Note that in reality, all parents are experimenting. Nobody _knows_ the right way to raise a child. I'm the father of a 3yr daughter but I dare not claim that my way is the right way...
>This variance is also a big reason why there is no "one true way" of raising kids, and why you shouldn't take parenting authorities too seriously.
I have a 7mo old and, naturally, for the first couple months my wife and I drove ourselves bonkers worrying about whether or not we were any given task "the right way". I mean, don't get me wrong, we still check with his pediatrician and do basic online research about certain things, but for the most part you just develop an intuition about your kid and what their needs are.
As a father of four girls ranging from 8 years to three months old, I have to agree with that elderly lady. My daughters are all very different persons, with their own personalities, likes and interests. There's very little I could do to change who they fundamentally are, even if I wanted to. I also believe that as long as you love your children (which is very easy to do), and provide them with a safe environment where they can feel empowered to try things (a bit harder, but still very doable), they'll turn out fine.
There's this trend in parenting nowadays, where we're all pursuing perfection via different techniques / philosophies, but anything involving living things, especially humans, is inherently messy / imperfect. Raising children is no exception.
Seems like raising a kid requires exposing them to many different experiences growing up, and generally speaking fathers will provide different experiences mothers.
Do I have evidence? No.
Do you have any evidence that any other form of parenting is just as good?
I'm not a parent so take this with a grain of salt.
There are so many fads in parenting and they change all the time. Fads are, IMHO, dangerous and kids are not something you want to experiment on (too much). Finding someone who has raised happy children into the sort of people you'd like your kids to be would be the best way to go. Might be tricky to do in the modern world but if you can find a community of like minded people you'd be surprised how many people love to pass on their wisdom to a younger generation.
Interesting observation. I think it is important to highlight things that are taken for granted. There are seems to be an assumption that there is "the right way" to raise kids and that it should be constant from generation to generation. I'm not so sure that's the case...
I don’t know if I’m qualified as a father of three.
The most important point to raise children from my POV and experience is: mimétisme.
The very efficient way to teach or train them to adopt habit or behaviour is by personating yourself what you want them to be.
Children are copying what you are more than what you do.
Want them to love book ? Don’t buy them book and keep watching tv, play in front computer, or frenetically scroll your mobile. Just be a reader in front of them.
Want them to be curious, just be curious yourself… want them to clean and order their room, just clean your mess and order the house.
It’a all about that Your behaviour is the most important.
Leadership is not about enforcing things to other. But being the living example of the behaviour you want them to adopt.
Another important point from my POV, is learning and emotional context of the learning.
The more relaxed is the emotional context, the easier the learning will be easy and the skills will be able to be reused with ease in the futur.
Each time you use a skill in your life, your body also bring back the emotional context of the time of skill learning.
Learning is joy, not pain, not stress, not tension. And they start learning and never stop from the moment they are out of the mother’s belly.
It’s your responsability as a parent to enforce a relaxed and joyful environment in your house.
I could say far more, but I will stop here and wish you the best of luck. Congratulation for you and your wife being a parents.
"I think consensus with the partner on how to raise a child would be a given."
Looking around, it really isn't with many of the parents I know. There are just so many things one can disagree about. Food choices alone are very hard for some. Sugar or not, how much, and vegan diet or not, .. (We try to be as pragmatic as possible, as healthy as possible, but not dogmatic). Then, is it ok to play with toy weapons, what movies to watch at what age, how much screen time at all, ...
With my partner we were quite clear how to do it in theory before. But in reality there are many things we disagree - and then it is an art, to find a consensus about it, while the kids are watching. Otherwise it is an invitation for them for learning how to manipulate.
So good for you, if it was quite easy for you. For many it isn't for various reasons. So some probably just should have the courage to go with it, before they are too old. For others it might be better to wait.
This is the approach I've always had in mind to take with my future children. I hope they can have similarly successful results.
Any big learnings you found during the process which you didn't anticipate starting out? I'm always interested in different perspectives and experiences in raising children.
I agree and I really dislike the undercurrent of fear that's present in a lot of parenting advice. The message (implicitly or explicitly) tends to be "do it this way or you'll damage your kids." But the truth is we're never going to be perfect parents, we have no guarantees over how our kids turn out, and there are a wide range of approaches that will lead to good outcomes.
I like to do research to discover options I might not have come up with on my own, but I always try to pay attention to those subtle messages of fear so they don't influence my decisions too much.
Unfortunately, I think all child raising theory and advice is theoretical until you get to practice it on your own children.
I know you don't mean to imply otherwise, but that is what I'm doing right now. And I will tell you that I love hearing my daughter say "Anyway, I'm going to go to the couch and read a book now." instead of "Daddy can I watch Wiggles?!?!" :-)
Not that my wife and I don't have a long, long way to go.
There were so many books saying do this, don't do that. Everyone had words of wisdom for me, like "children love routine" and so on.
Much advice seemed self serving to me, and much of it was contradictory.
I decided to ignore all advice, read nothing, and just find our own way. Seems to be fine. My kid is happy, doing well and we aren't beating ourselves up over whether we're "doing it right".
Ah yes, once you're a parent, everyone will tell you how to raise your kid, and they will all be very sure of themselves. They will all disagree with each other. You have to get used to it.
In particular it sounds like you're an adherent of Dr. Sears. There may be benefits to his techniques. But the whole goal is to have the woman paying constant attention to the baby - which means that the woman never can pay undivided attention to anything else. This does not seem to me to be compatible with running a company, even in the best of times. (Which Yahoo is not in.)
(A random snide remark about Dr Sears. A man with 8 children advocates a child rearing technique where all of the work is done by the mom. Coincidence?)
Far be it for me to suggest to another how to raise their child. If it were up to me I'd so totally stick with it. The insane pace of development in these early years will never happen again. Another language is another life. The mind is also very good at adaptation, so anything you teach incorrectly today will auto-align/correct when your son is older and experiences that culture for real. What you're doing takes courage. Respect.
Thank you. Christ. In short: raise your child the way you would have liked to be raised yourself (not 'with loads of computer programming' - I mean this in a Rawlsian, veil-of-ignorance kinda way, supposing you are your own father, who liked, say, fishing, and tried to force it on you). That's the simple truth (ok, moral truth) that 80% of human beings seem to forget by the time they start replicating.
I'm glad NYT writer and so many HN posters finally figured out the correct way to raise kids, and are sharing it here. I thought we'd have to wait another 5000 years for it.
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