[ikanreed]

Children are most hurt by low expectations. Especially young children.

There's subtlety to this, high demands are not high expectations. If there's consequences for not meeting some high standard you set for children, you're going to create a very life-destroying kind of learned helplessness. Kids shouldn't be punished for failure.

And if it's something dangerous to try, then of course it's gotta be something you limit.

But beyond that, just don't assume kids aren't ready for something without evidence. Let them try.

[DiggyJohnson]

Completely agree. In various volunteering capacities (think STEM fairs, youth baseball umpiring, etc) I end up working with 8-12 year olds a lot and I seem to be better at this than a lot of my counterparts. You nailed it.

The secret is to treat the kid like an adult until they demonstrate a reason(s) not to. A GF one time asked me why I talked to her nephew “like that?” and I was so confused. She said “you talk to him the same way you talk to me” (ie. the way I talk to anyone). Nephew and I were shooting free throws in the driveway. We get along great. This was very rambly but I think about it all the time.

I’ve gotten the brattiest kids to calm down and accept the situation in meltdowns in youth baseball with the same approach.

I’m not claiming this always works. Many times the situation or kid themselves demonstrates they must be treated like a kid. That’s fine too.

[tmpz22]

I have very similar lived experiences to yours and would extend the age range well into the teenage years (and even sometimes beyond) due to the fact that many young adults are still very sheltered and suffer from the same environments and mindsets established 8 - 12.

Some warning signs are medical illnesses where a young adult is being sheltered as if they are still in a crisis state of that illness, even though they've grown well beyond it and may benefit from being treating like any normal individual.

[dgfitz]

I have the same knack with kids, I’ve had it forever. “Oh you’re going to be such a good parent” was something I heard constantly.

It’s different when one’s own kids, and it takes extra patience to have the same skill set as you do with “stranger” kids. Without getting into it too much, being in a position of “authority” with a “stranger” kid changes the dynamic as compared to one’s own kids.

I dunno if that makes sense, but I’ve found it to be true for me.

I also seemed to have figured it out with my own kids, it just takes more work and more patience.

[jxjnskkzxxhx]

It makes my blood boil that my kid comes from the nursery saying things like "I did an ouchie". Kids don't naturally speak like this, they are taught like this. He's 3. At home he speaks his parents languages and he sounds like a 5 year old because we don't dumb it down for him. In English he sounds like every other English 3 year old in the nursery.

[dismalaf]

As someone who has a 2.5 year old learning multiple languages, I think a problem with English is that it's very verbose; we use full sentences to express things that can be expressed in other languages with only 1-2 words. And of course shorter sentences are easier for children as there's less grammar to be learned.

And specifically for expressing you hurt yourself, we teach children to express that they're hurt far earlier than they learn actual speech. So from ~1 we teach them to say "Ow" (or some variation), but then the words change from that to "hurt", and into a full sentence "I hurt myself", which is also redundant (myself and I imply the same thing, so why do we use both in that sentence in English?).

Anyhow just a thought as I'm feeding my son breakfast. "Would you like some breakfast" in English turns into 2 words in his second language.

[ikanreed]

And preschool teachers talk this way because they're desperately afraid of hurting parents' feelings

[watwut]

It is just a different sound for the same thing. There is nothing dumber about "I did an ouchie" then "I got hurt". Ouchie is more infantile, but not stupider.

[palmotea]

> Children are most hurt by low expectations. Especially young children.

I feel children's programming is reflecting those low expectations.

Daniel Tiger's fine, but an episode tends to be so focused on some narrow little thing. The older Mr. Rogers show it's based on tended to be much more wide-ranging, and often had segments introducing parts of the real adult world to a kid.

And there's stuff like Blippi, where you have a man engaging in extremely literal and unimaginative play, being "educational" by teaching colors over and over.

[ikanreed]

Oh, yeah for sure. Children's television is seems more oriented toward addiction than genuine education more often than I'd like.

[thanatropism]

"Trash Truck" and Pocoyo.

[taeric]

"High demands are not high expectations." Holy crap that is a great phrase!

[worldsayshi]

I think treating partial goals as bonuses is a good thing. Any goal that can be seen as a fun bonus challenge becomes more psychologically rewarding than if it's treated as a requirement?

At least I find that works when motivating myself. I didn't expect that I would finish this big skirace this year. But having it as a bonus goal made it very rewarding when I actually did finish it.

[PartiallyTyped]

I wish we kind of celebrated failures and treated them as learning opportunities.

One of my main complains about my upbringing is that it didn't demand much of us, and it didn't provide opportunities to extend our wings and do and learn about cool stuff, while failures were treated as the end of the world.

[vwcx]

Looking back, what was your parents' relationship to anxiety (especially low-level anxiety)?

I have felt similar to your sentiment as I raise my 2.5 year old, and as I investigate more, true failure was always insulated by my parent's anxiety preventing a true experience of outcomes. "Don't climb on that ledge because it's wet and you could fall" rather than a climb and tumble off a 2 inch curb with likely no consequence. "Don't eat that meat if it's still pink", etc.

[alsetmusic]

I used to think I hated children. No, I hate bad parenting. Friends had kids and talked to them like adults (not when they were toddlers, obviously) and the kids turned out awesome. I think it’s easy to handicap children by limiting your expectations of them.

[zdragnar]

My cousin needed speech therapy because my aunt accidentally formed her own language with him in over-doing the baby talk.

Ironically, he is now fluent in more languages than anyone I've ever met.

[magneticstain]

This is the framework my wife and I use with our boys as well. Let them explore things, use regular words, even if you think they don't understand them (they do).

Like you said, set the bar high, but keep in mind they're still kids and failure should never be punished. We found that doing that for some time results in them setting the bar high for themselves _all on their own now_. Their confidence is beaming, and they're never afraid to try new things, or try again after failing.

[eitally]

The safest and best approach, as far as my limited parenting & school volunteering experience has demonstrated, is to go in with the assumption that the kids are just as smart as you and that they only suffer from lack of life experience.

Yes, the fact base kids have is limited due to limited experience & education, but they are able to learn and reason just as well as adolescents and adults, and should be treated like that. What they need is exposure to reasoning methods, clear explanations of logical fallacies, and necessary background information that will help them both articulate complex thoughts and set context for their reasoning.

I would argue that, in many cases, kids are "smarter" than adults because their lack of experience also correlates to increased creativity. Rather than pattern matching based on experience they'll frequently try out-of-the-box methods to solve problems -- this should never be discouraged.

[tetromino_]

This may be the correct attitude towards school-age kids, but is plainly wrong when dealing with toddlers. For one thing, very young children are usually unable to empathize. So they are unable to understand why it's bad to seize their cousin's toy, they are unable to understand why it's bad to leave a mess for someone else to clean up - they can be taught a set of rules of behavior, but they won't really get the principle underlying those rules until their brain grows more and develops the ability to imagine themselves in other people's shoes.

[tremon]

From around 8 years old (depending on the child), this is probably an accurate assumption. Many children younger than that do not have a fully-developed theory of mind to understand different perspectives on the same issue. This may not matter too much for natural science topics, but it does impact their ability to comprehend social or political issues.

[sebasvisser]

Could you add adults to those shouldn’t be punished for (most) failures?

Let’s be nice to each other and ourselves when try..and learn.

[ikanreed]

Sure, but also as an adult, you're expected to have learned some resilience to failure. You're expected to be able to be able to withstand some criticism and see negativity as a chance to improve.

I know it doesn't always work that way, but a lot of times our failures aren't just "on us", but affect others.

[j45]

Agreed - the article about the study gives very basic examples, for example.

Children seem to demonstrate when given support to explore their curiosities as a gateway to learning (Similar to Reggio Emelia approaches).