Gunnar_Zarncke comments on Ignorance in parenting - Less Wrong

13 Post author: Gunnar_Zarncke 03 September 2013 10:00AM

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Comment author: Gunnar_Zarncke 03 September 2013 03:20:29PM 5 points [-]

Sure. In situations where parents have more experience link e.g. traffic or super markets. But not where children have comparable experience like creating or getting away with some mischief. Some parents remember their own childhood. But for most of us this lies in the dark before memory or before the significant restructurings during puberty.

Comment author: David_Gerard 03 September 2013 08:36:18PM 1 point [-]

I model my daughter's creativity in this manner upon my own. It's been a pretty reliable model so far.

Comment author: shokwave 04 September 2013 05:08:00AM 2 points [-]

Possibly you are more experienced than the average parent at creating and getting away with mischief. This is probably a good thing, actually, since most people are far less mischievous than they should be.

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 September 2013 06:47:52AM 3 points [-]

My mother is most heartily enjoying grandmother's revenge.

Comment author: Kawoomba 03 September 2013 03:47:38PM 1 point [-]

Well, some of us remain more mischievous than others, and social competence / ability to pick up on cues increases from childhood to adulthood.

I find overestimating children to be wrought with dangers of its own, similar in magnitude to underestimating children.

Comment author: Baughn 03 September 2013 04:30:03PM 5 points [-]

It's also very hard to avoid - hard to avoid doing both simultaneously, even.

Watching my own nieces, it's struck me that different parts of their minds are maturing at different rates. It's not just that children are any fixed amount less intelligent than adults, and there isn't even a similar vector of factors for different children - children actually acquire capabilities at different points in time, even when they're genetically similar.

So niece A was better at math at twelve than B was at fifteen, vice versa for boating skills, vice versa for impulse control...

It comes down to personality differences, but they're affecting what we'd consider basic cognitive skills in ways you just don't see in adults.

Comment author: David_Gerard 04 September 2013 06:52:25AM 4 points [-]

Observing a child develop is a marvellous lesson in the incredibly fragmented nature of what we so blithely simplify into the label "intelligence"