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    MegMeg Offline OP
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    HK -- Indeed!

    I think also our culture has largely forgotten that the job of parents is not just to care for children but to raise adults. Kids are not given opportunities to practice adulthood in small, low-stakes doses. The result is college students who flame out with too much alcohol and no decision-making skills. (Which I see on a regular basis.)

    I'm sure many will be horrified to hear that I gave my child a hot-glue gun at age 5 1/2. grin

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    Umm,yes horrified. DH is wary when he uses stuff like that - though as an industrial engineer, he has seen the horrible outcomes (including one that involved him).

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    MegMeg Offline OP
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    Yes, I'm sure the arts-and-crafts mini-gun I got my daughter is the same kind that caused an industrial accident with your husband.

    Look, humans are really bad at risk assessment. We are transfixed by possible dangers that seem really vivid to us, and are extremely insensitive to information about actual probabilities.

    Shall we just agree to disagree?

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    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    I think also our culture has largely forgotten that the job of parents is not just to care for children but to raise adults. Kids are not given opportunities to practice adulthood in small, low-stakes doses. The result is college students who flame out with too much alcohol and no decision-making skills. (Which I see on a regular basis.)

    I'm sure many will be horrified to hear that I gave my child a hot-glue gun at age 5 1/2. grin
    Originally Posted by NotSoGifted
    Umm,yes horrified. DH is wary when he uses stuff like that - though as an industrial engineer, he has seen the horrible outcomes (including one that involved him).

    This is a really interesting discussion. Bringing up children is difficult and involves hard choices - let's acknowledge up front that there's no perfect answer.

    I think part of what goes on is that there's no essential connection between the physical (for example) level of skill needed to do something, and the cognitive, emotional and societal skills needed to understand and manage the level of risk that results. One parenting philosophy (A) says that we don't let children do things until they are capable of understanding and managing the associated risks. Another (B) says that we let them do things when they can do them, and temporarily, we manage the risks for them. There is a theoretical other (C) which says that we just let them do things, and if they can't manage the risks then oh well - but I'm not sure anyone here is actually espousing that one!

    Let's try not to react to (B) as though it were (C). I'm willing to bet MegMeg's child had no idea how dangerous the hot glue gun could be, at 5.5, and also that MegMeg supervised closely enough that the risk of anything bad happening was nevertheless very low.

    I can certainly say that I let my 3yo use a sharp kitchen knife to cut cucumber with, as soon as he was willing, but, although he probably didn't realise it, I was right there - not so much ready to pull the knife away if he misguided it, because that would have required superhuman reaction speed and in any case wasn't the important risk, but rather, ready to redirect or stop him if he showed any sign of using the knife in any way other than the way required to cut cucumber.

    I did this - and generally, I espouse (B) parenting - because waiting till children completely understand and manage risks before you let them do anything that invokes those risks seems impractical; when I look at DS's 10yo friends who have never used a sharp knife and never cooked over a flame and never been outside without an adult watching them, it seems to me that I see people who (a) have too much to learn all at once and (b) have built up an image of themselves as people who need to be looked after.

    Sometimes it's not possible to let children acquire skills and simultaneously shield them from all associated risks. Then one has to choose. I worry, and analyse and reanalyse risks, and come down on one side or the other, in such cases. But there's no perfect answer in such cases: there's a cost either way. I too see 18yos arrive at university lacking skills they need at that point, and struggling to learn them too late. And I know that I as an 18yo still lacked full understanding of and ability to manage the risks I was running - to some extent I just had to learn them alone.

    It's not entirely clear how this relates to the above, but something that shook me badly recently was hearing that the 16/17yo son of an acquaintance of mine had been killed in a car accident. The shocking part was that he had written off his own car the day before, in an accident which was known to be his own fault. His mother had tweeted about her relief that he and the other driver were OK, and that he wasn't going to be driving again for a while. But the next day, in fact, he drove the family car to school - and was killed. (Those are the bald facts. I don't know anything about the decision making process that lies behind them. For me the lesson comes from imagining it, and it doesn't really matter whether what I imagine is or isn't true.)

    I think perhaps that why this comes to mind is something like this. One advantage of bringing your children up to be relatively self-reliant is that it's convenient. It's nice when your kids can get their own lunch, don't mind being left for an evening, and doubtless in due course, can drive themselves to school. But to get to that point as a parent doing (B) often requires more investment of effort than is required for either (A) or (C). It was harder for me to watch with alertness while my 3yo cut his own cucumber slices than it would have been either to do it myself (A) or leave him to it (C). And it was crucial that I was prepared to step in if it turned out that I'd misjudged and he wasn't ready to do it sensibly himself. Of course I now reap the benefit of being able to say "Help yourself to lunch" while I do something else! But there is an ever-present danger of complacency: one can get too used to things being easy, and a child who takes risks they don't understand does require someone to be conscious of that, because they may not be.

    Last edited by ColinsMum; 04/20/14 01:32 PM. Reason: fix misattribution

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    Not trying to pick a fight. And while it wasn't a glue gun, it was one of the more innocuous items in the factory.

    I am actually much calmer with the stuff my youngest does. My older two complain that I let her do stuff that I never let them do. Of course, now that eldest is off at college, who knows what she is doing...probably don't want to know everything.

    But back to the original discussion, I think that if the kid looks young, I would worry about what others think. I know middle kid got some comments on stuff she was reading when she was about 12, because it would not have been appropriate for an eight year old (which folks guessed as her age). That and the fact that we have a guy on our street charged with trying to hook up with a 14 year old - and I never would have guessed him to be a predator.

    We did let our eldest fly down to FL with twins she knows, to meet up with the sister of these kids, and they spent a week on their own (and mine flew back on her own). So I don't always hover over them (though I admit I sometimes do).

    Last edited by NotSoGifted; 04/20/14 12:57 PM. Reason: correction, addition
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    Colinsmum, we never gave DD a hot glue gun at that age. Nope-- we gave her eye and ear protection and a shot at the scroll saw instead. blush We also were supervising-- much the way that the cucumber slicing anecdote reveals.

    In all seriousness, ITA with

    Quote
    Look, humans are really bad at risk assessment. We are transfixed by possible dangers that seem really vivid to us, and are extremely insensitive to information about actual probabilities.

    It's when you get complacent about real risk levels that (IME) you get injured. Being immured to the risk is the problem, in most instances of rational risk-taking. No, I'm not talking about letting a five year old build a zip-line in a concrete back yard and ride it with no protective gear. Of course not.

    But my DH and I neither one have ever suffered a work-related injury, not in our cumulative 60+ years of work around radiological/nuclear, biological/infectious, electrical, mechanical, chemical, fire/explosion and thermal hazards, some of them quite extreme. We've worked around explosives, around hi-vac systems that were old-school glass walls-of-doom, etc. Nary a problem.

    Nope-- all of my injuries have been as a result of doing things that I just lost track of risk-- in my KITCHEN. Seriously. Burns, cuts, etc. Same with DH. He's never had a work accident or a woodshop one. It's the routine things that we do which are actually high-risk-- because we get complacent about those risks and we quit paying attention all the time.

    smile

    This is the precise reason why people will drive rather than flying because flying scares them-- it's about the illusion of safety with a locus of control. Same thing applies here with kids. There's not much that is LIKELY to happen to my DD when she's not being supervised that I could (realistically) prevent happening to her when she IS.

    It's all so very individual. I'll worry less about DD operating a motor vehicle in some respects than I did about her using a sharp chef's knife-- but that's because of her lack of muscle strength in her hands. She's VERY cautious and hypervigilant about her surroundings, which I anticipate will translate well into defensive driving skills.


    Last edited by HowlerKarma; 04/20/14 01:30 PM.

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    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Colinsmum, we never gave DD a hot glue gun at that age. Nope-- we gave her eye and ear protection and a shot at the scroll saw instead.
    Oops, sorry for the misattribution - will fix!


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    Originally Posted by ColinsMum
    Originally Posted by MegMeg
    I think also our culture has largely forgotten that the job of parents is not just to care for children but to raise adults. Kids are not given opportunities to practice adulthood in small, low-stakes doses. The result is college students who flame out with too much alcohol and no decision-making skills. (Which I see on a regular basis.)...
    ...
    This is a really interesting discussion. Bringing up children is difficult and involves hard choices - let's acknowledge up front that there's no perfect answer...
    I find true wisdom in these posts. I would like to add one thought: Children aware that someone is investing effort in them, coaching them to become capable, while managing the risks... may also grow into adults who are comfortable with investing in the next generation... finding joy and meaning in taking responsibility for giving kids roots and wings (as the saying goes)... in the balance they deem appropriate for their child/ren.

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    Originally Posted by ColinsMum
    Originally Posted by HowlerKarma
    Colinsmum, we never gave DD a hot glue gun at that age. Nope-- we gave her eye and ear protection and a shot at the scroll saw instead.
    Oops, sorry for the misattribution - will fix!

    No worries-- it is clearly the sort of thing which we WOULD have done. LOL. grin


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    Last year I broke my right thumb and had surgery on it. It was in a cast for 6 weeks, and another 4 weeks till I could use it for much. My son learned to do a LOT of useful things because I simply couldn't do them. Chopping vegetables turned into his chore. He put up a set of lights outdoors, while I not so patiently watched him learn to use a hammer.

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