
Bill Gates: My parents took me to a child psychologist - salmonet
http://www.expressandstar.com/entertainment/showbiz-news/2016/01/31/bill-gates-my-parents-took-me-to-a-child-psychologist/
======
autoreleasepool
I _wish_ my parents had taken me to a psychologist when I was having trouble
in school. Instead, I was usually punished. I was raised by conservative,
psychiatrophobic parents and I never got the help I needed until after
college. I'm in my early 20's. I was lucky to have the meta-cognitive
awareness needed to identify that something was wrong, and that it had gotten
worse. After recently getting care from a professional my quality of life and
productivity improved across the board. It almost breaks my heart how much it
has helped me. I feel as if I could have been so much more successful in
academia. I definitely would have led less of guilt-ridden academic life.

Even if you do not have anxiety, major depression, or other disorder - I think
basic psychological therapy is something almost anyone can benefit from. We
like to think friends and family are all we need for help during a rough time
or troubling period, but, no matter how well intentioned they might be, they
are usually the least qualified to help you. It's important to have a
professional to talk to in these situations. With children this is even more
so.

Psychiatrists can see the red-flags that others often ignore, or brush off as
personality quirks. This was the case with me for long time. I would have had
a better academic life if the "ADD is bullshit" meme never happened. For me,
this prevalent mentality prevented me from receiving the health-care I needed,
especially with regards to my very private (and personally shameful) crippling
anxiety. I hope one day basic psychological check ups for children become as
routine as a dentist visits. There are so many benefits to keeping tabs on
your mental health and the only downside is the current social stigma.

If your child is acting up, consistently has trouble with areas such as
organization, or is all over the place with grades - please don't assume he or
she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed. Help them by taking them to someone
who can see things you cannot, and possibly find an easily solvable underlying
problem.

~~~
childpsychismeh
While I certainly wouldn't affirm what your parents did or suggest it to be a
preferred course of action, I'd also hesitate to suggest taking a child to
Psychiatrists as any sort of knee jerk reaction. While you say you'd have had
a better academic life if the "add is bullshit" meme was gone, mine would have
been far better if the meme caught on faster. I hope you understand my wanting
to disclose the following on a throwaway, but I was medicated HEAVILY for
"ADD" for the vast majority of 2nd through 4th grade, and to this day some of
my strangest memories are from those years, during which I developed broad
slews of physical ticks and OCD-like behaviors that took me decades to train
myself out of, and certainly compounded the damage to my learning and social
development that the medication had already begun.

I would be TERRIFIED if psychological checkups became routine, and see that as
near-dystopian as some aspects of brave new world. For so many people (I say
this now being married to a psychologist of my own) including myself are
diagnosed with disorders of extremely variable diagnostic validity at
extremely young ages (beyond even what the DSM, with its already spotty
contents, would recommend) and then medicated past functionality and/or told
we have something wrong with us.

What would have helped me? If instead of being told "you need these pills to
fix you" someone told me that "normal is a spectrum", and people even with
behaviors we love to tag with fancy names and try and treat can learn to
control them and live perfectly normal lives without drastic intervention.

Don't take this as a "we should ignore psychological disorders", it's not the
intent at all. Take it as a, I've seen the culture that arises out of LOOKING
for mental issues rather than encouraging growth and maturation, and I'd
rather resort to a psychological approach as we do with antibiotics, _when
needed and after extensive exploration of other options_, lest we
unconsciously do ourselves further disservice. Although I have a different
takeaway than you though, I'd echo the same guiding thought, "don't assume he
or she is lazy or doesn't want to succeed" but would append "or assume they
are broken."

~~~
alexashka
I think the parent had a very positive experience with a good psychologist and
has extrapolated that to think everyone would benefit from coming in contact
with the quality professional that he/she was in contact with.

Which's another way of saying 'it is nice to meet people who are really good
at what they do and can happen to help you'.

The flip-side is what you're describing - that most people are not that good
at what they do and ultimately - it is usually a frustrating and tedious
process of poking in the dark until something works.

For psychological issues it's often a slew of things and having one person
make a significant difference in your life is a little miracle.

The thing I like that you mentioned is that you trained yourself out of
behaviours that you found to be counter-productive. Which's largely my point -
until one takes responsibility for the problems they're facing and stops
hoping for an easy fix, it is unlikely to work out in the longterm and I don't
know that a psychologist is capable of making somebody a life-long learner if
you're not one to begin with.

'When a student is ready, a teacher appears' :)

~~~
autoreleasepool
When someone has spent years hiding compulsions, tics, tendencies, mood
swings, panic attacks, delusions, irrational fears, and other neurotic
behaviors, it's not as simple as "training yourself" out of it.

> until one takes responsibility for the problems they're facing and stops
> hoping for an easy fix...

You have just delivered a more eloquently articulated version of the "be a man
and suck it up" mentality that does way more harm than good. This sort of
reductionist hand waving does not result in useful or practical advice. I
suspect it is coming from your limited experience with these issues.

EDIT: I also find it gross that you consider getting help from a psychologist
an attempt to find a "easy fix". As if sufferers don't put in A LOT of
additional effort themselves...

~~~
jsprogrammer
What health-care did you require? It is hard to imagine a scenario where
someone can "become better" without having an internal, personal, change. I
don't believe psychiatrists can think for you (though they can certainly feed
you thoughts).

~~~
autoreleasepool
> I don't believe psychiatrists can think for you (though they can certainly
> feed you thoughts).

Right... like I said, it takes A LOT of effort on the suffers part. It's none
of you business, but I take an SSRI and do cognitive behavioral therapy for
OCD. The behavioral therapy is for learning and developing good habits and the
medication helps prevent intrusive and obsessive thoughts. Nobody is "thinking
for me" (It saddens me that this is the prejudice you have). These
professionals help me help myself, by giving me tools, information, and
guidelines I would not have access to otherwise.

A college-level course on object oriented programming isn't going to magically
make you a good Java developer, but it may help you learn in a more
sophisticated way than a self-taught curriculum. Either way, you wouldn't
shame someone for "not helping themselves" or "taking the easy way out" by
enrolling in such a course.

~~~
jsprogrammer
>Nobody is "thinking for me" (It saddens me that this is the prejudice you
have).

As I said, I don't think that is possible.

I only meant to counter-point your point:

>it's not as simple as "training yourself" out of it.

In some sense, it is that simple, as that is really the only base tool that
one can access (probably why CBT is so helpful). That is, no one else can
'train you out of it'; they might be able to show you the door, but you have
to walk through it.

~~~
autoreleasepool
No, it's not that simple. You're actually contradicting yourself a lot so I'm
debating if it's worth replying.

> (probably why CBT is so helpful)

I'd say the medication is more helpful, to be honest. BTW, "that's probably
why CBT is so helpful" does not follow from "training yourself is the only
base tool that one can access". CBT is not at all training yourself. It's
almost literally the opposite.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Please list a self-contradiction.

------
seibelj
I started drinking in 8th grade, moved to marijuana soon after, and did many
drugs in high school. I did many stupid things, and graduated with barely a
3.0. I was a "wild child", and although I was raised by a very intelligent and
successful single mother, she said I couldn't be controlled and thought giving
me freedom was the best solution for me.

In college, I had sort of a "been there, done that" attitude to parties and
substances while many of my peers were just starting to experiment. I realized
that this was my chance, and if I didn't buckle down and study, I was going to
wind up a failure in my own eyes.

Would I want what I went through for my own kids? No. In hindsight I would
have put more boundaries and controls on myself. But I turned out OK. There's
hope for everyone.

~~~
sleazebreeze
Your's is an interesting story. I'm glad for you that you were able to
recognize what was happening and change. I agree that there is hope for
everyone. Freedom to create your future is a heavy task, but as a song goes:
"the weight is a gift".

I had a similarly difficult transition to "adulthood" \- mine happened after a
vanilla engineering college experience though. After I found out post-college
life isn't anything at all what I expected, I went through a period of self-
loathing, depression, reckless behavior and substance abuse.

Somewhere in the fog, I found a wonderful book about self-compassion and was
able to muddle towards a better sense of wholeness. Then, I re-discovered a
love for programming and threw myself into that with a renewed sense of
direction.

A common theme that I've observed in people's stories who were able to "help
themselves" was the realization that they are solely responsible for their
success in life. Circumstances and other people will aid or obstruct, but
ultimately the only thing you can control is your response to external events.

------
samfisher83
This was an interesting quote.

"I worked weekends, I didn't really believe in vacations," Gates says of his
early years at the helm of Microsoft.

"I had to be a little careful not to try and apply my standards to how hard
[others at the company] worked. I knew everybody's licence plate so I could
look out the parking lot and see, you know, when people come in. Eventually I
had to loosen up as the company got to a reasonable size."

~~~
bluedino
>> I knew everybody's licence plate

Wouldn't it'd be easier to just remember what car people drove, than the
plate? Dave drives a green, older Ford Bronco. Jim drives a new red Porsche.

~~~
furyofantares
I have this thing where I accidentally memorize license plates in the same way
you might accidentally memorize what car people you know drive. It's a
completely automatic process just like everything else we effortless memorize
throughout the day. And, I've never thought about this before, but the cars
themselves actually don't stick very well. Bill says it so casually that I
wonder if it's the same for him.

I grew up near Microsoft, and it might help to know that until recently
Washington plates for standard cars have all been 6 characters long in the
form 123-ABC or ABC-123. On top of that there are a ton of common patterns on
the road at any given time due to the way they are distributed. So they are
pretty well designed to be memorable.

As an aside: We're now on a 7 letter system in the format ABC1234, and that's
most of what you see on the road. These don't stick quite as often -- I can't
tell if that's the format change or if I'm just aging or more often lost in
thought and not noticing the world around me or what. I believe they _all_
start with A now, so it's not actually an extra letter to memorize, but I
think the format change modifies the rhythm to the plate and makes it so it
doesn't automatically chunk and therefor doesn't automatically get memorized.
I guess trucks (before this change) have always been something like B12345D
(where it's always B and usually ends with D, I think) and those didn't stick
very well, either.

~~~
lotharbot
When my son was 5, he would ask me if we were going in the "455 car" or the
"378 car". Both cars were the same model and color, but he had the plates
memorized.

Now that he's 6, he has about 300 digits of pi memorized. He's also got the
entire periodic table, and the song "Yakko's World" (all of the nations).

Some people have an easy time with faces. Others have an easy time with data.

~~~
petemc_
What inspired your 6 year old son to memorise 300 digits of pi?

~~~
lotharbot
he watches lots of educational and semi-educational videos on youtube. I
believe the one that inspired him was
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Skf8NTEnrO4)
though he has half a dozen other pi songs he watches as well.

He also regularly asks me questions he's learned the answer to from videos,
like "why isn't the District of Columbia a square?", "which countries in South
America don't have oceanic coastlines?", and "what would happen if you tried
to make Graham's Number but you used 2's instead of 3's?"

~~~
2bitencryption
also he can fly, tell the future, and count backwards from the last digits of
pi.

Sure.

~~~
lotharbot
I'm disappointed that I don't appear to have a "flag" button at the moment.
There's really no need to be a dick about someone else's young child on Hacker
News (or in any other circumstance), at all, ever.

To bring this back to the topic, though: yes, my son is an absolute genius
when it comes to data. I'm not making it up to score internet points. I
actually have a six year old who has legitimately reached 4096 in the game
2048, and who has a basic understanding of what a "limit" is, and who in the
last week has really taken to fractals. That doesn't mean he's good at
everything -- we're still working on pooping in the toilet, not talking in the
middle of someone else's sentence, and not having a gigantic meltdown if his
milk is in a green cup instead of a yellow cup.

Point being, it may initially seem weird that Bill Gates memorized license
plates rather than car makes and models, but that may just be what his brain
handles well.

~~~
2bitencryption
> To bring this back to the topic, though: yes, my son is an absolute genius
> when it comes to data.

I just highly doubt anyone who is so excited to return the conversation to
their "genius" son. It's very
[https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/)
.

~~~
lotharbot
> _" It's very
> [https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/"*](https://www.reddit.com/r/iamverysmart/"*)

This isn't Reddit. HN guidelines don't say "it's OK to be a jerk as long as
you highly doubt someone". If you think I'm making stuff up about my son (who
I'm very excited about because I'm a parent and that's how it works) to score
internet points, the proper thing to do on HN is hold your tongue and not
bother commenting, or use your downvotes once you've earned that right.

------
m-i-l
Source link (Desert Island Discs interview):
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35442969)

~~~
doe88
Thanks for the link, it made me look for the corresponding podcast
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt)

~~~
Brakenshire
The programme goes back continuously to the 1940's. It's very well known in
the UK. Unfortunately they only have occasional fragments for the early
programmes, but for instance I just found clips from the Dave Brubeck and
Alfred Hitchcock episodes, from 1959:

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7kb)

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009y7js)

Hitchcock mentions his upcoming production, a 'rather gentle horror picture'
called Psycho!

------
jgh
I had a particularly awkward conversation with my parents about 10 years ago
when a family friend had joked about a psychologist following me around in
kindergarten.. It turned out to be true and no one had ever told me.

~~~
johnchristopher
Now I have to ask you to tell the whole story, pretty please :).

~~~
jgh
I honestly don't know much about it other than I was a weird kid and the
school thought I was weird enough for observation. I don't think anything ever
came of it though, I never changed schools or classes (not that I know what
they would necessarily do about a "weird" 5 year old)

------
dorfsmay
> I knew everybody's licence plate

I have trouble remembering my own license plate number... but I'll argue that
it makes me a better contractor, because I have to document everything, from
the current architecture to the work I do.

~~~
Retra
That sounds exactly like something that a person who is unaware of their
irrational biases would say.

~~~
visakanv
But it might just as well be said by someone who IS aware of their irrational
biases. So that's not actually a meaningful statement.

------
hackbinary
From the BBC source program:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06z1zdt)

"Hopefully make it [polio] the second decease ever, after Smallpox, to be
completely eradicated"

Wrong, it would be the third decease ever. Rinderpest was the second.

[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?p...](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/28/health/28rinderpest.html?pagewanted=all)

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

~~~
selectodude
I have a feeling that statement meant to only include diseases that infect
humans.

------
Decade
"I wrote the original software on Apple 2."

How Steve Wozniak Wrote BASIC for the Original Apple From Scratch
[http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-
ori...](http://gizmodo.com/how-steve-wozniak-wrote-basic-for-the-original-
apple-fr-1570573636)

In case you were wondering why people in computing _hated_ Bill Gates with an
undying passion. He still won't stop taking credit for others' work, and using
the legal system to give himself special privileges (copyright and such)
because of it.

~~~
hanspeter
"The Apple II Plus, introduced in June 1979, included the Applesoft BASIC
programming language in ROM. This Microsoft-authored dialect of BASIC, which
was previously available as an upgrade, supported floating-point arithmetic,
and became the standard BASIC dialect on the Apple II series (though it ran at
a noticeably slower speed than Steve Wozniak's Integer BASIC)."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_II_series)

------
acqq
> He also selected copies of the world's great lectures on DVD as his luxury
> item

The company and the products weren't named in the article but here's the link
where Gates writes about them:

[https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-
The...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/Education/Great-Lectures-from-The-Teaching-
Company)

Disclaimer: just their satisfied customer.

