
How to raise successful children - ilamont
http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/how-to-raise-successful-children--advice-from-parents-lucky-enough-to-know/2014/12/30/54785c3c-7fe9-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html
======
AndrewKemendo
I have three kids. They are all still in the house, but my wife and I have put
a lot of effort into understanding how we make "successful" children. After a
lot of reading, reminiscing and thinking about it I have come to three
conclusions about how to have successful kids.

1\. Don't be poor. Statistically, those who are under or near the poverty line
have exponentially worse outcomes than those who are even slightly above it.
This will get them at least 50% of the way there.

2\. Don't be abusive. Either physical, emotional or sexual abuse will destroy
and poison a child. While it may seem obvious, some people don't realize that
they are doing it because that is what they were brought up with. This gets
them another 20% of the way.

3\. Be part of the right social groups. Social mobility is huge for being in
"the right place at the right time" or in other words "being lucky." This will
get the kid into 80% territory.

The last 20% is a crap shoot that is largely dependent on a mix of external
factors and individual actions past peak parenting age.

edit: By the way, notice how the families in the article hit all my points. No
poor, abused or outcast people in that group.

~~~
rdtsc
> 3\. Be part of the right social groups. Social mobility is huge ...

What does that mean? What are some example of "right social groups" and better
"social mobility".

Are they euphemisms for something else?

~~~
Mandatum
Essentially I think this is "high society", people with respectable jobs,
working for respectable companies. Not your mechanics, cleaners or factory
workers who hang out at the pub every Friday, but your doctors, lawyers,
programmers and suit-types that goto events, and the pub on a Friday night.

I've always heard and would agree with the phrase, "success breeds success".
Surround yourself with people you consider to be successful. Same thing
applies here, except your setting up play dates.

~~~
marincounty
If you can stomach it? As you get older, you just might reevaluate your
definitions of success? Personally, at my age; you couldn't pay me to spend a
night at the Pub surrounded by Doctors, and Lawyers? Suit-types? I won't even
comment on that one, but you must be young? I can guarantee you will look back
on your post and go "Wow--I was young?" Or, maybe you won't?

------
kinkora
Funny this topic came up.

A few months back, it suddenly dawn to me that throughout my childhood, my
parents NEVER ever praised me directly. As in, when I got straight As they
never called me smart. Or when I won a sports competition, they never said I'm
good. It was frustrating as a child at times (they reward me in other ways)
but now in my adulthood, I realised they did praise me albeit it in a
different way.

They praised my effort, and not the results.

So, when I got straight As, instead of saying I am smart, they said I got it
because I studied hard and they praise me for spending my nights studying. Or
when I won that competition, instead of saying good job on being first, they
praise me for the extra effort i put in to train on the weekends.

I never thought much about it but after going through life, I noticed now that
a lot of people mostly tend to just focus on the rewards but never consider
the hard work that needs to be put in. Due to my parents quirkiness in my
upbringing, I value the work I put in more than the reward itself when
achieving for something which makes it so fulfilling.

Just my anecdotal 2 cents.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
Yep, a lot of data coming out about this approach in recent years. The
thinking is that effort can be adjusted with real impact on outcome, while
being smart can't in the same way - thus telling someone they are "smart"
places being "smart" as the thing that makes you successful instead of effort
and therefore you don't need to try.

[https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/95208400815/the-...](https://www.khanacademy.org/about/blog/post/95208400815/the-
learning-myth-why-ill-never-tell-my-son-hes)

------
refurb
Studying something like this is a great example of the "halo effect".

If you raise a child who turns out to be successful, you'll attribute all
sorts of things to that success. Doesn't mean they actually had an impact.

I think one thing most people can agree on is that a stable up-bringing can
certainly make things easier on a kid.

~~~
petegrif
Good point. Like reviewing the strategies of successful entrepreneurs. :)

~~~
refurb
There is a book by the name of "The Halo Effect" about the same thing in
business. It's a great read. It really tears apart all of the business books
people rave about.

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-
ebo...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Halo-Effect-Business-Delusions-
ebook/dp/B000NY128M)

------
emptytheory
I was raised in an unconventional way.

One piece of advice I would give is to be open with your kids. Don't be afraid
to talk about certain things, including your own insecurities and dogmas.
Speaking from my own experience, a restricted dialogue can lead to
frustration, conflict, and anxiety. If a kid isn't comfortable asking
questions, he'll guess at the answer and worry about being wrong. What happens
when he's wrong? All I'll say is that it's pretty difficult to have a calm
resolution when the subject matter cannot be discussed.

I'm making no guarantees about success... but at least you'll have a "healthy"
relationship (healthier than mine).

------
bcantrill
The article contains the best parenting advice ever: "Your job is to see who
your kid is. And help your kid be whoever that is." Lest any of the childless
here become too smug, this is much, much harder than it sounds -- especially
because kids are often different from their parents in ways that may seem
genetically impossible. My advice to parents is: as an adult, you are
inherently more flexible than your child, and it is easier for you to change
yourself to help them become who they are than it is for them to change
themselves to become someone that they aren't. Again, if this sounds easy, it
isn't...

~~~
KayEss
It's a little more complex than that I think. The truth is that the young are
more flexible than the old. The nature/nurture debate actually works the other
way around than what people think. When young it's nearly all nurture, and as
we age our lives much more reflect our nature. This simply reflects the
difference in the power we have over our lives at these different ages.

The reason for taking to heart "help your kid be whoever that is" is because
you don't want them wasting their best years trying to be something that
they're not. If you try to push them into what you want you'll win to start
with, but eventually you will lose. It's far better for them to get the nature
part earlier and get to be who they are rather than spend years trying to be
somebody else with all the pain, frustration and ennui that will foster.

~~~
bcantrill
So, do you not have kids or has it just been a really long time since you've
had young kids? My kids are ten, seven and two-and-a-half; when you have one
kid, you can fool yourself into thinking that nurture is playing a large role
-- but when you have two (and certainly when you have three) you begin to
realize how much of our nature is, um, nature. I think nurture is important
(obviously), but much more for emotional well-being (that whole unconditional
love thing), for character (that whole right-from-wrong thing) and for values
than for the essence of their person. I also don't think that "you'll win to
start with" \-- in most cases when I've seen kids pushed into things that are
fundamentally not in their disposition, the effort doesn't clear the end of
the runway. If you had better luck, that's awesome for you and for your kids
-- but my experience has been that it's easier to change me to match my kids
dispositions than vice versa.

~~~
KayEss
> in most cases when I've seen kids pushed into things that are fundamentally
> not in their disposition, the effort doesn't clear the end of the runway. If
> you had better luck, that's awesome for you and for your kids

This is kind of missing the point. I agree with you that we oughtn't be
forcing our kids to do things that are not in their disposition, but in
practice we do this all of the time. My four year old doesn't get to choose
the clothes she wears, the food she eats, when to go to bed, when to get up,
whether she goes to school or not -- for most of her time she isn't in control
of her life in any meaningful way. I on the other hand get to choose these
things not only for myself but for her.

Given that it would be easy for me to put my foot down (as I sometimes have
to), but in general I try to make sure that she is empowered as much as she
can be so we can both try to learn what her real preferences are -- but in
practice I'd be fooling myself if I believed that she was living the life she
would build for herself at this age.

Hopefully what I'm doing now with her will help her to build that life quicker
and with less dead ends when she does come of age -- but only time will tell.

------
therealdrag0
I listened to a Freakanomics Episode on parenting a few years ago. Worth a
listen (transcript available too)[0]. From what I remember, activities aren't
much of a determinate of a child success so much as appropriate parental
attention/affection. (This corresponds to what I've heard from exes who were
in graduate lvl psych programs).

[0] [http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/17/new-freakonomics-radio-
po...](http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/17/new-freakonomics-radio-podcast-the-
economists-guide-to-parenting/)

~~~
jriley
I found this course helpful:
[http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/scientific-secrets-
fo...](http://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/scientific-secrets-for-raising-
kids-who-thrive.html)

------
tokenadult
Another top-level comment asks,

 _Is anyone willing to contribute insight or actionable information in the
interest of a better discussion? The article is steadily climbing the front
page, so this is clearly a popular topic._

I'll put in an edit to my first comment here to answer that question. This is
advice based on the research I did as I brought up four children, beginning in
1992:

1) The book _The First Three Years of Life_ [A] by the late Burton White is a
good book about child development. His perspective on how (to use the title of
another of his books[B]) to raise a happy, unspoiled child is helpful for
parents.

2) Be open to shopping for educational choices. Don't assume the school down
the street will do a good job, no matter where you live. We have mostly been
homeschoolers as our children have grown up, and our firstborn sent me a very
kind email on Father's Day two years ago telling me he is glad I did that. He
still thinks so two years later.

3) The book _The Optimistic Child_ [C] by Martin E. P. Seligman is good for
teaching children how to deal with inevitable problems and setbacks of human
life.

4) The book _Mindset_ [D] by Carol Dweck is a very good book on helping young
people and people of all ages to maximize their abilities. We have seen
wonderful results from "growth mindset" with our two younger children, who are
young enough not to have known any other mindset in our household.

5) Develop a network of parents who are your close friends--close enough
friends to be real with and to vent with when parenting becomes challenging.
It's too easy for parents to isolate themselves by wanting to keep up a show
of not having challenges in their parenting.

[A] [http://www.amazon.com/New-First-Three-Years-
Life/dp/06848041...](http://www.amazon.com/New-First-Three-Years-
Life/dp/0684804190)

[B] [http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Unspoiled-Parents-Develop-
Secu...](http://www.amazon.com/Raising-Unspoiled-Parents-Develop-
Secure/dp/0684801345/)

[C] [http://www.amazon.com/Optimistic-Child-Safeguard-
Depression-...](http://www.amazon.com/Optimistic-Child-Safeguard-Depression-
Resilience/dp/0618918094/)

[D] [http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-
Dweck...](http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-Psychology-Success-Carol-
Dweck/dp/0345472322/)

Having written that, I'm open for more discussion. What's below is my original
comment on the submitted article.

Here is the gist of the article, in the author's own words: "I think a lot
about parenting. Last year, I moved to the D.C. area after 16 years in Oregon.
Although I grew up on the East Coast, I hadn’t been immersed in the
competitive parenting scene since I left home for college. But since my
husband and I returned, I’ve caught myself fretting over whether enrolling my
daughter in the “right” activities — sports or academic enrichment? Karate or
Odyssey of the Mind? Or both? — will guarantee her entrance into a good
college and success in life.

"I don’t have time to talk about parenting with the moms of my daughter’s
friends, and, besides, they’re all going through the same thing I am. I
started thinking about the people who have raised successful children, and I
wanted to explore how they did it."

She then relates anecdotes about various families she has encountered, who
have had children who appear to be successful by differing definitions of
success. Good for them. As a parent myself (four children, one grown up and
launched into adult life, and three still in my care in my household), I
thought I might see some actionable information here, but I really didn't. The
experiences of the families described in the article differ enough from mine
that even after reading the whole article, I will seek other sources of advice
on how to continually refine my parenting.

Collections of anecdotes like this suffer from problems that everyone who
reads Hacker News knows about, and anecdotes about effective parenting suffer
from one more problem that a lot of people miss. Any collection of anecdotes
suffers from sample bias: how do we know that these families are
representative of the many millions of other families who have either
unsuccessful or successful children? A collection of anecdotes about people
who reach some defined endpoint suffers from "survivorship bias,"[1] the
tendency to look only at what the people who reach the endpoint have in
common, without looking at how they differ from people who drop out of the
competition to reach that endpoint. Maybe we have no idea, after looking at
the successful, if any of their characteristics really make them different
from the unsuccessful.

A powerful mistake in many studies of parenting is not setting up a
genetically sensitive design for the study. All human beings everywhere have
systematic similarities with all other human beings everywhere. But in the
aspects of human life that show individual variation, usually people resemble
close relatives more than they resemble random members of all humanity. If
some individual differences contribute to success, and some do not, we may
have observations of children who become successful not because their parents
parented well, but because their parents passed on genes for success to the
children. Any correlation between parent behaviors and child outcomes has to
be tested for whether or not it arises from genetic similarity. (The study
designs that help tease out these issues, but do NOT fully resolve them,
involve including observations of identical twins and adopted children--and at
best identical twins adopted into different adoptive households, who are rare
--to separate upbringing influences from biological inheritance influences.)
Children resemble their parents sometimes more than parents wish.

[1] [http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-
bias/](http://youarenotsosmart.com/2013/05/23/survivorship-bias/)

[http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)

[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-11/success-
stor...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-11/success-stories-how-
survivorship-bias-tricks-entrepreneurs)

~~~
brc
I found the article to be of low value as well, partly because of _anecdata_
and partly because it wasn't clear to me how any of the profiled were really
'successful'.

Really what would be more useful is in finding the turnaround stories -
examples where parents have been on a wrong path, and where their kids have
started to fail, and where they changed their approach and succeeded with
helping the children to succeed.

And with this I don't mean where a parent escaped an abusive household or
where someone kicked drugs and alcohol, but where a normal parent with
relatively normal children managed to turn a child with little spark for life
and zero achievements into one who was motivated and excited by possibility.

In my extended family there are children I have watched grow up - some of
these have been spectacularly successful, while others haven't managed to get
traction on life. As both can be self-reinforcing negative or positive
feedback loops, the interesting thing is finding out those small inputs that
steer a growing child one way or another. I think these are often how we
respond to external events (such as coping with criticism or failure) but also
if we have developed self belief. For parents, knowing how best to help a
child navigate these tricky waters is crucial. And the article doesn't help
with any of that.

------
j_s
So far (4 hours in) it seems the vocal portion of the HN brain trust would
vote for removing the link and changing the title to a question...

Is anyone willing to contribute insight or actionable information in the
interest of a better discussion? The article is steadily climbing the front
page, so this is clearly a popular topic.

Parenting is a tough subject to discuss without resorting to anecdotes; I
would be interested to hear what HN-ers have to add even if it wasn't
particularly insightful or actionable!

~~~
deeviant
Trending has little or no correlation with content quality (See: Linkbait) and
as far as I can tell after reading about half the article and all of the
comments, they seem spot on, it's a bad article. I think that is pretty
valuable feedback...

~~~
j_s
Thanks for your input.

I didn't intend to minimize the value of the feedback received so far; I look
forward to seeing how HN can do better!

------
madengr
Eh, screw all that. Wolf dad, AKA "how to beat your kids into the top
university":

[http://www.npr.org/2011/12/14/143659027/and-you-thought-
the-...](http://www.npr.org/2011/12/14/143659027/and-you-thought-the-tiger-
mother-was-tough)

~~~
jpatokal
I'll see you Wolf Dad and raise you Eagle Dad:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9597951...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9597951/Chinas-
Eagle-Dad-and-son-get-stranded-on-Mount-Fuji.html)

------
electromagnetic
What it appears to boil down to in the article is: do what's best for your
kids by taking your ego out of the picture.

JK Rowling did the Harvard Commencement Speech in (IIRC) 2008 in which she
speaks of failure, where she basically tells the audience of students (along
the lines of) "For you, just being ordinary is a failure."

It was the Michele Zavos one that reminded me of this, where she's talking
about her daughter basically following in her footsteps to become a lawyer,
and was on the path to go to Harvard.

> So she’s now 19, and she’s the youngest assistant cook they’ve ever had. And
> then I guess after about a year and a half, she says, “I’m going back to
> school.” And she does not do well at all, and she says, “I don’t want to be
> here.” She gets a job in Boston as the kitchen manager of the Beacon Hill
> Friends house. We go out to dinner, and she says to me, “Mom, I think I want
> to go to culinary school. Are you disappointed?” And, sort of your whole
> being a parent flashes by. And I thought, I better get this right. I said to
> her, “You know what, Add? Even if I am disappointed, here’s what you say to
> me: ‘F--- you, Mom, it’s my life.’ She sort of flinched and said, “My
> therapist said that, too, but not like that.” It was really funny.

It kind of eloquently paints the angst of a teenager against her mom just
wanting to do what's best for her. However, that situation plays out very
differently when you've got a parent who wants to live vicariously through
their own child's successes as determined by the parent.

From the objective view, I totally screwed up. My dad had his own rags to
upper-middle class story, and my parents only wanted what's best for me and
wanted me to succeed. I wanted to be--I feel there should be a drum roll here
--a novelist. I've lived my life predicated on the belief that "well if it all
fucks up, at least I got a story out of it." So far it's served me well. I'm
married, own a house, have a kid and one on the way, two dogs, and I did it
all early. I sleep pretty good at night, because I get to walk into my kids
room, stroke his hair and I go to bed with a smile on my face.

My brother is the success. He did well, better than my father. Except, I don't
know if he's happy and he basically broke of most communication. All I know is
he keeps himself very busy, and seems to drink a lot.

I think I've got a bottle of Scotch stored somewhere for a special occasion,
but I'd be hard pressed to actually rustle something up to get drunk off of. I
haven't drank at home in almost three years, me and my wife used to do Fuzzy
Navel Wednesday before my kid was born, but that was about our extent after we
bought our house, which is about where I hit my own metric of success and
where I actually became happy, or at least satiated.

So I think the trick to raising successful children is teaching your kids to
set their own criteria for success.

~~~
ppod
So, you earned enough to make a living by writing novels?

~~~
electromagnetic
Oh hell no, but real life isn't like a book. The twist doesn't just happen at
the end.

------
tootie
This is fluff. Corrleation, causation and so forth. There is actual academic
research on this kind of thing. The fact that responsible, motivated parents
raised responsible, motivated kids is largely genetic rather than a result of
their parenting techniques.

------
suprgeek
A good Definition (from the article): "... Success is having an interesting
life. "

~~~
AnimalMuppet
... as long as you don't have the Chinese definition of "interesting life".

~~~
swatow
There is no Chinese curse of an "interesting life" or "interesting times"

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_tim...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_you_live_in_interesting_times)

------
collyw
No definition of success in the article, which I take to be a very personal
thing.

Personally I view "being happy and content with life" as more of a success
than the materialistic or academic view of success that this article seems to
imply.

------
gwern
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nurture_Assumption)

------
critium
step 1, define success.

not a joke. Is it monetary success? Is it happiness?

------
simplexion
Define success.

~~~
UrMomReadsHN
I'd rather have a happy child who appreciates what shes has than a successful
one (measuring sucess as having a bachelor's degree and a high paying job and
an assortment of material goods).

~~~
lgas
I'm with you 100%. From what I've seen most parents fall into one of two
extremes. Those that are simply bad parents. They are, on balance, neglectful
and/or mean to their children. Or they are hyper involved with their kids
because they want them to be super successful. That set bifurcates into two
more groups: basically the helicopter parents that try to protect their child
from everything and arrange for the child to face no really challenges until
they have graduated college and left the nest and those that push their
children super hard to give them a perfect Ivy League entrance resume. The
first groups kids are absolutely helpless and have almost no chance of being
successful. The second groups kids probably will be successful if they don't
kill themselves but grow up to be high pressure asshole parents to their kids
repeating the cycle.

It's so rare that I find parents that really seem to be focused on what's best
for their children and their children's happiness.

Even among my close friends who I thought we're smart enough to avoid these
traps they largely fit one of the stereotypes.

I almost want to have kids just to see if it would happen to me too but I
think that's probably not a good reason to have kids.

------
swombat
Read only the first couple of sections. Seemed like a pretty terrible article.
Maybe there's some sort of insight hiding somewhere in there, but it's well
disguised. Skip.

