
The Case for the “Self-Driven Child” - artsandsci
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-case-for-the-ldquo-self-driven-child-rdquo/
======
stinkytaco
There's a certain irony in this. By putting restrictions on kids (no screens,
digital downtime, etc), we expect them to become self-driven. This is a great
idea in theory, but it also seems pretty likely that a kid will go to their
friends house to watch Youtube videos, when I would just as soon have them
(and their friends, if necessary) at my house doing that where at least I have
some sense of what they are watching.

~~~
monkmartinez
I don't expect my kids to be "self-driven", in the sense of "productive" when
I restrict screen time. They can literally do whatever they want... if that is
mope around bored as hell, so be it. If that is digging a hole in the back
yard, so be it. If that is getting into a little trouble somewhere down the
street, so be it. If they want to read the latest "Diary of a wimpy kid", so
be it.

The only thing I am after is some kind of interaction with the physical world
where they are making the decisions. I have no idea if that is the right thing
to do, but it feels like it is.

~~~
zachlatta
I deeply and thoroughly don't understand this mindset.

Whether you like it or not, technology is part of growing up in the 21st
century. It's not just an "outlet" or a place to waste time on YouTube, it's
interwoven into everything in their lives. Their ability to gather information
depends on it. Their social lives depend on it. Just as yours does. If you
restrict access, you're pretending like a very crucial part of living today
doesn't exist -- or isn't as important as it actually is.

At the end of the day, I'd imagine your goal is for your child to have a happy
and healthy life. As part of that, you probably want them to have a healthy
relationship with technology. Restricting access instead of helping them build
that healthy relationship just leads to them wanting to do things like go to
the houses of friends to watch YouTube. I know this because I lived it and
that's exactly what I did.

~~~
ryanianian
Most kids don't know how to self-regulate screen time. Saying "no screen time"
for an arbitrarily large amount of time seems anathema to growing up today,
but saying "no more than N hours a day" (where N depends on age and kid and
what the kid does for the time) seems quite reasonable.

This isn't just about screen time imho, it's about ensuring balance when kids
don't yet know what's best for them. A "healthy relationship" doesn't mean
"free to do as much of it as they want to the detriment of other aspects of
being a healthy human being."

Anecdote: My best friend growing up was super into soccer. So much so that
other parts of his life were suffering and he had little life outside of it.
So his parents set a weekly limit on the number of hours he could practice and
play. He hated it at the time. But during his down time he found programming
and now he's a programmer and soccer isn't nearly that important to him
anymore.

~~~
LrnByTeach
The problem with this "no more than N hours a day" is that

\- For parents it is hard to implement N hours/day on long term basis (
parents may be able to do for a week or month)

\- The parental control tools are too narrow in scope, good ones cost
$10/month

\- on top of all this, you do not know what they are doing in those N
hours/day , using 50% time for FB/Snap etc..

\- It is ironic in this day and age of ML/Deeplearning software and open
source github thousands of projects, we do not have a open source Parental
control that really works.

\- The solution is to build an Open source Parental control on
Iphone/Android/Mac/PC in an integrated way to enforce N hours/week screen time
and smart enough to account all non-school work related screen time across
devices.

\- To have a small regulation( to force device manufacturers ) stating above
mentioned kind of "high quality" open source Integrated Parental control
software pre-installed on all devices .

> Most kids don't know how to self-regulate screen time. Saying "no screen
> time" for an arbitrarily large amount of time seems anathema to growing up
> today, but saying "no more than N hours a day" (where N depends on age and
> kid and what the kid does for the time) seems quite reasonable.

~~~
photojosh
I've got kids in upper primary school now, and trying to think through all
this carefully.

Our current rule is that you can have an hour of screen time for every hour of
reading, music practice, etc, and after certain chores are done. Plus the
screen time has to be at an appropriate time - for instance first thing in the
morning and last thing at night are no-gos. They're currently on a ban until
the end of the week because they went significantly over, but that's only
happened twice in the year we've been doing this.

I'm thinking through what our approach to phones will be... at this stage I'm
going with them getting phones for the start of high school and pondering what
guidelines we'll use.

~~~
jimmaswell
Here's my anecdote. My parents tried to limit video games (but not tv, they
weren't very rational) to some amount of hours a day. Only result was that I
hated it, it made me resent them at the time, and I'd do what I could to get
around it. I don't think I'm an iota better off for it. They'd try to pull the
same nonsense with the computer too which ended up being what got me a
successful career. It was detrimental if anything and made me not respect them
because I could tell all along it was unsubstantiated BS that somehow video
games and computers were "bad" for you. I highly recommend just letting them
sort out what they want to do with their time. A restriction of a half hour
before bed maybe, to not disrupt sleep, fine, but what does the morning have
to do with anything?

~~~
jvvw
We have a morning restriction on school days because it's nigh on impossible
to get the kids to school if they start playing games! (We also have an
evening restriction so doesn't interfere with bedtime or disrupt sleep but are
otherwise easy-going. Still not sure if we are doing the right thing or not)

------
temp-dude-87844
I was self-driven by the book's description, enabled by unobtrusive parenting
and a stable home life. But I also turned out really well by several objective
metrics, and many of my peers in similar circumstances didn't.

As I think about how to parent, where you're supplying steady inputs into the
system with many other inputs, I'm beginning to think we undervalue positive
parenting contributions but overvalue its detrimental effects when the end
result is unsatisfactory. We have vague ideas about what helps and what hurts,
but every person is quite different, an any number of inputs, from genetics
and inbuilt predispositions, to one random event or encounter or interaction
can perturb one's mind and personality in complex ways. And all of these feed
into the outcome: some judgmental, haphazard aggregate of metrics by which we
-- and society -- judges new young adult's success.

This book seems to strike a tone of unobtrusive enablement much like what I
received and avoids descending into the nihilistic spiral that I ponder a lot,
but understandable most commercial works avoid.

~~~
e40
_I was self-driven by the book 's description, enabled by unobtrusive
parenting and a stable home life. But I also turned out really well by several
objective metrics, and many of my peers in similar circumstances didn't._

In the 60's and 70's when I grew up, free-range kids were the norm. I turned
out good, but some of my peers did not. I've felt for some time that for those
that do well with free-range parenting, they turn out real well, but for those
that don't they turn out really bad. The swings from good to bad with that
method are really big.

With the current style of helicopter/over-scheduling parents, I feel the range
of good-bad is much smaller. That is, the bad parts are more hidden and maybe
even pushed off until sometime in adulthood; the good parts aren't very good,
but because the bad parts _seem_ minimized, it seen as an overall win.

As for the _bad parts_ I'm talking about from my childhood, they included
death much more frequently from random things. I knew kids that died from
accidents ranging from getting hit by cars, to drowning at the reservoir that
no one was supposed to swim at, etc. My son is 17 now, and I have never heard
of anyone from his school dying. As for other bad parts, I didn't even mention
some darker stuff, having to do with sex and drugs. Most of what I
experienced, I should really say _survived_ , just doesn't happen anymore. And
I'm not talking about kids getting drunk or high at parties. Yes, that still
happens in high schools in the US.

~~~
lobotryas
Then what are you talking about? Reading your post makes the 60s and 70s sound
like a pretty kickin' time.

------
spyckie2
In my experience, the topic of parenting always elicits the worst case of
"everyone in the room is immediately an expert". People are incredibly
opinionated and judgmental about the subject, and often take a dismissive
attitude rather than a learning attitude about it.

Part of the reason is as a population, we talk about parenting advice in a
universal, context-independent way but the sheer amount of distinct situations
in parenting makes it easy to poke holes in universal advice.

Another reason is that we each have our own experience of being parented
(often not positive), and may subconsciously judge advice based on its
potential to lead to a child experiencing the same bad experiences we had,
rather than the overall objective merits of said parenting direction.

A third reason is that we underestimate the amount of negotiating,
manipulating, and psychological back and forth that managing kids adds to
parenting decisions. Even if the parenting direction is good, executing it
properly is an entirely different matter.

Having said that - I agree with most of this article. Control or the illusion
of it is a very strong ingredient for mental stability and confidence,
especially in undesirable environments. Lack of control in a undesirable
situation leads to a feeling of helplessness, which can have cascading effects
on mental health.

That said, like most parenting advice, I don't think this qualifies as
universal advice. It fits a large body of contexts, but there are several
parenting situations I can imagine this having largely little to no effect in.

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bubbleRefuge
I find it tough to get my kids to socialize more without scheduling them
especially on weekends. Daycare is good because they exercise and run wild.
But weekends are hard because the kids are just not out there anymore, so you
have to coordinate with other parents.

~~~
Cthulhu_
That sounds like more of a factor of where you live and whatnot than anything;
I was fortunate enough to grow up in a normal sized town (~6000 inhabitants)
and had friends living within walking / cycling distance (not to mention
streets you could actually walk on). Not nearly as sprawled out as some cities
/ suburbs are.

~~~
ben7799
You're an adult... lots of us grew up in towns like that but those same
towns/neighborhoods are not like that anymore in the US.

~~~
toomanybeersies
I don't think that things have significantly changed in most towns and
neighbourhoods. Things are actually safer now, especially since it's now
conveniently cheap for everyone to give their kids a phone, so not only can
you child ring you, you can also keep an eye on their location.

For the past 20 years, the media has been pushing this narrative that your
children are going to get kidnapped, raped, and/or murdered if you leave them
out of your sight. Fear sells newspapers.

------
rbongers
Self-driven children are the next logical step after self-driving cars.

~~~
adyavanapalli
Haha, such is life XD.

------
guy98238710
There's another irony in this. The authors say that children are stressed out,
but most of this stress comes from anxiety exuded by people around them. And
then they give us more things to be anxious about: screen time, lack of
control, lack of independence.

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0xdeadbeefbabe
My computer logs out after 15 minutes, and I really like it. It makes me plan
more. I've been thinking of getting a cel phone battery that only lasts for 15
minutes too. By "me" I really mean "kids".

------
jcsergent20
As a 18 year old starting my first year of college, this article has
essentially pointed out every single fear and worry I have had in the last 5
months and given the direct cause of these thoughts. I had a hunch that the
mindset of raising kids in the last decades where the cause of this, but it is
quite releaving to see some facts behind it. I hope the upcoming generation of
parents adapt these recommended parenting strategies, but I fear that the
state of parenting is heading to more of an extreme in the opposite direction.

------
akhilcacharya
I feel like I had a lot of control in my childhood, because I actively
resisted structure. With that said, even that structure wouldn't have helped
much - I'm still a failure compared to most of the HN crowd (no
Harker/Exeter/Andover, no Stanford/Harvard/MIT/Cal, no Google/FB/Pinterest).

~~~
tclancy
I think you've got a pretty high opinion of the HN crowd. What you described
probably applies to <10%.

~~~
akhilcacharya
I probably do, but there's at least 1 Googler per thread it seems or 1 top
school (at worst public ivy grad) talking about their tough coursework.

------
bobthechef
"And since the 1960’s, we’ve seen a marked rise in stress-related mental
health problems in children and adolescents, including anxiety, depression,
and self-harm."

"this problem has been increasing since the 1960’s because our culture has
increasingly valued extrinsic and self-centered goals such as money, status,
and physical attractiveness, and devalued community, affiliation, and the
pursuit of meaning in life"

A great deal about the 60s was culturally disastrous.

~~~
Retra
Since the 1960's our ability to communicate with each other has significantly
expanded. It's natural for everyone to end up a neurotic perfectionist when
you can see every day what other people across the world are doing. Not so
much when you only saw your friends and family in town and at home; your
standards would be much lower then.

------
guy98238710
Ironically, the book, including the cheesy title, fits in a range of parenting
books telling parents how to arrange their children's lives, making children
an object rather than the subject once again.

Psychologists (and related specialists) could use more humbleness given the
sad state of the science of psychology. Parenting advice, especially one
argued in such biased way, is inevitably crude. Parenting is more nuanced,
kind of like a conversation, always taking different path, shaped by family
circumstances and objectives of everyone involved and frequently taking
unexpected turns.

~~~
PeterisP
As the first line says, it's about giving children more _sense of control_
over their lives. Not more control, but more sense of control - it's not about
reality but about their perception of it.

~~~
guy98238710
That's one of the many nuances here. You have to think about other things.
When is illusion of control going to be harmful? When is the illusion going to
crack? When is the illusion going to stick and become reality? When is
increased control equivalent to removal of boundaries? When does it turn into
abdication of parental responsibility? When does it reach levels of neglect?
When is withdrawal from child's life going to make the child feel deserted?

There is no way to resolve these ambiguities upfront. You have to listen and
observe. That's why parenting resembles conversation that is unique for every
parent-child relationship and that evolves over time.

Following advice in this book or any of the many similar books is going to
result in crude, clumsy parenting. Particularly so when authors argue for a
side in order to stand out or to keep the book focused. That's why these books
feel so artificial and kind of extremist.

------
twouhm
Also known as the Locus of Control[0].

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Locus_of_control)

------
analog31
Recent HN thread on a similar topic:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16359049](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16359049)

------
andy_ppp
Autonomy is the best motivator, not just for children.

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whataretensors
Look at reward signals. Elementary through high school is a little sliver of
what a collapsed marxist society looks like - no positive rewards signals just
negative arbitrary ones. I was programming at 8 but apparently to be "well
rounded" I had to do all this other stuff that non-coders deemed important.
Meanwhile there was no "safe base" for me or anyone else who grew up poor.

But at least now I can also now see scams a mile away.

For instance, every company doesn't know the exact amount of money they will
make this year, but every employee has a good idea. It's the same system only
a little better implementation.

Forcing all the kids into assembly lines and scalping their autonomy is
breaking people. It's taking away their ability to think. Which is nice for
politics and propaganda, but it's bad if we want a free market with
innovation.

~~~
andrepd
> I was programming at 8 but apparently to be "well rounded"

Well so was I (Turbo Pascal on DOS ftw), and _thanks god_ responsible adults
didn't let me sit in front of the PC all day, and made me learn languages,
history, literature, philosophy, mathematics, science, etc.

I'm also straining to see how the adjective "Marxist" found its way on your
rant. I fail to see the applicability.

~~~
whataretensors
In regards to reward signals it seems similar when collapsed. No ownership. No
way to succeed through creativity. No way to escape a degraded too-large-to-
fail system. Maybe there's a better word for it?

~~~
boomboomsubban
>No ownership. No way to succeed through creativity. No way to escape a
degraded too-large-to-fail system

Sounds like the kind of soul crushing job school is preparing most children
for.

------
amelius
Upon first reading the title, I thought this was about putting unattended
children in self-driving cars :)

------
kelukelugames
How do I make a 12 weeks old the next chloe kim/barack obama?

~~~
akhilcacharya
Spend a lot of time identifying early talents, do high school competitions
related to those talents, get them into a top school and then just see what
happens after that.

The "top school" thing seems pretty key to me, tbh.

------
aglavine
Are video games still considered an addiction by someone?

~~~
Cthulhu_
Yup, by me.

Source: I'm 32 and if I could I'd spend all my time playing video games. This
hasn't changed much from back when I was a kid. Doesn't help that games are so
much better nowadays either.

FACTORIO IS CRACK COCAINE. Just cheaper and with less withdrawal effects.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Same here. I always wonder in conversations about UBI... I'm a fairly
productive person because I have to be, but given the option I would drop off
the grid and crush candies ALL DAY.

