About literature: The most interesting book to me was “Babyjahre” by Remo Largo, a pediatrist who led the Zurich longitudinal child study and basically just explains what happens empirically in different areas of development in different ages. The book is about the ages 0-4. I assume there must be something similar in English. There’s a kind of book that’s a real nuisance, namely those that explain developmental stages and behavior like a horoscope: It’s very vague but seemingly concrete and people tend to interpret things until it fits.
Polgar: You can find Scott Alexander’s articles about the Polgar family approach here and here.
If your child is sick, Googling may have a different effect than it does in case sick adults: In the latter case, people tend to believe they have something deadly afterwards, while in the former you often just learn that certain “symptoms” are just normal for the age.
Stated like state, “avoid rote memorization” is not really just parenting advicing, but a statement about learning. It depends on method, context and detail whether that is sensible—for example, flashcard learning seems to work quite well.
“At all verbal ages, you can talk to them in a more complex way than they are able to communicate, yet they will still understand some parts of it and absorb context and parts of meaning..” Sure, but the art is to calibrate how complex your communication should be. If I read a book to learn physics and I take one aimed at PhD students, I may also be able to understand part of it, but a lot of it is just wasted time.
“I don’t have enough neuroscience to develop this any further, but it’s “common knowledge” that many teenagers think their parents are idiots.” It’s surprising that the English wikipedia article on puberty does not comment on behavioral development, or maybe I overlook it, and the German one only has a short paragraph lacking sources, translated by google as “During puberty, both parents and teenagers report that they no longer feel so close to each other. One reason for the problems that arise between child and parents can be the child’s improved judgment, which tends to question and criticize the behavior of the parents. In addition, the roles of young people in their lives change as they mature physically and they want to be treated as adults accordingly. The adolescents also want to take on more responsibility for their leisure time. However, the parents want to protect their children from harm and thus adopt a counter-position. Most of these arguments are only superficial and do not endanger protective family ties. The young people also quarrel with their siblings more often. Puberty is often referred to as the “second phase of defiance” because of the quarrels. ”
Very interesting report. Some remarks:
About literature: The most interesting book to me was “Babyjahre” by Remo Largo, a pediatrist who led the Zurich longitudinal child study and basically just explains what happens empirically in different areas of development in different ages. The book is about the ages 0-4. I assume there must be something similar in English. There’s a kind of book that’s a real nuisance, namely those that explain developmental stages and behavior like a horoscope: It’s very vague but seemingly concrete and people tend to interpret things until it fits.
Polgar: You can find Scott Alexander’s articles about the Polgar family approach here and here.
If your child is sick, Googling may have a different effect than it does in case sick adults: In the latter case, people tend to believe they have something deadly afterwards, while in the former you often just learn that certain “symptoms” are just normal for the age.
Stated like state, “avoid rote memorization” is not really just parenting advicing, but a statement about learning. It depends on method, context and detail whether that is sensible—for example, flashcard learning seems to work quite well.
“At all verbal ages, you can talk to them in a more complex way than they are able to communicate, yet they will still understand some parts of it and absorb context and parts of meaning..” Sure, but the art is to calibrate how complex your communication should be. If I read a book to learn physics and I take one aimed at PhD students, I may also be able to understand part of it, but a lot of it is just wasted time.
“I don’t have enough neuroscience to develop this any further, but it’s “common knowledge” that many teenagers think their parents are idiots.” It’s surprising that the English wikipedia article on puberty does not comment on behavioral development, or maybe I overlook it, and the German one only has a short paragraph lacking sources, translated by google as “During puberty, both parents and teenagers report that they no longer feel so close to each other. One reason for the problems that arise between child and parents can be the child’s improved judgment, which tends to question and criticize the behavior of the parents. In addition, the roles of young people in their lives change as they mature physically and they want to be treated as adults accordingly. The adolescents also want to take on more responsibility for their leisure time. However, the parents want to protect their children from harm and thus adopt a counter-position. Most of these arguments are only superficial and do not endanger protective family ties. The young people also quarrel with their siblings more often. Puberty is often referred to as the “second phase of defiance” because of the quarrels. ”