
How to get kids to pay attention - bkohlmann
https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost-secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention
======
jinfiesto
I often wonder whether this has a lot to do with how we treat our kids. I
often catch myself acting uninterested in my daughter's interests (she's two
and often wants to show me things for the 50th time that were pretty boring in
the first place.) She doesn't have any attention or behavioral issues in
general, but I was amazed when a friend of mine came to visit who is an early
music educator. They didn't do anything music related, but watching her
interact with my daughter was eye-opening. She was very present and respectful
with regards to my daughter's interests and what my daughter wanted to do. I
guess more or less she treated my daughter more or less like an adult.
Thinking about it, it's so easy to be flippant or dismissive about what our
kids are doing or are interested in without even noticing.

I was really amazed to see how much my daughter reciprocated the attention and
my friend was able to get her to pay attention to this or that or be much more
engaged than I usually can.

This is obviously a very small sample, but it really made me think about the
ways that we don't treat our children like adults (and how maybe they act like
children because we treat them that way.)

~~~
dalbasal
An indirect way of encouraging this is including kids in what _you_ are doing,
as opposed to engineering activities for them.

A lot of kids' world these days is an artificial reality, made for them.
School, soccer, art class, play dates. The reason the activity exists is to
give kids an experience. We're not interested in it, because it's kid stuff.

When I was a kid, some of the most formative activities were fishing, sheep
farming & vegetables gardening (grandparents on a farm), home repair jobs like
painting or brickwork.

When I was very small (2-4), if my parents were painting a room, I was also in
old clothes with a paintbrush "helping". Same with spring cleaning or whatnot.
I had a little hammer I could bang, to help my dad assemble IKEA furniture.

You don't have to conciously "engage" in their stuff, just let them engage in
your stuff.

~~~
Ntrails
> When I was very small (2-4), if my parents were painting a room, I was also
> in old clothes with a paintbrush "helping". Same with spring cleaning or
> whatnot.

One of my favourite childhood photos is me mowing the lawn (with a plastic
"bubble spewing" lawnmower). A thing I used to walk behind my father as he
mowed the lawn.

It never really had the soap to make bubbles in it. Didn't care about that. I
was _helping_

~~~
k4r1
I second this. I'm a father of a 5½ year old boy. Like the grandparent said, I
try to treat him as an adult with no experience, knowledge or skills and with
a plastic mind.

Small kids have an instinct to learn: they follow you around and copy your
behavior. It takes great responsibility to shape the future of a person. And
with your own flaws replayed in front of you, you change, you become a better
person because of it.

I remember that age. And I loved when I was doing stuff with my dad. Before I
was 7 I had worked with wood, handled the axe and knife, welded metal, messed
with bikes, capsized a boat, tied knots and shot rifles. I wasn't good, I
didn't contribute, I was just given small tasks to free my dad to do the real
work. I felt I was on the team, and I learned a lot.

My father always answered all my weird questions, and if he wasn't able to, he
looked it up and told me at bed time.

When I was 12, and enthusiastic told him about a game have played on my
Commodere 64. He listened and was understanding of my enthusiasm. Then he
said: "But did you program that game?", and I replayed "No, of course not...".
And my Dad replayed: "So you are only running other peoples programs...". That
sentence is the reason I'm in IT and reading this site...

------
tomohawk
This is pretty much how I was raised in a small midwestern farming community.
I was in charge of the laundry by the time I was 6, and the lawn when I was 8
or 9, and summers were pretty much filled with activities that my friends and
I could organize.

Moving to the burbs where play was organized sports and kids had everything
done for them was a really big shock.

It was hard to believe how inept at life most of my peers were when I went off
to University. They only things they knew were what was on tv or from school.

~~~
lgregg
I can relate, I was born/grew up overseas and was raised this way before my
parents moved back to the states. I moved back with them, and it was
surprising how little my friends had in life skills. I had learned to cook
(from watching/learning) already and would cook for myself after school for
example, while most of my friends would have zero ideas on what to do.

It's sad how the U.S. Government prevents native American kids to have this
experience in populated areas. There's a cultural vibe of individualism
preventing overwatch of kids by adults which has led, in part, to the
prohibitive autonomy that I had as a kid.

I was told by my mom that at the age of 4 years old, I hailed a taxi cab alone
in the Philippines while she went to the bathroom in a McDonalds. That would
never happen here in America.

~~~
mos_basik
>There's a cultural vibe of individualism [where?] preventing overwatch of
kids [whose kids?] by adults which has led, in part, to the prohibitive
[prohibiting what?] autonomy that I had as a kid.

I don't quite understand what you're saying here, but I'm genuinely
interested. Could you clarify?

Active listening: What I thought you said is that in, say, the Philippines,
there is a culture of individualism that prevents adults from hovering over
kids (not sure how that follows), which leads to the kids having significantly
more autonomy than in the U.S. (and maybe you used the word "prohibitive"
incorrectly?).

I was also raised by American parents in a village in equatorial Congo--thus
my interest.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Not OP but I read it as prohibition of the autonomy (of children by today's
culture) that they used to have. I can relate, as a child I was expected to be
self-sufficient in a way that would be unrecognisable to modern children.

Rather than being ferried by car to the school, and taxied to a series of
child appointments, I walked to school alone or with friends. That including
crossing a 4 lane highway, at the lights, in a major city. I must have been
doing that at age 5 and 6 as at 7 we went to a different school. I don't
remember my parents ever taking me apart from the very first time. Maybe a
couple more times at most then. Same for everyone else - we all walked. Now
every school is near unreachable thanks to the hundreds of cars from parents
who are usually near enough to walk.

When playing out I was often told not to come back until dinner, so we'd go
off and do stuff.

Every adult around, and everyone else's parent would give us a telling off if
we were being out of line. A shopkeeper or stranger might come out to yell.
Everyone seemed to have half an eye out for all the kids.

The individualism of today's adults all around has led to them ignoring, or
putting up with the excesses of, everyone else's kids. Few would dare say
anything, and would probably get a torrent of abuse from the parent if they
did.

The over-hype of abuse and stranger danger hasn't helped either - serious
things, but not exactly as common as the media imply. Adult males have double
the reason not to speak to or tell off someone's child.

~~~
bsenftner
I grew up with much the same freedom: in small town Iowa, the school bus was
for kids 20 miles away. My street would join the larger neighborhood's kids
for the 5 mile walk to and from everyday, rain, thunderstorms, winter snow
storm or not. If snow was really bad, dads with snowmobiles would ferry the
kids, pulling trains of sleds. Rain was okay, no matter how hard.

After school, the "bike gangs" of kids would be roaming free, stop in for
dinner, and then back out till dark. Everyone had this freedom.

As the kids became teens, this being the late 70's, a tax law created
incentive for publishing and insurance corporations to move to Iowa. Their
families brought major city / coastal teen attitudes, including appetites for
a drug culture that Iowa was not sophisticated enough to manage. That Iowa
Innocence seems to have been lost. Now it is just another generica in the US
corporate sameland, with the original Iowa Natives unable to understand what
happened to their culture.

~~~
tomjakubowski
> Now it is just another generica in the US corporate sameland, with the
> original Iowa Natives unable to understand what happened to their culture.

Is this a very cleverly disguised allegory for the loss of indigenous culture
by invading hordes, descended from Europeans who settled the coast of what is
now the United States? Do you actually consider small town mid-20th century
midwestern US culture to be the culture of the "original Iowa Natives"?

~~~
bsenftner
I am referring to the fact that all the States had unique cultures,
transplants from their original countries, many idealist moved to the middle
states and tried to create utopias in the New World. None of that worked, but
there was unique culture, distinct in different parts of many states. Many of
these people never move, so they are the original descendants from some
religious idealism that fizzled.

I course I recognize these are not the original Iowa Natives. I am referring
to the ideal of small towns and their community culture. Which was very real
not that long ago.

------
nickjj
What's really interesting to me is this same thing can be applied to adults
too.

The article writes:

 _> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if
you didn't have to do anything else?'_

I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same
question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that instead
of being pressured into "making a living".

~~~
maltalex
> I often wonder what civilization would be like if adults asked the same
> question to themselves and then lead a life where they focused on that
> instead of being pressured into "making a living".

I imagine we'd have an abundance of pilots, and actors and a severe lack of
toilet cleaners.

~~~
Kluny
Personally I think there are more people than you think who would be perfectly
happy to clean toilets as their contribution, so long as they were compensated
fairly for it.

~~~
CryptoPunk
Isn't that the entire point of the free market? To find the price that
incentivizes the necessary level of production of a good/service?

The alternative is a central authority setting prices, which has historically
had disastrous results.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
Well, in romantic theory, yes. But unfortunately, society doesn't value folks
that clean toilets and folks that clean toilets need income to buy food,
shelter, and other things. The balance of power seriously works against the
person cleaning toilets, and they have no real power over the wages they are
paid.

The market forces that determine pay are more competition between folks that
hire others to clean toilets. If all of your competitors pay twice as much as
you, you might not have quality employees... or any at all, if a job is
readily available. If you have a lot of folks desperate for income, you can
pay less. If there are few folks that are willing to clean toilets, you
probably pay more. You could go without folks to clean toilets, but your
average Western accountant probably isn't going to clean the office toilets or
breakroom willingly unless it becomes standard for office jobs everywhere.
Many places simply cannot leave dirty facilities - and in some jobs, you
probably would rather have separate staff cleaning (hospitals, for example).

Luckily, there are a lot of levels between "unregulated, free-market-will-
take-care-of-it" and complete control from a central authority. Minimum wages,
worker rights, workplace safety, safety nets that ensure less desperate
people, and so on.

~~~
CryptoPunk
If the supply of people able and willing to clean toilets is great compared to
the demand for toilet cleaning service, the wage for toilet cleaners will be
low.

We can redistribute profits from investors to low wage workers like the people
who clean toilets, but the consequence of that is lower return on investment,
and with it, lower rates of investment/economic-growth.

In the long, policies that lower economic growth rates are very detrimental to
all classes of workers. What increases wages for people like toilet cleaners
is high levels of production relative to population.

Investment is the mechanism by which we increase production, and profits are
how 1. resources are distributed to those who are most effective at growing
the economy's level of production 2. people are incentivized to invest to
increase production.

There's no escaping economic laws, and no free lunch from policies that
redistribute income from high income earners to low income earners.

------
pnathan
It's very hard to compare a hunter gatherer / traditional village society to
the modern urban & educated society and have meaningful takeaways.

The crux of the matter is the requirement for responsibility. Rather than have
this goofy teenagehood that runs from 13-25, forcing the matter of
responsibility at an earlier age and _accepting the failures_ is a critical
difference.

Protecting children and ensuring they are not morally damaged runs exactly
counter this reality. There's a good deal of cognitive dissonance and parental
self-delusion going on here as well.

I have generally grown to have a dislike of child labor laws that prohibit or
limit working after 14. It's doing a great disservice to the young adults who
could be doing something constructive in character.

Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in
household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet
litter, etc.

~~~
fb03
> Same goes for chores: children should be doing a full set of chores in
> household rota as soon as they are physically able. Vacuuming, dishes, pet
> litter, etc.

It is insane that some parents I know would like to reply to this part of your
answer like this: "Kids should be kids you shouldn't force them to be adults
too soon or you might steal their childhood". I've literally heard that.

~~~
kzrdude
You might steal from their adulthood if you refuse to teach them life skills,
maybe something to reply with.

------
unit91
I have 6 kids, and I've found it's pretty simple to get kids to pay attention
(or anything else). Be consistent, and willing to discipline if necessary.
Here's the order I follow:

1\. Polite request

2\. Polite command

3\. Stern command

4\. Warning

5\. Push-ups

6\. Spanking

They know I love them and because of that love obedience is required.
Situations rarely escalate past step 2, and step 6 is memorable.

ETA: for anything past the polite stages, I try to always follow-up with
gentle counseling after they've had a couple minutes to think about it. "Do
you know why you got into trouble? How could you have handled the situation
better?". Complete amnesty is the rule during counseling, i.e., no matter what
they confess, they will NOT receive punishment. I want them to learn by
reflection.

~~~
s4vi0r
Don't spank your kids. It has no benefit, and many negative effects.

~~~
geomark
Indeed. I was spanked as a child (I was very stubborn and looking back it's
clear that nothing else really worked with me). As a result, I suffer from a
condition known as respect for others. It's a terrible affliction to have in
this day and age.

~~~
c22
Strange, I was also spanked as a child and somehow I still ended up with
several flaws. I feel like the experience retarded the age at which I was able
to achieve self actualization by many years and seriously impacted my ability
to have a healthy adult relationship with my father who has himself changed
and grown tremendously as an individual since the years he spanked me as a
child.

------
xstartup
I and my wife discuss programming matters in front of our kids. And my kids
listen to the discussions and want to be part of it.

Then I start teaching the basics, they are a bit more willing to hear.

Here the incentive for them is to be part of the club where interesting things
are happening.

We laugh at coding jokes which kids don't appear to understand which leaves
them confused.

So, it seems they are aware they lack some understanding because of which they
are unable to understand us.

The same idea has worked for math, playing musical instruments like
keyboard/ukelele, physical exercises like skipping ropes or air pushups.

If I simply give them a computer or ukelele, they won't be interested as they
don't know how to hold a ukulele or have no one to tell them how to hold it
right and how to fuse a chord progression with the strumming pattern. These
things are not obvious by just watching or hits and trials on a
guitar/ukelele.

~~~
mncharity
Thanks for an idea. As part of developing a rough-quantitative feel for
physical properties, I like associating measures with real-life adult-world
examples. Eg, a Newton-meter torque is reopening a 2L plastic soda bottle.[1]
But my mindset was 'make the associations transparent and low-barrier', and do
'number->example, to allow easily exploring the measure space"'. But what if
there was more mystery, struggle, challenge, tease? An adaptively tuned
barrier.

Instead of 'touching a thermometer scale at some temperature instantly yields
a video about making chocolate', or a video clip of a tv news weather report,
what if instead a video had temperatures bleeped/blurred out, and required an
act of effort - "give me the temperature, d*mnit! it should be around here
somewhere...". Then maybe related videos (of similar temperature or topic)
aren't just more surfing, but payoff? An unlocking. "Ohhh, change the
temperature of that step and you get a different kind of chocolate!"

Maybe a little animated critter that watches videos with you, and cheers for
temperatures, or jumps on them, and sometimes makes it so you cant hear/see
them, unless you shush the critter, or move it.

Anyway, random brainstorming - I'm exploring maybe doing a temperature
education app. Thanks for your comment.

[1]
[http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torq...](http://www.clarifyscience.info/part/ZoomB?v=A&p=CK6Ji&m=torque)

------
maltalex
> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you
> didn't have to do anything else?'

In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive
activity such as playing video games, or watching videos on youtube.

~~~
tonyarkles
> In the western world the answer to that question is often some addictive
> activity such as playing video games, watching videos on youtube or
> something similar.

I was a relatively free-range child. I had a bike, I had a pocket full of
quarters to call home if I needed to, and if I wanted to I could stay home and
play video games (we had an NES, followed by a SNES, but not that many games).

What did I do? I rode my bike to the library and took out books from the
programming section. The first ones were video-game inspired. You could get
the source code of a game in a book and type it into the Vic-20. I was
obsessive with it. Once I'd gone through all of the game-books they had, I
started making my own. And then we got a used XT and it. was. on. Quickly went
from QBasic to a C compiler (PowerC, if I recall). Around '97 or so we got a
Pentium 1 and I heard about this thing called "gcc" which was apparently a
better C compiler, so I ended up installing Linux.

And here we are, 20 years later and I've turned all of that into a great
career. At the time, my parents were pretty dismayed that I wasn't into
baseball, or soccer, or basketball, or whatever... But they did a great job at
keeping things balanced. Don't want to play sports? That's ok, but we've got
to go take the dog for a walk.

I fully accept that a lot of the computer-related activities are significantly
more addictive now (and passive) than they were back then. If I wanted a new
game, I had to ride my bike to the library! But... I'm always leery of people
who suggest heavily restricting screen time just because it's screen time. If
that's the direction someone's going, they might just need a little nudge to
make it a more productive learning experience.

~~~
nickserv
There's a big difference in active and passive screen time. I got into
computers in the early 90s and back then there was always a certain hands on
aspect to it. From installing RAM to clearing drive space or making custom
boot disks... Games actually thought me a lot!

Now... Not so much. Much of the hardware is locked, nevermind the software. So
kids get to thinking they _can 't_ make anything, that it's a primarily
passive experience.

To me, that's the big problem, to become passionate about passiveness.

For the record my 5 year old runs KDE on a fanless laptop. It's been great for
him to learn letters at school

~~~
robbrown451
I agree except for the idea that hardware and software being locked somehow
prevents creative activities.

If you want to do programming, you can do a huge amount just using browser
APIs (and that is kind of nice because it is very easy to share what you do by
sending people a link). You can do graphics (canvas, svg, webgl), audio, and
so many other things.

But to use a computer creatively you don't have to be a programmer. You can
use paint programs, 3d modeling programs, music programs such as DAWs, word
processors/text editors for writing, and a huge number of other kinds of
software that allow non-passive, creative activities.

The problem, as I see it, is that so many passive things are available too,
and many are very attractive to kids.

~~~
thomastjeffery
Three problem with locked-down software and hardware is that it is the
environment. An immutable environment leaves no room for creativity.

Sure, you can go find an open environment, but when I was growing up, I was
already there; and that made all the difference. I didn't need a mentor to
introduce me. I was free to stumble into the world of software via my own
interests.

~~~
wilsonnb2
That's just not true. Plenty of creativity is available in immutable
environments. Working around limitations is a key factor of creativity in my
opinion.

~~~
thomastjeffery
Sure, but it's a different kind of creativity.

The limitations are arbitrary and nearly impossible to get around. Computers,
especially smart phones, tablets, etc. are being treated less as property of
the buyer and more as property of the seller/manufacturer.

For example: When it is very difficult to unlock a bootloader, then most
people do not find it interesting to try other operating systems. Very few are
more creative, and the rest are just prevented from
exploring/learning/creating just because they have the wrong device.

~~~
robbrown451
The kinds of creativity that are allowed are far more relevant to the question
of kids and attention and the effect of electronic devices. My four year old
has a chromebook, which she uses for a lot of things (of which watching inane
videos on YouTube would be her default if I didn't intervene regularly to
point her to better stuff).

She'll probably be coding by the time she is 8, but she mostly does graphics
and music now (for instance, she uses piano-karaoke software I developed that
runs in Chrome on most any device). The "unlocking the bootloader" issue
hasn't cropped up yet, but maybe I would be more frustrated if we had an iOS
instead of chromeOS, Android and MacOS devices.

~~~
thomastjeffery
These limitations aren't constrained to toddlers. I have met plenty of
teenagers who are stuck with similar devices.

This is a problem that has been somewhat avoided in the Android ecosystem, but
the trend is definitely negative.

------
seibelj
My father was short tempered, very loud, and an unusually large man in stature
and presence. Additionally he worked nights, got a couple hours of sleep, and
then woke up and took care of my brother and I for breakfast / school before
sleeping more. He was not someone to mess with in general, let alone at 630am
on a Tuesday.

I think the threat of being screamed at and intimidated made my brother and I
two of the most well behaved kids I knew. I would see my friends going bananas
and think, “are you guys out of your minds?”

I’m not advocating this style of parenting, and I won’t replicate it, but I
can’t deny that the old school mechanism of raising kids was basically “sit
down, shut up, or else!” and it made kids much more likely to listen. And the
view of children as mini adults who could be useful, if properly trained, has
been the default parenting style for thousands of years.

~~~
subjectsigma
Another anecdote people might not like: Sunday school was an amazing form of
early-childhood education for me. Some of my first experiences with music,
art, and reading were in Sunday school. It taught me to love drawing and
singing which I still like to this day. We were taught to obey our parents or
go to Hell, to pay attention or go to Hell, to share and be kind and to
empathize... or go to Hell... Which everyone of course realizes the
implications of, even at very young ages.

I once had a very interesting conversation with a high school teacher of mine
who taught very high-level math. Speaking only of his students who were in
honors courses, he said that there was a clear divide between students from
religious homes and students from secular ones. The religious ones were much
more diligent and willing to learn. The non-religious ones may have been smart
but were sometimes unmotivated or couldn't handle the rigorous pace of work.
The religion itself didn't matter - we had Hindu, Christian, and Jewish kids
in the class, maybe one Muslim but I don't remember. He himself was a
Christian so maybe he was biased, but I believe it.

~~~
corry
Interesting theory, I think there's something to it.

There's probably some selection bias going on with the religious homes thing.
Like the hidden variable that both religious adherence AND discipline/work
ethic are caused by: a belief in a meta-order that one should conform to and
operate within.

i.e. It's reasonable to assume that more traditionally religious parents are
people that tend to prefer (a) explicit order and structure, and (b)
conformity or deference to authority. If you value those things, you will
likely place a higher degree of value on discipline and work ethic in your own
life and in your children's lives.

On a more subtle level -- and this will likely be unpopular on here -- I
believe that sincerely religious people are also more likely to have a certain
"default stance" towards life / the universe... that their actions matter,
that they want to be "morally good", that they must take into account a
perspective other than their own (either God's perspective, their priest's,
their parents', etc). That combined with a kind of earnestness... seems like a
good plan for success in life.

Obviously not saying those are exclusively or even principally religious
attributes.

Also not saying that that stance is absolutely the best one. You can likely
index too far that way too.

------
jeroenhd
Text-only link because NPR couldn't be bothered to make their GDPR compliance
page link to the correct page:
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789)

~~~
jonnytran
How did you find this? I looked all over but was unable to find it after
declining and going the the plaintext site.

I would love the text-only site... if it worked.

~~~
akavel
You can copy the story ID from the original URL. It's the "long" number just
after the date — e.g. in the following URL:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/6217527...](https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/21/621752789/a-lost-
secret-how-to-get-kids-to-pay-attention)

it's 621752789. I would then click any random story on the default "plain text
site" ([https://text.npr.org/](https://text.npr.org/)), to quickly get a base
URL for a story, and then replace the sId in the URL with the copied number.
Thus:

[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789)

------
wu-ikkyu
It's amazing how so many in our society wonder why kids naturally don't want
to be forced to sit down, shut up, and passively consume arbitrary,
impractical, and obsolete information. Our teaching and testing methods are
stuck in the 19th century. Children who don't fit the mold of a cog in the
industrial machine are drugged into submission.

>We must do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to
earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a
technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of
today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living.
We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be
employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian-Darwinian
theory, he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of
inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors.
The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about
whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told
them they had to earn a living.

-Buckminster Fuller

------
empath75
As someone who has spent a bit of time traveling in the Mayan parts of
Guatemala and Mexico, it seems difficult to me to compare parenting styles
without also considering the fact that quite a few of the Maya in general are
living in abject poverty with very little social mobility and with often 3+
generations of family living in close proximity, and I suspect as their
financial situation improves and they have better access to distractions like
tv or internet, the differences will fade away. I’d be very surprised if it
even survived one generation of living in Guatemala City, let alone after
moving to the US.

It’s one thing to let your kids free roam in a village that has a single dirt
road going through it and almost everyone around you is a cousin or has known
your family for generations. It’s quite another in the suburbs where you have
only had a 5 minute chat with one neighbor in 3 months.

I’m also sort of skeptical of applying a value judgement to one or the other —
I’m not sure that it would be beneficial to raise your kids that way in the
developed world, although it sounds nice in the abstract.

------
sjclemmy
I have so many problems with these kind of articles / studies. For starters,
does any of this matter? There seems to be a moral assumption that more
motivated kids are somehow better.

I also dislike the ‘more autonomy’ argument - somewhere in the article it says
something like ‘ we can’t give kids that much autonomy because it would be
dangerous’. So it’s setting up a morally superior scenario and parenting
approach and then discounting it as inapplicable in the modern context. What
does that tell you about kids? Nothing. But it tells you a lot about society’s
priorities.

I’ve got a counter conclusion; the American kids have seen the toys before and
they’re just not that interesting. The Mayan kids have fewer toys so are
interested in playing with them.

------
Forge36
Autonomy,

    
    
      What would you do if you didn't have to do anything else?
      Then create space in their schedule for this activity

and the time to focus on their interests.

I'm curious if their measurement of paying attention to an unrelated task
performed by someone else is a measurement of attention or curiosity.

~~~
goodJobWalrus
I am so grateful my parents didn't need to "create space in my schedule" for
anything. I created my own schedule (outside of school). That is autonomy, not
your parents creating spaces in your schedule.

~~~
Forge36
Can you explain the difference? to me both statements appear the same with the
difference a matter of perspective. Your parents scheduled some of your time
as your time outside of your schedule for school. You scheduled that time and
your parents respected that.

~~~
barrkel
Well, I think first you need autonomy without direction before you can figure
out what you want to do. Without space to be bored, it's hard to find the time
to be creative, IMO.

------
mmt
I'm disappointed to see this article trot out the "unsafe" trope, especially
after, earlier in the article, citing the Maya mother stating her child knows
how to avoid traffic.

> Now, many parents in the U.S. can't go full-on Maya to motivate kids. It's
> often not practical — or safe — to give kids that much autonomy in many
> places, for instance.

I'm not asserting that traffic is the only US safety concern (or that it's
even comparable for that example), but I would have hoped the authors would at
least put in a link to an article regarding safety concerns or the
controversy, without implicitly taking sides.

~~~
ebikelaw
Traffic safety is the main reason that US kids aren't out there playing.
Because we're "rich" we've created a car-choked hellscape where nobody can be
outside. We're so much more "rich" than those backwards people who have to
walk to the store or ride a filthy bus.

~~~
mmt
This is not supported by, at least, this chart, comparing the US and
Guatemala:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-
related_death_rate)

Now, it may still be true that pedestrians or child pedestrians are killed at
a higher rate (per capita, per car, and/or per mile driven) in the US than in
Guatemala (or other countries that are not "rich"). However, for that
possibility to be plausible, there would need to be at least a credible,
substantive explanation.

~~~
ebikelaw
It's more about the perception than the reality. People won't let their kids
out because it appears to be rather dangerous. They drive them everywhere
instead.

The dig at Americans' self image as "rich" is a reference to the famous line
by Enrique Peñalosa: a developed country is not a place where the poor have
cars; it's a place where the wealthy ride the bus. I live part-time in
Switzerland where the traffic violence rate is a small fraction of what it is
here in the US. I let my kids roam the city because it's safe. I won't let
them roam around in Oakland where we don't even have sidewalks. My neighbors
consider themselves to be very rich compared to my neighbors in Zurich. They
have a huge tacky mansion and two Porsche SUVs, and their kids are stupid and
fat and have diabetes.

~~~
mmt
> It's more about the perception than the reality.

What's the "it" here? The article's statement? If so, that's my
disappointment. They could easily have added the adjective "perceived" or
ommitted the part about practicality.

> The dig

A dig is not, in general, substantive, and I fear that your use of words like
"hellscape", "backward", "filthy", "tacky", "stupid", and maybe even "fat"
have a tendency to inflame and thereby distract from whatever on-topic point
you may have.

------
mbateman
For what it's worth, what the Maya families are doing is a version of the
central principle of Montessori early education (and what my company is trying
to scale). That is, build a capacity for deep concentration in early childhood
using (1) high autonomy pedagogical practices and (2) an environment with a
structure that makes it possible for children to contribute to practical life.

------
Aissen
Text version for EU users
[https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789](https://text.npr.org/s.php?sId=621752789)
, since declining tracking does not redirect to the correct article. It should
work well with your browser's reading mode.

~~~
arendtio
Thanks, now I understand what reading mode is for :-)

------
i_love_jc
"The parents intentionally give their children this autonomy and freedom
because they believe it's the best way to motivate kids." This is basically
the philosophy behind self-directed learning: unschooling as well as learning
communities like Sudbury schools, liberated learners centers, and agile
learning centers.

I work at one of these schools, and our kids are really good at paying
attention. ADD is a real thing and still affects some of them, but we also
have a lot of kids who were diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are
interested in what they're doing, their attention span is completely normal.

~~~
jonhendry18
"diagnosed with ADD and it turns out when they are interested in what they're
doing, their attention span is completely normal."

Of course the problem is that, even when something is interesting to the
person at a high level, there may be subsets of that activity which are dead
boring.

------
qznc
So it comes down to the choice of the kids. Apparently, making an origami
jumping mouse is interesting for mayan kids, but not for american ones. The
article doesn't even try to convince me that autonomy is the critical factor.

When a professor starts a sentence with "It may be the case that" it is
clearly just personal opinion and not published scientific fact. The professor
intentionally makes the disclaimer that she has no proof for the hypothesis.

~~~
empath75
Yeah the reason is that they can’t afford to buy talking Paw patrol toys.

I’ve handed a bunch of Mayan kids my iPad and they didn’t give it back to me
for hours. They totally forgot their beautiful handmade toys in an instant.

------
icc97
> "Of course she can go shopping," Tun Burgos says. "She can buy some eggs or
> tomatoes for us. She knows the way and how to stay out of traffic."

I wonder how much this has to do with the value of child life.

What are the statistics of Mayan children being run over / kidnapped?

I can't imagine it's somehow safer in Mexico, just somehow parents are more
willing / less informed to take this risk.

~~~
Tepix
If people believed in statistics they would let their kids roam free like
their parents and grandparents did. It's much safer than it used to be. Alas,
US parents are overly protective.

~~~
icc97
I believe it's because parents and grandparents never looked at statistics and
so because in communities where there wasn't a story of children getting
kidnapped or being killed on the road then they just never thought about the
chance happening.

------
projectramo
I guess my follow up is: which is better? Is it better not to pay attention to
tasks and imagine other stuff or is it better to focus on the task no matter
how trivial?

In other words, should the Maya kids be learning from the Americans?

~~~
2trill2spill
Interesting question. I certainly have had many great ideas while not paying
attention and being bored out of my mind in school.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I agree. Personally, I don't remember what boredom is. I stop paying attention
whenever I can get away with it, happy that I just reclaimed some time from a
bullshit situation - time which I can use to think about problems that
interest me.

------
b1daly
The way my step sons live strikes me as having much less autonomy than I had
at their age. I’m still boggles that young kids aren’t allowed to walk to
school by themselves.

Most of the time, I tend to think as long as good basic care is taken of kids,
they can work out all sorts of weird child rearing environments just fine.

Something that has given me pause though is the astonishing addictive power of
the various “screen” which occupy so much attention. Unibiquitous
telecommunication is something new in human history, and it really grabs hold
of people, the young as much as anyone. My concern is that our highly tuned
psycho-physiology has not evolved to handle the type of activity, and it’s
distorting our consciousnesses, and ability to pay attention, in ways that are
unhealthy.

(Similarly to how humans have a hard time with too much access to processed
food with high calorie amounts.)

------
amelius
> "If you do better on the task, it would end sooner," Esterman says. "And you
> can get out of the lab sooner."

My boss never tells me this :(

~~~
pasta1212
I have a friend (a programmer) whose employer decided to try shortening the
work day to 6 hours as long as the work still got done at the same pace. The
owner was under the assumption that work will expand to take the time
allotted. The experiment worked, and they still have 6 hour work days a couple
years later.

I think the theory that work will expand to take the time allotted is true,
and I bet the motivation of getting done early is a big contributor as well.

Maybe you can pitch it to your boss :)

~~~
amelius
The problem is really that I'm the one making the time-estimations. So if I
can get the work done faster, I could (in theory) go home earlier, but if it
takes more time than expected, then to be fair I'd have to do night-work.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
Honestly if you get your work done faster, you will probably just get more
work until your schedule is full again.

------
baxtr
Be aware that the conclusion is not rock solid:

 _So maybe the Maya children are more attentive in the origami /toy experiment
— not because they have better attention spans — but because they are more
motivated to pay attention. Their parents have somehow motivated them to pay
attention even without being told._

They say _maybe_... I can think of other reasons why Maya children seem to be
more interested in anything happening in a western lab, than western kids. I
don’t know the details because I haven’t read the original paper, but reading
the article I’m not sure this effect has been ruled out.

------
jpadkins
Control-F 'montessori' ...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montessori_education)

The conclusions are not new. Maria Montessori researched this 100 years ago.

\- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options. \-
Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours. \- A constructivist or
"discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials,
rather than by direct instruction. -

------
jvvw
If anybody is interested in this, then it's worth looking at the RIE approach
for babies and toddlers (Janet Lansbury's blog is a good place to start
[http://www.janetlansbury.com/](http://www.janetlansbury.com/)). A large part
of it is about allow babies and toddlers to choose what they pay attention to.
Anecdotally, I very loosely followed it with our two and they have amazing
attention spans compared with most kids their age - certainly both their
teachers have commented on it. It's also much more relaxing as a parent I
found, letting your children be in charge of what they want to pay attention
to most of the time.

------
santoshmaharshi
At [https://www.schoolze.com](https://www.schoolze.com) \- we are looking at
the problems faced by Schools from all these angles. From Attention, to
engagement, to fundraising, to measure all the aspects of a successfull K-12
classrooms.

That's why looking at the participant of the education system is very
important. Be it Kids, Schools, Teachers or PTAs. All will have to work
towards this success.

------
yy77
The genereal idea is to let the children themselves want something with
passion and they will pay attention. (not only to child in fact). However, one
of the simple way to do that is NOT autonomy as the article suggest, but to
make that thing sparse, precious and difficult to get. The children does not
have the right to be well educated, will pay more attention comparing to those
who have plenty already.

------
mac01021
This is the second article on HN in the last few weeks from NPR praising the
virtues of traditional Central American child rearing.

------
known
"You are a product of your environment" \--Clement
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_effect)

------
rahimnathwani
> For starters, he says, ask your kid this question: 'What would you do if you
> didn't have to do anything else?'

Wow. I don't have to do anything else right now, and I'm reading HN :(

------
monocularvision
These sorts of stories should require every commenter to disclose how many
children they have. Nothing like parenting stories bring out the parenting
experts with zero experience.

------
eezurr
TL;DR: Autonomy; which holds true for adults and children.

~~~
s-shellfish
Adults don't have to be any different from children in terms of autonomy.

We get these weird ideas of what gives us personal security, what keeps our
lives from devolving into chaos, what we are able to do and what we were never
good at. Those ideas are what take away autonomy for adults, because the
opposite is often demoted to a triviality like 'the innocence of children',
brain plasticity (mind like sponge), etc.

------
jankotek
> _The other kid was told to wait._

> _One little boy started making explosive noises, pretending a toy on the
> table was a bomb_

Hm, perhaps some Ritalin could fix this?

Perfectly normal behavior; little boy waits and plays small games to pass
time. Incompetent teachers blame kids and "fix the problem".

~~~
watwut
Depends on age whether normal. For 5 years old, yes. For 8 years old,
absolutely no. Normal 8 years old should be able to wait two minutes without
being disruptive when teacher is focused on somebody else.

The kids who can't should absolutely get special help and assistance. However,
if the healthy kid can't, then the solution is not to excuse it, but rather
teach them patience and less egoism.

~~~
Forge36
But what's the range? Maturity isn't a hard line

~~~
watwut
No, it is not exact line. I would have to check the exact lines in studies,
but basically expectations rise with age.

But largely, I think that the goal should be to _teach_ kids to have abilities
like patience and functioning when you are not center of attention instead of
categorizing them into "good enough" and "bad" categories. Ultimately, don't
blame child.

That teaching won't happen if adults knee jerk to wave everything away.

