4 ms·

That's not true. I never pushed my kids and now that they are adults they are angry with my for not pushing them. For example, "Why didn't you make us play spor

That's not true. I never pushed my kids and now that they are adults they are angry with my for not pushing them. For example, "Why didn't you make us play sports?" Well, if you had told me you wanted to play sports I would have supported you, but you never said anything. It turns out that kids don't really know have the maturity to do things unless pushed or encouraged by parents. Who knew?

sosborn 4y ago
Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it? IMO, my role as a parent is to expose my kids to as many things as I can. If the like it, I give them more, if they don’t, then we move on to something else.
- gwd 4y ago
  > Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it? I think ultimately the problem is that the child has the first-hand knowledge of their own experience, but not the mature perspective of age; and the adult has the mature perspective of age, but not the first-hand knowledge of the child's experience. I have a toddler. Sometimes he knows he's tired needs to sleep; sometimes he needs to sleep but he refuses to accept that; sometimes he knows that he's not tired and won't be able to sleep. I know that he often gets tired around a certain time, and that he often refuses to accept that he actually needs sleep. So sometimes when he refuses sleep, I insist, and then he conks out immediately. I was right: my greater perspective as an adult was more accurate his immediate experience of wanting to stay awake. But sometimes when he refuses to sleep, and I insist, he spends the next two hours tossing & turning and not being able to sleep. He was right: his personal experience of not being at all tired outweighed my greater perspective as a parent that he's normally tired at the time. Neither one of us has enough information to make an informed decision on our own. I think something similar happens with children. Children don't really know the potential reward of putting up with the grind of practicing for years, or the regret as an adult of missing out on those skills. But if it's excruciatingly painful, they certainly know it. Adults know the potential reward of putting in the time, but they don't know the child's experience. So, when a child balks, is it because they're just facing the normal barrier of effort that everyone faces? Or are they really experiencing something excruciatingly painful? If it's the first and you push them, they'll be glad in the end. If it's the first and you don't push them, they'll regret it. If it's the second and you push them, they'll be resentful; if it's the second and you don't push them, everyone will be happier. Neither the child nor the parents actually has all the information required to make an accurate decision.
  - sosborn 4y ago
    I agree, and I don't mean to imply that the very first mention of "I want to quit" is the right time to quit. But, as a parent, it isn't difficult to have a sense of where they fall on that spectrum. And yeah, you won't be 100% right, but such is life.
- beowulfey 4y ago
  This is the right attitude. It’s how I was raised, and I can say that I’m very happy with the person I’ve become. Kids don’t know what it is they like or don’t like. They might think they dislike something, but usually they are just afraid of the unknown. Once something is tried at least once, then they can make an informed decision.
khazhoux 4y ago
I begged my parents for an electric guitar and they bought me one. But I didn’t enjoy my first couple of guitar lessons and my parents said “Whatever, quit.” Fast-forward my raging envy in high school at my friends shredding on stage while I could bang out a few chords.
- manmal 4y ago
  Do you think you‘d be great at guitar, and love playing it, if your parents had forced you to take lessons?
  - khazhoux 4y ago
    Absolutely. I still played at home, just without a teacher. I improved a tiny amount with all bad technique. This was the down side of lenient parents who never forced us to do things we didn’t like, and let us quit even things that were good for us.
    - manmal 4y ago
      Thanks for sharing your perspective. I started practicing electric guitar at the ripe age of 20 (with a teacher I met at compulsory army service), and after 6 years of that, played in a band for five years (including a gig in front of four thousand people). My parents only ever once saw me play live - and I think that actually helped, because I never felt forced to practice (as was the case with the piano).
  - arethuza 4y ago
    For some reason this reminds me of maths at university - I initially hated it (and was dreadful at it) but had to do it because there was no flexibility in the course - you had to do 3 years of general engineering maths or fail the course. I eventually ended up really liking maths and focusing on more abstract and maths heavy elements of computer science.
- beowulfey 4y ago
  If you were envious in high school, why not take lessons again?
manmal 4y ago
I sympathize. But if you had pushed them to do anything, chances are not so high you‘d have picked the right things. You might have pushed baseball and chess on them, and they might now be angry that you didn’t make them learn to code instead. Plus there might be additional resentment because forcing humans to do something they don’t like tends to create that.
- khazhoux 4y ago
  Even pushing baseball, they’d grow up with better physical fitness than sitting at home at day. (Assuming the kid wasn’t already active in something besides baseball)
- kelnos 4y ago
  No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all. There's a wide spectrum between "leave the kid to figure out all their hobbies themselves" and "require that they do the four hobbies that you've picked for them. I think it's absolutely healthy to push kids to a certain extent. That extent is just something that's probably different for every kid and activity, and I get that it's probably hard for a parent to figure out when to push and when to give up.
  - manmal 4y ago
    > No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all This thread (started by irjustin) is about this though. And, where do you draw the line? I‘m all for encouragement, like: „Ok young one. You had half a year of ballet lessons now. It’s a bit different than you imagined, and you’re often exhausted afterwards. You can quit anytime you want, but how about you give it another shot and see if you can rest more between drills?“ And if she still wants to quit - let her.
Scarblac 4y ago
I make my kids do sports, but let them try out different ones until they find one they like. As a parent I had all these ideas for them - socially it can be good to be in a team sport, it's nice to have something that you're good at that you can also still do as an adult, if you move cities later its a way to meet people there so do something a lot of people do in an organized way... But we'll see what they end up with. The oldest is into (inline) skating.
balfirevic 4y ago
Well, your kids are wrong. They imagine enjoying all the benefits in the present, while all the costs are already in the past so they don't properly account for them. It's just confused thinking on their part (very common, judging by some of the comments here). (All of this is about "pushing" or "forcing", not about "encouraging", which I believe to be very different).

sosborn 4y ago

Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it? IMO, my role as a parent is to expose my kids to as many things as I can. If the like it, I give them more, if they don’t, then we move on to something else.

gwd 4y ago
> Is it that they weren’t pushed to do sports, or is it that they were never given the opportunity to try it? I think ultimately the problem is that the child has the first-hand knowledge of their own experience, but not the mature perspective of age; and the adult has the mature perspective of age, but not the first-hand knowledge of the child's experience. I have a toddler. Sometimes he knows he's tired needs to sleep; sometimes he needs to sleep but he refuses to accept that; sometimes he knows that he's not tired and won't be able to sleep. I know that he often gets tired around a certain time, and that he often refuses to accept that he actually needs sleep. So sometimes when he refuses sleep, I insist, and then he conks out immediately. I was right: my greater perspective as an adult was more accurate his immediate experience of wanting to stay awake. But sometimes when he refuses to sleep, and I insist, he spends the next two hours tossing & turning and not being able to sleep. He was right: his personal experience of not being at all tired outweighed my greater perspective as a parent that he's normally tired at the time. Neither one of us has enough information to make an informed decision on our own. I think something similar happens with children. Children don't really know the potential reward of putting up with the grind of practicing for years, or the regret as an adult of missing out on those skills. But if it's excruciatingly painful, they certainly know it. Adults know the potential reward of putting in the time, but they don't know the child's experience. So, when a child balks, is it because they're just facing the normal barrier of effort that everyone faces? Or are they really experiencing something excruciatingly painful? If it's the first and you push them, they'll be glad in the end. If it's the first and you don't push them, they'll regret it. If it's the second and you push them, they'll be resentful; if it's the second and you don't push them, everyone will be happier. Neither the child nor the parents actually has all the information required to make an accurate decision.
- sosborn 4y ago
  I agree, and I don't mean to imply that the very first mention of "I want to quit" is the right time to quit. But, as a parent, it isn't difficult to have a sense of where they fall on that spectrum. And yeah, you won't be 100% right, but such is life.
beowulfey 4y ago
This is the right attitude. It’s how I was raised, and I can say that I’m very happy with the person I’ve become. Kids don’t know what it is they like or don’t like. They might think they dislike something, but usually they are just afraid of the unknown. Once something is tried at least once, then they can make an informed decision.

khazhoux 4y ago

I begged my parents for an electric guitar and they bought me one. But I didn’t enjoy my first couple of guitar lessons and my parents said “Whatever, quit.” Fast-forward my raging envy in high school at my friends shredding on stage while I could bang out a few chords.

manmal 4y ago
Do you think you‘d be great at guitar, and love playing it, if your parents had forced you to take lessons?
- khazhoux 4y ago
  Absolutely. I still played at home, just without a teacher. I improved a tiny amount with all bad technique. This was the down side of lenient parents who never forced us to do things we didn’t like, and let us quit even things that were good for us.
  - manmal 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing your perspective. I started practicing electric guitar at the ripe age of 20 (with a teacher I met at compulsory army service), and after 6 years of that, played in a band for five years (including a gig in front of four thousand people). My parents only ever once saw me play live - and I think that actually helped, because I never felt forced to practice (as was the case with the piano).
- arethuza 4y ago
  For some reason this reminds me of maths at university - I initially hated it (and was dreadful at it) but had to do it because there was no flexibility in the course - you had to do 3 years of general engineering maths or fail the course. I eventually ended up really liking maths and focusing on more abstract and maths heavy elements of computer science.
beowulfey 4y ago
If you were envious in high school, why not take lessons again?

manmal 4y ago

I sympathize. But if you had pushed them to do anything, chances are not so high you‘d have picked the right things. You might have pushed baseball and chess on them, and they might now be angry that you didn’t make them learn to code instead. Plus there might be additional resentment because forcing humans to do something they don’t like tends to create that.

khazhoux 4y ago
Even pushing baseball, they’d grow up with better physical fitness than sitting at home at day. (Assuming the kid wasn’t already active in something besides baseball)
kelnos 4y ago
No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all. There's a wide spectrum between "leave the kid to figure out all their hobbies themselves" and "require that they do the four hobbies that you've picked for them. I think it's absolutely healthy to push kids to a certain extent. That extent is just something that's probably different for every kid and activity, and I get that it's probably hard for a parent to figure out when to push and when to give up.
- manmal 4y ago
  > No one is saying you should push kids to do things without compromising at all This thread (started by irjustin) is about this though. And, where do you draw the line? I‘m all for encouragement, like: „Ok young one. You had half a year of ballet lessons now. It’s a bit different than you imagined, and you’re often exhausted afterwards. You can quit anytime you want, but how about you give it another shot and see if you can rest more between drills?“ And if she still wants to quit - let her.

Scarblac 4y ago

I make my kids do sports, but let them try out different ones until they find one they like. As a parent I had all these ideas for them - socially it can be good to be in a team sport, it's nice to have something that you're good at that you can also still do as an adult, if you move cities later its a way to meet people there so do something a lot of people do in an organized way... But we'll see what they end up with. The oldest is into (inline) skating.

balfirevic 4y ago

Well, your kids are wrong. They imagine enjoying all the benefits in the present, while all the costs are already in the past so they don't properly account for them. It's just confused thinking on their part (very common, judging by some of the comments here). (All of this is about "pushing" or "forcing", not about "encouraging", which I believe to be very different).