
Ask HN: How far should parents control their children? - okokoktroway
In order to raise a responsible and a “good” human being, how far should parents control vs give freedom to their children? And how does that change with age?<p>Here are some examples:<p>- study : if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?<p>- religion : would you teach him your religion because that’s what you beleive to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.<p>- Would you just teach not to visit bad websites or would you put parental control filters, and do you best to “protect” him?
======
redm
I have a two-year-old, five-year-old, and seven-year-old. All boys. These are
my personal opinions.

I find that treating them like people instead of subservient goes a long way.
I.e. a bit of latitude in their own life goes a long way. You want them to be
able to think for themselves, and my job as a parent is to 1) steer them clear
of black holes, 2) help them up when they make a mistake, but not coddle them,
and 3) help them find their own path in life, whatever that may be.

To your examples:

Study: some kids like to study, some don't. The best way to ensure they study
is to establish a routine. The best way to create a routine is sitting with
them while the routine is established.

Religion: Well you have to start somewhere. If you subscribe to religion,
teach them. If they go in another direction, support them. In general,
explaining the world as you see it to your children goes a long way in shaping
their view.

Internet: Yes on parental controls. This just comes down to protecting them,
the same as you might watch them as a park. Younger children are much more
likely to stumble onto something bad than seeking it out. Parental controls
just help that. As they get older, you have less ability to control external
influences, so you better hope you did a good job in instilling morality and a
sense of independent thought.

Just remember the most important rule, your kids learn from you. You set the
example. Be the best you can be around them and they will come out just fine.

~~~
circlefavshape
> I find that treating them like people ... goes a long way

+1 on this

I treat my kids as equals, because they are. I try and pass on my life skills
(with explanations as to how/why I find them valuable) to them in the same way
as I try and pass on my dev skills to more junior programmers - an improvised
mixture of example, coaching, coaxing, and occasional whip-cracking

------
urahara
Parent-child relationships are more about mentoring and guidance than control.
Pure force is almost never an adequate answer to any problems that a child
experiences. How on earth can you force someone to study without fundamentally
harming him, if he has a bunch of underlying problems that effectively prevent
him from learning? No way, it's just a lazy approach and unwillingness to
figure out the real problem. Also, there are many things, that you can teach
only through personal example and overall context inside a family. Bad
websites? If you are spending enough time with your child, teaching by
example, family culture and discussion, explaining what is right and wrong, he
is very unlikely to develop any interest towards "bad websites". Besides, the
idea of blocking all possible sources of negative content is pretty laughable
from a certain kid's age. As for the religion example, I have no idea why one
should want to teach children any religion apart from maybe some historical
and cultural perspective.

~~~
gjem97
I'm interested to know: do you have any children, and if so, what age? Not
that that is the end-all-be-all of knowing how to parent, but comments like
"explaining what is right and wrong, he is very unlikely to develop any
interest towards 'bad websites'" make me think that you don't have much
experience trying to raise children. They test boundaries. They misunderstand
morals of stories. They have primal urges. They disregard social customs that
they see as irrelevant. I'm constantly explaining right and wrong to my
children and they are probably slowly getting it, but it's a process.

~~~
olau
Of course it's a process. Please excuse me for using your post as a spring
board, but:

When you try to impose rules upon children that don't make any sense for them
in the situation they're in, and that they may simply be mentally incapable of
following at that point in their life (cf. the primal urges), it is not going
to work just like that.

Children need to make up their own mind, and given the limited experience
they're coming from, for many years that mind will of course look a little
different from what a grown-up opinion would be.

That doesn't mean the grown-up opinion is necessarily right, by the way. It
has not seen the world from the perspective of the child. The grown-up mind
may very well reach another conclusion if it had seen that world.

------
treehau5
> religion : would you teach him your religion because that’s what you beleive
> to be true, or let him search and choose for himself, knowing that if hou
> had taught him he has more chances to grow up having your beliefs, and if
> not he might end up in hell according to what you believe.

It's a fallacy to even suppose that children can be raised in an ideological
vacuum. Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits
and more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that
especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it
were possible? If it were possible, I would be a complete fraud myself,
something that I would think would be setting a terrible example to my
children.

~~~
tbirrell
> Religion is morality, history, worldview, behavior, traditions, habits and
> more all wrapped up into one. Why would I want to deprive them of all that
> especially if it s a faith I subscribe my life and salvation to, even if it
> were possible?

This is perhaps the best argument I've heard for raising your child in
religion. I suppose it should be obvious, but I had never thought about it
like that before.

~~~
goalieca
Why would you need religion when there is modern philosophy? Ancient beliefs,
unproven history, inappropriate behaviours (in modern society) are wholly
inadequate

~~~
tbirrell
This (at least this specific comment thread) isn't a discussion on if belief
in a religion is justified, but rather the acknowledgment that if you believe
you have found the answer to life, the universe, whatever, you would almost
certainly feel obligated to pass it on.

------
circlefavshape
It is extraordinarily difficult to force a wilful child to do anything. My
now-12-year-old daughter was _very_ reluctant to learn to read, but we
insisted that she read to us every night from her second year in primary
school onwards. It was exhausting and emotionally demanding work that myself
and my wife dreaded doing every evening, but now she's a good reader, and
enjoys it. Would she have become a good reader anyway? I have no way of
telling, but wasn't willing to take the risk that she mightn't, reading is too
important

As for homework - in our house it absolutely must be done. It's like brushing
your teeth - no excuses, ever. I don't care that it's often useless and
boring, what I care about is that _their teachers stay engaged with my kids_ ,
and staying in the loop with homework is essential to that

------
hluska
I have a 16 month old, so I'm struggling with these same questions. Here's
what I'm thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a
dozen times in the next week. :)

Study:

My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used
to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves.

For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished
more than forcing me to do homework ever could have.

Religion:

I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious
and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my
parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think
carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true
morality.

In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn't see through all
the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy.

However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she's
getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her
religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may
choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don't raise her
within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path.

I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about
telling them what to think.

As for media, I wouldn't dare put parental control on any form of media.
Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators
online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if
anything confuses/scares her.

Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental
control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in
trouble, she might be scared to tell me.

Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied,
or pressured into sexting. And, if she's afraid that I'll get mad because she
broke the rules, I'll lose that.

~~~
chesterc
How is growing up outside of religion a more difficult path to freedom of
religion than growing up within one?

Wouldn't growing up in one religion be more constraining to her with regard of
all other religions?

There is one step from being non-religious to any religion, but to move from
one religion to another you have on you the burden of having to leave your
current religion.

~~~
hluska
I'm a sample of one so take this with a giant, highly critical grain of
thought, but for me, being raised within a religion gave me the freedom to see
that all religions are fundamentally the same.

They have different names for things and in some cases, certain stories
resonate better with me. But deep down, the Zen expression 'ten thousand
forms, one suchness' absolutely applies.

My phone is about to die, so I'll cut it off, though I suspect that I'll
revisit this throughout the day!

------
klenwell
Not a parent myself. (But I had a couple.)

Whenever the subject of parenting comes up, I like to throw this cherrybomb
into the discussion: Judith Rich Harris

"Judith Rich Harris (born February 10, 1938) is a psychology researcher and
the author of The Nurture Assumption, a book criticizing the belief that
parents are the most important factor in child development, and presenting
evidence which contradicts that belief."

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

To see how this idea may play out in practice, consider the fierce debate over
tiger mothering from a few years back.

Here's the HN discussion:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2090678)

My take on Tiger Mom Amy Chua's methodology (at the top of that thread):

"Chua probably believes that its her strictness and strong principles that are
leading her children to excel. And these have their role, no doubt. But I
would propose, following Harris, it is her oppressive control of their social
lives which is the much stronger factor."

~~~
phd514
That seems to be an example of "parent is important factor in child's
development though not in the way the parent intended" rather than "parent is
not important factor in child's development".

------
fusiongyro
I'm no expert and my kids are still young (one is just about to start school)
but I have a philosophy that guides me here.

I don't think you'll get "good" people if they are unable to evaluate
decisions and make them independently of you. This means they need to be
comfortable doing this, which means they must have practice, i.e. experience
with making free decisions. But you want to guide them to the right way to
approach it.

If you imagine the ideal behavior you want to inculcate as a function, and the
worst-case behavior you want to absolutely prevent, picture these as two
functions. Somewhere in the region between these two functions is the kid's
actual behavior. You are implicitly creating a region of allowable behaviors
between these two functions. If you are a caricature tiger parent, there is no
region, just two overlapping functions, and your kid has no experience of
autonomy, they are completely unfree, unhappy, and unequipped to handle real
life.

On the other hand, a completely absent parent doesn't define those functions
at all. The kid is totally unmoored. Sometimes kids in this situation figure
things out on their own and feel like they benefited from not having a parent
telling them what to do or not to do. But an awful lot of kids from this
circumstance do not make it to a successful, free, or happy life. So this can
work (I think it probably works better than caricature tiger parenting) but I
don't think the odds are that good.

What you need to do is build up the child's ability to make decisions. To do
that, they need to experience making decisions and experiencing the
repercussions. When they're a baby, they have no control, the functions
overlap. When they become an adult, they are mostly on their own (though you
should still intervene to prevent disaster). In between the two, you want the
region of autonomy between the two functions to grow as they get older and get
better at making decisions. So even when they're pretty young, you want to
give them some berth. And make sure they trust you to help them, especially
with making decisions, which means, telling you something doesn't trigger an
intervention automatically.

That's my philosophy in a nutshell.

------
jstanley
> if you see that your child is not keeping up with his homeworks, etc. would
> you step in and force him to study, which might save his future, or let him
> do as he likes and then assume the consequences of his actions?

Homework is almost universally a waste of time[1]. You'd be better off
encouraging them to do whatever is interesting, than forcing them to do
homework.

[1] [http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-
homework....](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/only-do-math-
homework.html)

~~~
jasonkostempski
Interesting. My kid is going into 4th grade and probably 98% of all the
homework he's ever brought home has been math. I've been wondering why. I
certainly didn't think it was based on rationality :) They have reading goals
as well, but it's not required or guided in any way, they can read whatever
they want. That seems like a worthwhile task as well.

------
Cerium
You can't control, but you can build respect for your opinions. My parents
consistently gave me level headed advice that served me well. When I deviated
from their advice and opinions, often I would be unhappy with the outcome,
reinforcing the idea that I can trust their advice.

With regards to the homework, my parents set an expected GPA and left me to my
devices. I didn't do homework for easy classes, and worked quite a bit on the
hard ones.

------
BrandoElFollito
Father of two boys (10 and 13), French.

Homework : I am behind their back, forcing them to plan ahead (this includes
catching up over the weekend). They got used to that and now do their homework
on their own, I still check and will continue until high school.

Religion : I am an atheist, the whole family is into science, I am open about
my theory that religion is nonsense but that it brings some mental order and
peace for some people. I let them choose to think what they want but this is
not a big discussion subject anyway.

Internet : my first aim was to make sure they are never exposed to something
they are not actively seeking. Which means paternal control, one they will be
someday able to avoid if they want to. I put some strict rules : zero personal
information published, including their first name. They are putting pressure
to show their face in some videos but this is still a "no". I told them that
Internet has dark corners and that they can find horrible things if they are
not careful. The younger one (more independent type of child) did not listen
and watched something about zombies. Still had nightmares but clearly let's a
lesson.

------
phd514
As for religion, it depends entirely on how you view it. Most parents have at
least a small set of values (whether they be open-mindedness, tolerance, hard
work, generosity, etc.) they wish to impress upon their children and they
frame those as real virtues, not simply potential virtues. Whether you include
religion among them is simply a matter of whether you consider religion among
a set of possible virtues, an essential virtue itself, or, in the case of
adamant atheists, a vice or weakness.

~~~
cookiecaper
Yes. Every parent works to transfer their sincerely-held beliefs to their
children because every parent wants their child to succeed.

"How do I raise a 'good' person?" implicitly indicates the parent's intention
to transfer their own moral and social values, which comprise the core of
religion, to the child (and there's nothing wrong with that; that's how it's
supposed to work).

This type of ethereal, fundamentally subjective teaching _is_ religious
education. A mature mythos around the core is not the element that causes
people to value religion, and discarding that mythos cannot automatically make
a religious sentiment non-religious.

------
turc1656
As a parent of a 3 year old, I haven't yet had to deal with this, but I have
thought about it. My view is that a parent is supposed to protect and guide a
child to prepare them for adulthood and being self-sufficient once they are of
age. To that end, I plan to take the general viewpoint that on the major stuff
I will force requirements from my child. On everything else that is far less
important, I will let my child make decisions so that they can learn cause and
effect and the consequences of those actions. Doing this I hope to shield them
from terrible decisions that affect their lives in a major or permanent way
and let them experience the good and bad of the decisions which have less
impact. So...

study - this is in the "major" category. I will push them to do well and have
expectations that are challenging and in line with their ability.

religion - my wife cares about this so she is going to raise them as Roman
Catholic (which both of our families are). I actually am not a fan of
organized religion but I don't see the big harm since no one in our family
lives their life around it at all (hell, we don't even go to church), and it
can help teach some core values which I do approve of. I plan to encourage my
daughter as she gets older to think critically about the role, if any, she
wants religion to play in her life and press the fact that she should
seriously evaluate it again as an adult.

online controls - i'm not going to filter her internet or anything but I will
strongly stress the dangers of communications with random strangers on the
internet. the COPPA law helps here, since children aren't supposed to be able
to have accounts until a certain age (12 or 13 I think?), which is an age
where they are fully capable of understanding what is being explained to them
regarding the dangers. of course, anyone can fill out any age they want when
signing up, so there is still a concern that has to be monitored. Also,
youtube kids is pretty good at filtering out the inappropriate content. some
stuff slips through, but overall it's pretty solid.

------
lucozade
I'm a parent of 2 teens and a pre-teen. As such, it's still too early to tell
whether our approach has worked but fingers crossed.

With regard to how much you make them do things like homework. Our view has
been that they don't necessarily act in their own self interest.

Sometimes what they want to do and their self-interest match and it's all
good. Our eldest has generally been like that.

Sometimes they need a bit of a nudge: our youngest has needed help building up
her confidence. For a while she didn't want to do certain activities because
she didn't feel she was good enough. We made her continue some but not all (we
had them try lots of things when they were young) even though she wouldn't
have chosen to continue. It was definitely the right thing to do and she'll be
the first to say so.

Sometimes they're obdurate little sods but you love them anyway. We have one
of those too. Everyone in the family agrees he's a lot like me at the same age
so there's not much hope for him (only kidding).

Religion is interesting. Both my spouse and I were fairly religious as
teenagers in different traditions and before we met. Neither was observant by
the time we had children. We've encouraged them to find out about religions
and take part where they've expressed an interest; school friends for all of
them have been from all the major faiths (just how it turned out). I'd
characterise 2 of them as being fairly liberal/open-minded about religion. The
other one has been a strong atheist from a very young age.

For parental controls, the approach I've taken has been to not restrict access
particularly. However, I've said that I reserve the right to look at their
devices whenever I want and, if I find something unacceptable then all hell
breaks loose. I haven't defined unacceptable particularly clearly but they're
not stupid. So far so good although I am assuming that I'm still better at
this techy stuff than they are which may be rash.

All in, it's been interesting to say the least. The 3 of them are quite
different and we've had to explore different approaches with each. Having said
that, they have lived relatively sheltered lives (good schools, stable home
life etc) so it's not like we've had major external challenges as a family.

Wouldn't have missed it for the world.

------
cookiecaper
The answer to these questions, like most other important questions, is "it
depends". Each parent and each child is different. The dynamic of the parent-
child relationship, including the relevant hard-baked personality factors, is
very important. Kids come more pre-developed than people want to think.

------
emhac
From what I know, if you want to rise a responsible and 'good' human being you
should allow it to be good and responsible in the first place. It means not
controlling. Controlling someone is taking over someones responsibilities.
Controlling someone is making him (not, ir)responsible.

------
mdekkers
It depends on the child. Children are mini-people, and they all have different
personalities and temperaments. Some will do really well with a very
independent approach, some will need more guidance. What they all need is love
and respect.

------
thinkMOAR
guide, not control.

~~~
phd514
The "guide not control" recommendation needs to account for both the severity
of the potential consequences of an action (e.g., playing in traffic on a busy
street) and the maturity of the child (e.g., a two-year-old will not be given
the option of choosing his own bedtime whereas a 17-year-old may be better
able to handle the consequences of less sleep due to staying up late).

~~~
dsfyu404ed
The stuff with serious consequences shouldn't come up often if at all if
you've started guiding far enough in advance.

By the time they're in high-school they should know the reason you don't cheat
on exams, drive drunk and do weed (varies by state) isn't because you can't do
those things but that on the off chance it turns out badly you're gonna get
screwed hard enough that the risk isn't worth taking in the first place.
Nobody should have to tell them to wear hearing protection around power tools
and not get drunk three nights a week because by the time that those things
are an issue (high-school/college) they should be familiar enough with the
concept of long term wear and tear to draw their own conclusions about what's
appropriate.

It's an annoyingly circular definition but good enough guidance removes the
need for control.

~~~
ashark
> they should be familiar enough with the concept of long term wear and tear
> to draw their own conclusions about what's appropriate.

From ages ~15-22, I averaged less than 6 hours of sleep a night, ate north of
4000 calories of junk food a day yet had visible ab muscles with minimal
exercise, could stay up ~36hrs before I'd have to crash if I needed to, all
but the worst cuts, scrapes, and bruises healed completely and disappeared
without leaving a mark in 12-48hrs, I simply _did not get_ hangovers _ever_ ,
could push myself to run a pretty damn fast mile despite not being a runner
and not feel it at all the next day, and so on.

I don't think I had a very good handle on what long-term wear and tear was
like except in a very abstract way.

------
oblib
People write books in attempts to answer these questions and it's pretty hard
to provide detailed answers here but I'll chime in a bit...

All children are people, and all people are different in how they learn and
react, and what intrigues and inspires them.

My advice is to first understand your child is a person and to treat them like
one, as opposed to a piece of personal property or a "dog" you can command to
do tricks.

Study: Yes, you have to "make them do things" they don't want to do, like take
a bath, clean their room, do their homework, and help with household chores
because they'd rather not.

When our youngest was 17 he was failing his Senior year in High School and I
pulled him aside and explained that if he had visions of sitting in his
bedroom playing video games all day after he got out of school what he'd find
was me putting all his stuff on the curb and turning his bedroom into my home
office and he could go find someone else to house and feed his lazy ass. He
bucked up, graduated, and is now a manager at the company he works for.

Religion: We live in the "Bible Belt" where a lot of what is preached comes
from "Ministers" who are more interested in what's in the "collection plate"
than teaching the lessons Jesus laid out. I stopped attending "Church" when I
was a teen because I realized this but since most all of my children's friends
went to church they wanted to go as well and my wife and I let them and gave
them rides so they could attend and then we'd discuss what they were told and
taught afterwards. It wasn't long before they started seen contradictions
between the sermons they heard and what Jesus said and taught and my wife and
I would go over these with them.

A good example is "gay marriage". Jesus said "there is no marriage in heaven"
and to "love one another", and they all grew up around a few gay couples that
are close friends of ours and knew they were loving and kind and caring people
who were hurt by the huge anti-gay stance of the evangelicals we're surrounded
by. By the end of "High School" they didn't want to go to church anymore
because of the hate and vitriol they saw promoted there, but they also studied
the Bible on their own to better understand the teachings of Christ and to
defend themselves and their beliefs and by the end of High School they knew
and understood scripture better than many of the adults that were "teaching"
it to them.

Life Lessons: We gave each of our kids their first car and told them they'd be
buying their 2nd one themselves. They all hated their first car because it
wasn't a brand new sporty car their friends would be envious of, and they all
smashed that first car up while being stupid and then whined when we didn't
buy them another. And then they all worked hard, bought their own 2nd car, and
not one of them has crashed their cars up since, or complained their car
wasn't "cool" enough to be seen in.

Internet: I've been making web sites and web software since the mid-1990s so
they all grew up with it. I explained that there's a lot crap on the internet
and they'd be wise to not waste their time on the crap they could find there.
And I told them I could, and would, track the sites they visited and pull the
plug if they got stupid on it. And I explained that even if I was not tracking
them, the access providers they use and sites they visit are tracking them so
they needed to aware that others might find out what they do there and expose
them and they'd better keep that in mind because they'd have to deal with that
all on their own. But I never put any restrictions on what they could find
there because they'd have none as adults and could find it somewhere else
anyway.

Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Yeah, you have to deal with that too. Our
approach was to teach them that it's fine to party but don't make a career out
of it. Don't aspire to be the most drunk or do the most drugs at the party,
and that doing hard drugs is always a stupid choice. All our children grew up
seeing friends, family, and acquaintances do stupid shit to get high and when
high and the consequences that ensued as a result and we didn't shield them
from that. We were very up front about it: "Uncle Joe is in jail again because
he's a dumbass who's spent his life chasing drugs and that's why we're not
bailing him out, and we won't bail you out either if that's the path you take,
so don't expect or ask us to.

None of them wanted to be like "Uncle Joe" and none of them went that route.

The short of it is, raise your kids to be adults from the get go.

------
frabbit
As long as your child isn't irritating me or my child in a public space I do
not care.

------
csa
These are largely false dichotomies.

1\. Study - Starting at the beginning, be involved with your kids and their
schoolwork. A big part of this is being with them while they do their
homework. First, this helps you solidify points that they may not have
understood from class. Second, this gives the parent opportunities to share
various sorts of life skills -- time management, problem solving, learning
strategies, etc. Obviously the parent needs to have restraint so that the
child still has ownership of the homework, but that's not terribly difficult
if the parent is aware of that parameter. If the parent thinks that the kid
has too much homework, then I suggest having a talk with the teacher(s). Hands
down, the number one predictor of student success is parental involvement with
a child's education.

2\. Religion - Typically, when young, just tell them what you believe. They
are children and will largely accept it in its entirety. Once they start
asking questions, explain to them that other people believe different ways,
and when the child is ready, they can decide what approach they want to take
with religion. Make sure to explain to them any potential repercussions of not
toeing the party line (e.g., a born Muslim openly revoking the religion of
Islam in the KSA). Note that they will make this choice whether the parent
"permits" them to or not. The real question is the attitude the child takes
towards the parent after they have decided. In the example of a parent
believing that their child will go to hell in the even that the same religion
is not followed, then I think the problem there lies with the parent -- either
they need to accept this possibility and the fact that the child will choose
no matter what, or they need to embrace or more tolerant religion.

3\. Internet use - This is actually a tough one. I strongly suggest controls
on any computer that is not the child's -- mainly to avoid malware. Tell the
kid you are doing so and why. Ideally, as your child is growing up, you have
been able to teach them at least a modicum of internet/tech literacy, but that
still won't guarantee the safety of your computer. As for the child's own
device, I suggest teaching them best practices from the time they start using
computers. Once they are teenagers (or even earlier), they will be able to
access any sites they want, whether your want them to or not. If you are
concerned about a certain type of website (e.g., porn), then have a discussion
about these topics before or right as they and/or their peers become curious
about such subjects (usu. around the early onset of puberty around 10).
Explain to them your thoughts and feelings about these sites, and (perhaps
most importantly) tell them that they will have to make up their own minds
about these types of sites. As said before, they will do so whether they are
"permitted to" or not.

These questions seem to be oriented towards control. This "works" only as long
as the child's ability to think independently is suppressed. This may last a
lifetime, but it usually doesn't. It also leads to parent-child conflict once
the door to independent thinking has been opened.

Modeling desired behaviors is usually the easiest way to get a child to
exhibit those behaviors. This works both for "good" behaviors as well as "bad"
ones. That said, most people who are regarded as "good" parents, even with the
curtains are pulled back, are ones that model the behaviors/values they want
their kids to have, explain those behaviors/values to their kids, mentor their
kids within the child's context, and support the child's decisions, even if
they differ from the path the parent would have taken.

