Comment by AkshayGenius
1 day ago
This sounds very interesting and very much in-line with what I’ve been musing as a soon-to-be father.
One question that comes to my mind is do your kids compare their experiences to their friends? If their friends have access to a laptop with internet, or a music subscription service with all the music constantly available (a la Spotify), do they not compare and ask you why their experiences must be so limited? Why do their friends get to be on iMessage and they just have a landline phone number.
These are the kinds of questions that worry me about how much the kids can truly buy in to this. But maybe I’m overthinking this.
Re: the subscription music service
We got my daughter an FM radio when she was around 9. Turns out it's a novelty among her friends and she really enjoys using it. I find local commercial radio insipid but apparently the music they play is acceptable to her. The music on broadcast FM is tame enough that I wasn't worried about subject matter.
Just tell them the truth, friend. You want to protect them, this is your family's way.
> this is your family's way
Don't say that one. It's creep zone 9000. Respect will be lost. Better off just saying "because I say so."
It can be important to tell kids early that comparisons don't matter, that everyone's diffferent, and that's ok, and every family's different and that's ok.
Depends on personality I guess. That would be sooo unsatisfying to me. E.g. not wanting to accept that languages have exceptions "just because" is what got me interested in historical linguistics as a young lad.
Yep, we can see a lot of people here have had little experience in raising children. Some will just seem to naturally say "I accept that", and another kid that will be like "f you, I don't do what you tell me" born a year apart and raised in the same household. Nurture can moderate these behaviors, but nature is strong.
I was more referring to the children that compare themselves to other children, or differences between what they have/are allowed to do and what others can.
It's why I prefaced it with "It can".
Every child is different, but a big impact is every parent who has or hasn't dealt with the normal childhood stuff every parent can have, plus the extra, or latent reactivity can be modelled and passed on.