I've got five kids. The more I loosen up and let the kids take risks and learn for mistakes the better. The challenge is when the adults inject a ridiculous level of risk to something that should be a learning experience. For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records. When risk is too high, learning stops and risk avoidance takes over.
I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself.
It seems that nowadays we have an extremely interventionist culture, and it leaves us ill-equipped to recognize situations where the best thing to do is nothing at all.
It's not just around child-rearing. I have chronic pain from a decades-old sports injury, and well-meaning people frequently advise me to get surgery to fix it. There's a tacit assumption that, by choosing to live with it, I'm simply being complacent. (There's also, for that matter, a tacit assumption that an appropriate procedure exists in the first place.) If I point out that the surgery for my sort of thing tends to have much worse long-term outcomes than choosing not to pick at it, then I'm generally told that I just haven't found the right surgeon. Similar for my nearsightedness - I have one family member who thinks I'm crazy for not getting LASIK surgery. My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device, while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated, so the risk/reward balance just isn't right for me. But that's not how they see it. What they see is that I'm just being weak-willed, because I'm opting not to do something when there's something that could be done.
But it upsets me more when it's child-rearing, because then it's adults choosing to screw up the life of another person who doesn't have any say in the matter. Ostensibly for their own good, but, more accurately, I think, because the adult feels like this is how they need to perform their role.
> I am seeing this, too. Oftentimes, ostensibly in the interest of protecting children from harm, we try to control their behavior with increasingly disproportionate ultimatums, to the point where the authority's response is vastly more harmful than the situation itself.
And IMO, perversely, this incentivizes behavior problems. Kids sooner or later (and often sooner in the case of smarter kids) catch onto when adults are making disproportionate ultimatums, or when the reasoning behind a ruling is disconnected from objective reality. What does this teach a kid? Adults are liars, don't know what they're talking about, are undeserving of respect, are not to be obeyed if the consequences of such are bearable, are to be subverted whenever possible, etc.
I mean, there's going to be a degree of disrespect and disobedience when a kid enters adolescence and they start to try to assert their independence as they approach adulthood. But learning the above attitude as a child is going to make adolescent behavior so much worse.
My kids figured this out... I think the solution is that you have to be consistent and both parents have to back each other up. Some people say that you should setup house rules and let the kids help set them up that way they have ownership.
The other thing would be to go to therapy. We don't teach people how to be parents but there is a lot of applied child development skills you can learn.
Having a disinterested third party to talk to saves my friends and family and internet forums from much of my babble (some clearly gets through:), and it’s a safer place to take risks and grow. The Blindboy Podcast promotes cognitive behavior therapy and other tools one can use on their own vs anxiety and depression, and I’m transitioning away from talk therapy towards these tools. The therapist was pivotal along the way.
> My take is myopia can be effectively treated with an inexpensive and non-invasive device
Like what?
>while LASIK comes with significant risk of causing different kinds of visual impairments that cannot be treated
The numbers behind LASIK (and PRK) are pretty solid such that one can make an objective claim that it is a low risk endeavor unless you have some specific conditions.
Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.
My feeling has always been... I've been wearing soft contacts for decades--and now multifocals. I do wear reading glasses for, well, reading and other close work when I have the contacts in. (Probably more than I really need to.) So maybe LASIK is super-safe at this point but, honestly, there's very little about my current situation that inconveniences me in any appreciable way.
I would not get refractive eye surgery if I was old enough to have reading glasses (since nothing fixes that yet), but if all you have is run of the mill myopia, a couple thousand dollars to spare, and you are 25 to 30, LASIK or PRK is one of the best quality of life improvements you can make.
The clarity with which you can see everything is stunning at first, and the lack of inconvenience is incredible. If you’re interested in dating, it is probably one of the best investments you can make to improve your experience.
You would get at least 10, maybe even 15 years of not having to deal with glasses.
Personally I had the LASIK surgery done because high correction glasses and contacts are more serious liability in sports or emergency situations than residual -1 diopter nearsightedness. (Compared to -7 D before.) Such as being able to drive a car safely without them, or read. Or work at all.
It didn't cause any halos or dry eye. Those would still be preferable over legal blindness.
The bigger problem is they were unable to correct some astigmatism and so in certain conditions I get doubled image without glasses. Still not even comparable.
For low corrections or farsightedness, the risk benefit situation is very different.
I also suspect that another surgery could be risked to further improve on it once technology advances a bit more.
That's fair. My contacts were always for distance vision. But as I've gotten older, I need readers--only if I'm wearing contacts--for reading. Multi-focals improve but don't eliminate the need. So very manageable.
> Low risk -> that paper's definition of "safety" is whether people had good eyesight. It doesn't take into account halos or dry eyes, as far as I can tell.
Yes, it was a quick search on my phone. I just remember doing a ton of research for it before I got mine done years ago. I know 6 others who got it done too around when I did, and everyone claims it was well worth it.
I just figured it has been around so long and performed so much, that there would be a lot of people claiming issues and it would show up by now.
I had PRK done 6 years ago. I was lucky and never got the dry eyes thing, but I still have some (fairly minor, I guess?) halos around lights at night. I think the trade off is well worth it, though.
I certainly know people who have had worse complications, though, and they might have a different feeling about it than I do.
It completely depends on the severity of your myopia. If it's mild, yeah, it's pretty safe. If it's moderate or severe, then things start looking a lot more dicey.
The overall numbers give a biased perspective. With the way the risk/benefit ratio varies, people with milder cases are a lot more likely to get it. This is in addition to there being more of them in the first place.
The inexpensive and non-invasive device is corrective eyewear.
I think, more to the point, this advice is typically being offered by people who aren't even thinking in those terms in the first place. They're just operating from a tacit bias toward interventionism.
Well people who are not ophthalmologists who have not diagnosed your eyes should not be commenting on whether or not you are a good candidate for refractive eye surgery.
This will sound terrible, but one theory why parents are so risk-averse with their kids is that 1-2 kids per family is the norm today. When it was more like 3-5 it was harder to keep track of all of them and they (the kids) inevitably did risker things. Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.
There might actually be something to this. My child #3 gets more freedom (and is much more self sufficient!) just because I am often too busy with the many other things to interfere with her learning process.
My parents had/have about 9 siblings each. There is no way in hell my grand parents could have raised those many kids without letting them be free most of the time.
Of course the times were different (between 1930s - 1970s) and in India the definition/threshold of risk is, let's just say, different compared to the west :-)
> Moreover, the loss of a kid feels far worse if you don't have more.
Let me tell you you’re very wrong here. Loosing a kid is the worst thing ever and is independent on the number of kids you have. I have 5 kids and I can’t imagine losing one.
The biggest reason IMO for kids having more freedom is not that we have less time for them but that they play more together instead of with us. This emulation leads to more risk taken.
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior). Another is lifetime academic and other records.
Just send them to a private school where matters are handled privately.
> For example, allowing police to arrest and charge a child for bad behavior at school (i.e. won't obey the teacher, outbursts - not for actually criminally violent behavior).
Are there any examples of this happening? I do not recall reading about any incident where police responded to a school where the cause was not due to physical violence.
If I was managing a school (or any other establishment), I would instruct staff that no one is to touch anyone outside of administering medical aid, for obvious liability reasons. In such cases, I can see it being necessary to call police if a child has to be physically moved or restrained.
The top two might be good examples, but the YouTube link says the kid was punching a teacher, which is a good example of what I meant by punting that to someone with better legal resources than me (if I am a worker at the school).
That is a systemic problem regarding tort and liability, I would not blame individuals at the school or police for that. The solution would have to be systemic reform.
