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Anyone else here think that kids should be allowed to spend their childhoods being, well, kids? A lot of people seem to spend their time as parents trying to t

Anyone else here think that kids should be allowed to spend their childhoods being, well, kids? A lot of people seem to spend their time as parents trying to teach the things they think their kids should know, but too often these seem to be things that kids need to know to fulfil their parents aspirations for them. Sure cash flow is a useful lesson (though one that I'd suggest could be taught more efficiently) but this feels a bit like a parent pushing someone down a particular line. Now I'm not saying that this is a bad story, and certainly not a bad parent, just that IMHO the absolute best bit of this story - by a country mile - is that it's something they did together, parent and child spending time with each other. If he learned about cash flow then that's great, but it's not nearly as great as him learning about his dad and his dad learning about him.

jgrahamc 15y ago
It depends what you mean by 'being kids'. My grandfather taught me quite a bit about electronics when I was young (how to solder, what the major components do, etc.) and I loved it. We also did woodwork together. With him I designed and built my own briefcase for taking my books to school in. For him these were things that I needed to know (he had been in the RAF as a wireless operator in the Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams) and so electronics was important and he'd grown up at a time when people made a lot of there own things). For me it was wonderful stuff to know about. And, as you point out, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. My parents took me to events organized by the National Association for Gifted Children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_Gifted_Children http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_Gifted...) and also had me do various types of IQ testing. Some of those events involve my best memories of time spent with my father. Perhaps they were fulfulling some sort of wish for me, but I tend to think that they looked at me and realized that these were things that I was going to enjoy or needed. Those interactions with my father and grandfather really matter a lot.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  By that I mean do stuff because it's fun and learn things because they're interesting and there to be learned rather than because doing them or learning them serves some aspirational purpose. I think what your grandfather did sounds ace but it sounds like you agree that the best bit was the time the two of you spent together and the knowledge imparted was secondary (even if it's gone on to be useful). Obviously things can fulfil both criteria and that's great, but I always think that the important thing is that it's fun and the minute it doesn't meet that criteria it should be changed. Kids spend enough time at school learning things they "need" to know. Let spare time be spare time. (As an aside my grandfather was a professional football player - while on the surface this sounds like ideal bonding material for a grandson he was big on the hard work element and spent too much time trying to get me to do repetitive drills...)
  - jgrahamc 15y ago
    The best part was being with adults who treated me like I was an intelligent human being and who explained things to me. Also, the fact that my parents realized that I was way ahead of the other kids when I could read at three years old and did something about it made a huge difference to my life. I think the most important thing I learnt from my parents about parenting is that parents need to look at their children and ask "what does this child need to be happy?" I was desperately unhappy at times at school because I was ahead of the other children and bored. They dealt with the problem when they had very little money and were dealing with their first child. I owe them a huge unrepayable debt for that.
  - knieveltech 15y ago
    Fun. Now there's a slippery slope that can lead to over-indulgence. As a parent your job is to protect your children, impart discipline, and teach them how to get along in this world. Keeping them entertained doesn't factor in in the grand scheme of things.
    - evilduck 15y ago
      Neglecting their mental state does them no favors either. Entertainment and enjoying an activity absolutely plays into the grand scheme of things with younger children.
- megablast 15y ago
  Apparently, I was never a kid for the same reason. If you start thinking about the real world, you are no longer playing in make believe. IE Kidsville.
bgraves 15y ago
I wouldn't read so much into this. It's a personal anecdote about the entrepreneurial spirit being encouraged in a young kid. All good parents want their kids to reach their own personal maximum potential. It doesn't sound like Mr. Robfitz was forcing his son to adhere to strict GAAP accounting principles, hustle for cheaper product, or make deals for prime vending machine real estate. This is equivalent to having a paper route as a kid -- which isn't really an option these days.
shin_lao 15y ago
What matters is that it's "fun". I would have loved to manage my own soda machine. It's a learning game. Managing a soda machine or playing Anno 1602, it's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?
- jensnockert 15y ago
  Essentially, except that playing Anno 1602 doesn't feel like a chore. More like being part of a work of gaming art.
Terretta 15y ago
No. Not if the definition of "letting kids be kids" is to let them do what everyone else's kids are doing these days, mollycoddling their every whim and when not acting as chauffeur or butler, letting them babysit themselves with TV and video games. Or, yes... If the definition of letting them be kids is shutting off the TV, on sunny days pushing them out the door to go play in the dirt, and on rainy days taking them to the library, coupled with spending time to encourage and support them in the interests they develop and express. The key is engagement. I don't see any indication in this story that the boy didn't enjoy it. Sounds as though he found it an engaging challenge, and that it didn't take too much of his time. If he wasn't doing that, he could have been playing Lemonade Stand on a Commodore 64 or Apple II. If the story was about Lemonade Stand, nobody would say "let kids be kids", so what's the problem here? Is it that this sounds like "work"? Work, even real work, can be fun, and figuring out how to enjoy something that returns financial gain may be the lesson with the most payoff a parent could provide, given the ratio of time most adults have to spend in work versus leisure.
- Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
  The definition is either of those or something different altogether. The point is that it should depend on the kids and the parents involved and revolve around something mutually enjoyable (rather than "improving"). I agree work can be fun and so can learning, and I agree that Rob probably had a great time and certainly had a great dad. My point is that he had a great time because he had a dad who was interested in him and engaged with him, not because he had a dad who tried to teach him cash flow.
  - jerf 15y ago
    '(rather than "improving")' Are you raising a child, or raising an adult? You seem horrified by the idea that we might try to "improve" kids; I'm horrified by the idea that I might turn my kids loose in the world without any "improvement". My mind can not even express the theory of parenting you are operating under in which improvement is some sort of anathema.
    - 15y ago
nyellin 15y ago
That depends on who is asking. If you're a responsible parent who plans creative and intellectually-stimulating activities for his/her children, by all means pick other activities. On the other hand, for many people I know, "being kids" refers to watching TV and playing halo. I was lucky to grow up in a house without television and I had an intellectually stimulating childhood that I wouldn't exchange for the world. I hope all kids experience "the zone" and a more meaningful, well earned, type of fun than that of consumption. The actual accounting knowledge the OP gained might not be important in the long run. The experience is.
poppysan 15y ago
A parents job is to offer comfort, support, and, yes, to teach the child what they feel they should know. A lot of people, this forum not excluded, have a definitive view of parenting, and if someone strays outside of that view then its not right. For instance, I am raising my oldest with the same tenderness and security that most parents have to offer, but I choose to be strict with education. As a result he is 3 and can read, write, do mathematics, and understand higher-level concepts than his peers. He still loves power rangers and playing outside, but he also feels good when he learns something new and receives the praise of his parents, teachers, and friends. But when he was about 1.5 I posted a thread asking for suggestions for raising an advanced child and was demonized. My view - which is just one view, is that the more you can teach a child (socially, academically, creatively) the better.
- bmj 15y ago
  Are you going to continue to home school (I'm assuming that's what you are doing now) your child once he reaches "school age?" Just curious. I agree that most parents believe what they do is "right," and if you don't do that, you are "wrong." To a certain degree, that's human nature (particularly with a subject like children), and if we didn't think our particular parenting method wasn't a great idea, why would we do it? Demonizing someone for a differing view, however, isn't the best way to express this.
tristan_louis 15y ago
You know, this kind of stuff is part of being a kid. When I was in first grade, my next door neighbor and I went into a water-selling business (think lemonade stand without the lemons) that failed miserably. My next venture was substantially more successful. Living in France, we had sticker albums associated to stories. A new movie would come out (for example, Star Wars) and shops would sell the album and sell sticker packs separately (each pack sold for the equivalent of about a buck and had 5-6 stickers in them). Each of the stickers were numbered and you would put them in your album to gradually uncover the story. Thing was, there always seemed to be some stickers you were missing and couldn't find in the pack. So I first set up a marketplace where people could sell me their unused stickers for 1 cent and I would sell the sticker someone was looking for for 50 cents. I don't remember any parent pressure in the matter (mostly, my parents looked at this as kids being kids) and I learned a lot about supply and demand in the process (including getting stuck with tons of worthless stickers at some point :) )
- unfed 15y ago
  Aah Figurine Panini. Those were the days. I was doing the exact same thing.
bena 15y ago
I don't know. Running a vending machine actually would sound like fun to me. It's a modern day lemonade stand.
jeffreymcmanus 15y ago
What it means to "be a kid": experimenting, learning, challenging yourself. That's what's going on here. I didn't need my parents to teach me to be entrepreneurial; I set up a lemonade stand in front of my house that I wanted to be the guy to provide services that people would pay for.
timwiseman 15y ago
If by being kids are you focusing on purely unproductive play, or worse passively watching TV, then No. Of course, I think there should be some of that. In fact, I think even adults should have some of that. I still play Go. I even still play Magic The Gathering and Video Games. And I watch more TV than I care to admit and let my kids watch more TV than they shoudl. But the TV is a guilty pleasure I know I should cut back on for them and me, and even playtime comes after the home work is done and comes along with me trying to teach them things they won't learn in school. I try to make the lessons fun as well as educational, but I'll let the fun slide long before I let the educational part slide. Paul Graham incidentally at least touches on this (and the fact that "childhood" now lasts much longer than it used too) in Why Nerds are Unpopular at http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html
west1737 15y ago
I think it depends on the kid. Speaking for myself, I would have loved that as a kid, so much that you don't even realize you're learning important things. There are probably plenty of kids who this would have made miserable and not been worth the trouble. I'm not saying this would work for every or even most kids, but if you can use the kids natural excitement to teach them important skills (not just cash flow, but money management, value of work, etc) then why wouldn't you? I think this is a great story, and I hope when I'm a parent I can engage my kids with something as creative.
maaku 15y ago
You ever been a parent? I'm guessing not because if you were, at some point you would have arrived at the horrifying realization that kids don't grow up on their own--that by some incalculable measure what we do today will affect their self-image, motivation, and desires for the future. Of course we are an amalgam of memory and experiences, and you can't look back and identify one single event that shaped your future, as Rob addressed in the article. But it is like sowing seeds--you don't know which ones specifically will take, but with some hard work and care-taking you can be know that the result will be good.
BrandonM 15y ago
Thinking back to when I was a kid, just about anything was fun. I remember categorizing my entire basketball collection in a spreadsheet, managing my parents' antique shop inventory, building bookshelves and birdhouses, putting together a garage sale with my brother and sister, and enjoying all of it. It's adults that forget how much fun can be found in everything around us. By delineating fun, work, learning, and development of other life skills, it's very easy to do children a disservice.
ajtaylor 15y ago
I did the typical American thing and started mowing lawns when I was around 13 or 14. At first I had a single 20" push mower and had one or two lawns. Then I used our family riding mower. After I had built up some clients I took out a loan and bought a used 36" commercial mower. The loan was repaid early, in about 8 months as I recall. About this time my dad bought a trailer and we used the family van to pull the trailer around. Not very long after that, I bought a 48" commercial mower. Along the way I also bought string trimmers, backpack blowers, and hedge trimmers. Every new customer was a springboard to more customers in that neighbourhood. All I had to do was make the lawn look great, and the new customers would come to me! At the fall peak, I could gross about $1400/month. I was my own boss, in top shape, had plenty of money (way more than all my friends) and in general was very happy. Those experiences were invaluable, and helped form my work ethic today. My father still has the large mower, and uses it every week to mow his own lawn - 20 years later.
lsc 15y ago
The primary difference between 'play' and "work" is safety, both in terms of personal harm and in terms of wasted resources. Most 'play' simulates some adult activity in a (hopefully) safe way; from mud pies on up to the first-person shooter video games. From that point of view, a business like this where the parent provides the 'safety net' so that the kid can explore without much by way of negative consequences /is/ play.

jgrahamc 15y ago

It depends what you mean by 'being kids'. My grandfather taught me quite a bit about electronics when I was young (how to solder, what the major components do, etc.) and I loved it. We also did woodwork together. With him I designed and built my own briefcase for taking my books to school in. For him these were things that I needed to know (he had been in the RAF as a wireless operator in the Second World War (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Beams) and so electronics was important and he'd grown up at a time when people made a lot of there own things). For me it was wonderful stuff to know about. And, as you point out, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather. My parents took me to events organized by the National Association for Gifted Children (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_Gifted_Children http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_Gifted...) and also had me do various types of IQ testing. Some of those events involve my best memories of time spent with my father. Perhaps they were fulfulling some sort of wish for me, but I tend to think that they looked at me and realized that these were things that I was going to enjoy or needed. Those interactions with my father and grandfather really matter a lot.

Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
By that I mean do stuff because it's fun and learn things because they're interesting and there to be learned rather than because doing them or learning them serves some aspirational purpose. I think what your grandfather did sounds ace but it sounds like you agree that the best bit was the time the two of you spent together and the knowledge imparted was secondary (even if it's gone on to be useful). Obviously things can fulfil both criteria and that's great, but I always think that the important thing is that it's fun and the minute it doesn't meet that criteria it should be changed. Kids spend enough time at school learning things they "need" to know. Let spare time be spare time. (As an aside my grandfather was a professional football player - while on the surface this sounds like ideal bonding material for a grandson he was big on the hard work element and spent too much time trying to get me to do repetitive drills...)
- jgrahamc 15y ago
  The best part was being with adults who treated me like I was an intelligent human being and who explained things to me. Also, the fact that my parents realized that I was way ahead of the other kids when I could read at three years old and did something about it made a huge difference to my life. I think the most important thing I learnt from my parents about parenting is that parents need to look at their children and ask "what does this child need to be happy?" I was desperately unhappy at times at school because I was ahead of the other children and bored. They dealt with the problem when they had very little money and were dealing with their first child. I owe them a huge unrepayable debt for that.
- knieveltech 15y ago
  Fun. Now there's a slippery slope that can lead to over-indulgence. As a parent your job is to protect your children, impart discipline, and teach them how to get along in this world. Keeping them entertained doesn't factor in in the grand scheme of things.
  - evilduck 15y ago
    Neglecting their mental state does them no favors either. Entertainment and enjoying an activity absolutely plays into the grand scheme of things with younger children.
megablast 15y ago
Apparently, I was never a kid for the same reason. If you start thinking about the real world, you are no longer playing in make believe. IE Kidsville.

bgraves 15y ago

I wouldn't read so much into this. It's a personal anecdote about the entrepreneurial spirit being encouraged in a young kid. All good parents want their kids to reach their own personal maximum potential. It doesn't sound like Mr. Robfitz was forcing his son to adhere to strict GAAP accounting principles, hustle for cheaper product, or make deals for prime vending machine real estate. This is equivalent to having a paper route as a kid -- which isn't really an option these days.

shin_lao 15y ago

What matters is that it's "fun". I would have loved to manage my own soda machine. It's a learning game. Managing a soda machine or playing Anno 1602, it's pretty much the same thing, isn't it?

jensnockert 15y ago
Essentially, except that playing Anno 1602 doesn't feel like a chore. More like being part of a work of gaming art.

Terretta 15y ago

No. Not if the definition of "letting kids be kids" is to let them do what everyone else's kids are doing these days, mollycoddling their every whim and when not acting as chauffeur or butler, letting them babysit themselves with TV and video games. Or, yes... If the definition of letting them be kids is shutting off the TV, on sunny days pushing them out the door to go play in the dirt, and on rainy days taking them to the library, coupled with spending time to encourage and support them in the interests they develop and express. The key is engagement. I don't see any indication in this story that the boy didn't enjoy it. Sounds as though he found it an engaging challenge, and that it didn't take too much of his time. If he wasn't doing that, he could have been playing Lemonade Stand on a Commodore 64 or Apple II. If the story was about Lemonade Stand, nobody would say "let kids be kids", so what's the problem here? Is it that this sounds like "work"? Work, even real work, can be fun, and figuring out how to enjoy something that returns financial gain may be the lesson with the most payoff a parent could provide, given the ratio of time most adults have to spend in work versus leisure.

Tyrannosaurs 15y ago
The definition is either of those or something different altogether. The point is that it should depend on the kids and the parents involved and revolve around something mutually enjoyable (rather than "improving"). I agree work can be fun and so can learning, and I agree that Rob probably had a great time and certainly had a great dad. My point is that he had a great time because he had a dad who was interested in him and engaged with him, not because he had a dad who tried to teach him cash flow.
- jerf 15y ago
  '(rather than "improving")' Are you raising a child, or raising an adult? You seem horrified by the idea that we might try to "improve" kids; I'm horrified by the idea that I might turn my kids loose in the world without any "improvement". My mind can not even express the theory of parenting you are operating under in which improvement is some sort of anathema.
  - 15y ago

nyellin 15y ago

That depends on who is asking. If you're a responsible parent who plans creative and intellectually-stimulating activities for his/her children, by all means pick other activities. On the other hand, for many people I know, "being kids" refers to watching TV and playing halo. I was lucky to grow up in a house without television and I had an intellectually stimulating childhood that I wouldn't exchange for the world. I hope all kids experience "the zone" and a more meaningful, well earned, type of fun than that of consumption. The actual accounting knowledge the OP gained might not be important in the long run. The experience is.

poppysan 15y ago

A parents job is to offer comfort, support, and, yes, to teach the child what they feel they should know. A lot of people, this forum not excluded, have a definitive view of parenting, and if someone strays outside of that view then its not right. For instance, I am raising my oldest with the same tenderness and security that most parents have to offer, but I choose to be strict with education. As a result he is 3 and can read, write, do mathematics, and understand higher-level concepts than his peers. He still loves power rangers and playing outside, but he also feels good when he learns something new and receives the praise of his parents, teachers, and friends. But when he was about 1.5 I posted a thread asking for suggestions for raising an advanced child and was demonized. My view - which is just one view, is that the more you can teach a child (socially, academically, creatively) the better.

bmj 15y ago
Are you going to continue to home school (I'm assuming that's what you are doing now) your child once he reaches "school age?" Just curious. I agree that most parents believe what they do is "right," and if you don't do that, you are "wrong." To a certain degree, that's human nature (particularly with a subject like children), and if we didn't think our particular parenting method wasn't a great idea, why would we do it? Demonizing someone for a differing view, however, isn't the best way to express this.

tristan_louis 15y ago

You know, this kind of stuff is part of being a kid. When I was in first grade, my next door neighbor and I went into a water-selling business (think lemonade stand without the lemons) that failed miserably. My next venture was substantially more successful. Living in France, we had sticker albums associated to stories. A new movie would come out (for example, Star Wars) and shops would sell the album and sell sticker packs separately (each pack sold for the equivalent of about a buck and had 5-6 stickers in them). Each of the stickers were numbered and you would put them in your album to gradually uncover the story. Thing was, there always seemed to be some stickers you were missing and couldn't find in the pack. So I first set up a marketplace where people could sell me their unused stickers for 1 cent and I would sell the sticker someone was looking for for 50 cents. I don't remember any parent pressure in the matter (mostly, my parents looked at this as kids being kids) and I learned a lot about supply and demand in the process (including getting stuck with tons of worthless stickers at some point :) )

unfed 15y ago
Aah Figurine Panini. Those were the days. I was doing the exact same thing.

bena 15y ago

I don't know. Running a vending machine actually would sound like fun to me. It's a modern day lemonade stand.

jeffreymcmanus 15y ago

What it means to "be a kid": experimenting, learning, challenging yourself. That's what's going on here. I didn't need my parents to teach me to be entrepreneurial; I set up a lemonade stand in front of my house that I wanted to be the guy to provide services that people would pay for.

timwiseman 15y ago

If by being kids are you focusing on purely unproductive play, or worse passively watching TV, then No. Of course, I think there should be some of that. In fact, I think even adults should have some of that. I still play Go. I even still play Magic The Gathering and Video Games. And I watch more TV than I care to admit and let my kids watch more TV than they shoudl. But the TV is a guilty pleasure I know I should cut back on for them and me, and even playtime comes after the home work is done and comes along with me trying to teach them things they won't learn in school. I try to make the lessons fun as well as educational, but I'll let the fun slide long before I let the educational part slide. Paul Graham incidentally at least touches on this (and the fact that "childhood" now lasts much longer than it used too) in Why Nerds are Unpopular at http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

west1737 15y ago

I think it depends on the kid. Speaking for myself, I would have loved that as a kid, so much that you don't even realize you're learning important things. There are probably plenty of kids who this would have made miserable and not been worth the trouble. I'm not saying this would work for every or even most kids, but if you can use the kids natural excitement to teach them important skills (not just cash flow, but money management, value of work, etc) then why wouldn't you? I think this is a great story, and I hope when I'm a parent I can engage my kids with something as creative.

maaku 15y ago

You ever been a parent? I'm guessing not because if you were, at some point you would have arrived at the horrifying realization that kids don't grow up on their own--that by some incalculable measure what we do today will affect their self-image, motivation, and desires for the future. Of course we are an amalgam of memory and experiences, and you can't look back and identify one single event that shaped your future, as Rob addressed in the article. But it is like sowing seeds--you don't know which ones specifically will take, but with some hard work and care-taking you can be know that the result will be good.

BrandonM 15y ago

Thinking back to when I was a kid, just about anything was fun. I remember categorizing my entire basketball collection in a spreadsheet, managing my parents' antique shop inventory, building bookshelves and birdhouses, putting together a garage sale with my brother and sister, and enjoying all of it. It's adults that forget how much fun can be found in everything around us. By delineating fun, work, learning, and development of other life skills, it's very easy to do children a disservice.

ajtaylor 15y ago

I did the typical American thing and started mowing lawns when I was around 13 or 14. At first I had a single 20" push mower and had one or two lawns. Then I used our family riding mower. After I had built up some clients I took out a loan and bought a used 36" commercial mower. The loan was repaid early, in about 8 months as I recall. About this time my dad bought a trailer and we used the family van to pull the trailer around. Not very long after that, I bought a 48" commercial mower. Along the way I also bought string trimmers, backpack blowers, and hedge trimmers. Every new customer was a springboard to more customers in that neighbourhood. All I had to do was make the lawn look great, and the new customers would come to me! At the fall peak, I could gross about $1400/month. I was my own boss, in top shape, had plenty of money (way more than all my friends) and in general was very happy. Those experiences were invaluable, and helped form my work ethic today. My father still has the large mower, and uses it every week to mow his own lawn - 20 years later.

lsc 15y ago

The primary difference between 'play' and "work" is safety, both in terms of personal harm and in terms of wasted resources. Most 'play' simulates some adult activity in a (hopefully) safe way; from mud pies on up to the first-person shooter video games. From that point of view, a business like this where the parent provides the 'safety net' so that the kid can explore without much by way of negative consequences /is/ play.