent poster is encouraging people to do the work in those situations and decide whether there really is a negative consequence that isn't worth bearing, and encouraging them to raise their level of unacceptable risk. I think you're engaging in black and white thinking by saying things are either dangerous or not. There's an in between.

cortesoft 5y ago

My response was under the assumption that when parents don't let their kids try something, it is almost always because the parent thinks it is too dangerous for them. By saying we should let them try stuff parents don't think they are ready for, it sounded to me like they were saying "ignore the danger" or that the danger is not as great as parents think. If they weren't saying that, then the comment seemed meaningless to me... basically the equivalent of saying, "make sure your kids eat the proper amount of food". It is a tautology, without any prescriptive advice. I doubt many parents are just stopping their kids from trying things simply because they don't think they will succeed... it is always because non succeeding would have some negative consequence that is not worth the risk (e.g. the kid could get badly hurt, create a huge mess, destroy valuable property, etc).

darkerside 5y ago
I think there are certainly times where there is a negative consequence, and you should rationally say no. I disagree that it is always trivially easy to recognize and classify the situation, and for most parents, being unsure translates to No. Parent poster is encouraging people to do the work in those situations and decide whether there really is a negative consequence that isn't worth bearing, and encouraging them to raise their level of unacceptable risk. I think you're engaging in black and white thinking by saying things are either dangerous or not. There's an in between.