When they have nothing to do, the default activity is watching YouTube. If you take away all devices, the default activity is playing with toys. If you take away toys as well, the default activity is running around, being loud, breaking stuff, and generally being annoying.
What if you restrict YouTube, then give them enough free time to get bored of their toys and “generally being annoying”?
Verbally focused activities also seem surprisingly useful, though they feel like games.
What are verbally focused activities? Like competitive debating?
And of course if the kid is really into something, they should be able to study it even if it’s impractical, otherwise you’ll forever be the horrible parent who took away their dream.
Maybe it would be a good idea to generate a list of such subjects so we can try to avoid letting the kid get interested in them in the first place. :)
Father of four, teach a programming class to some kids in my area, attend many social gatherings full of kids.
What if you restrict YouTube, then give them enough free time to get bored of their toys and “generally being annoying”?
YMMV, but I haven’t seen much progress happening as a result of boredom. As a child I was in this situation and spent most of my time pointlessly reading fiction. Got serious about math and programming only due to having amazing teachers in high school (actual math and CS researchers).
On the other hand, if you’re asking about your kids, maybe they’ll turn out like you and get interested in stuff naturally :-)
What are verbally focused activities? Like competitive debating?
At preschool level it’s games like broken telephone or I Spy. At school level I’m not sure, but I feel that my verbal abilities are low because I never did anything like debating in my teens.
Interesting, how do you motivate the kids to want to learn?
YMMV, but I haven’t seen much progress happening as a result of boredom. As a child I was in this situation and spent most of my time pointlessly reading fiction.
Reading fiction hardly seems pointless, compared to other pursuits a parent might push a child into. It develops vocabulary and reading comprehension (helpful when you later want to read non-fiction), general knowledge and social abilities, and can lead to other interests. I got interested in crypto and the Singularity from reading Vernor Vinge, and philosophy in part from reading Greg Egan.
It seems like boredom as a strategy requires a lot of time and patience, even when it succeeds. I wasn’t that serious about programming (despite learning the basics as a kid) until I got into crypto and decided that writing an open source crypto library would be a good way to help push towards a positive Singularity, and that only happened in college after I read Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep.
At school level I’m not sure, but I feel that my verbal abilities are low because I never did anything like debating in my teens.
Your verbal abilities don’t seem low to me (at least in writing). Maybe low compared to Eliezer, but then he is just off the charts.
I’m worried that competitive debating trains for the wrong things (e.g., using arguments as soldiers). ChristianKl’s suggestion of drama lessons doesn’t seem like it would increase verbal abilities more than say reading, but I’d be interested if anyone has evidence to offer about that. I’ll probably have to do some research to see what other activities are good for increasing verbal skills.
Interesting, how do you motivate the kids to want to learn?
That’s one of those questions like “how do you play the violin” :-) There’s no trick, you do it the hard way. I give lots of tiny exercises that are solvable but mildly challenging (typing, arithmetic, 2D coordinates, loops, etc). I make some simple game that fits in a screen of code, make the kids type it in from paper, then they naturally come up with tweaks and new features and add them with my help, so everyone ends up with a personalized game to show off. And so on.
(Why typing code from paper? Because kids start out unable to type. They need to practice it each lesson.)
The hardest part is getting the difficulty right, otherwise the kids run out of focus in 15 minutes and the rest of the lesson is wasted, or they solve everything too fast and get bored as well. I still get it wrong more than half the time, but when it works it feels great.
ChristianKl’s suggestion of drama lessons doesn’t seem like it would increase verbal abilities more than say reading,
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all somewhat distinct skills; my guess would be that if you wanted to optimize verbal abilities, you’d want to encourage all four. Drama lessons sound like they would help with the speaking and listening skills in a way that reading doesn’t.
Also I’m under the impression that if you have four interrelated skills A-D, even if you were only interested in optimizing A, spending some time on each of B-D also lets you learn A better. I don’t have a formal cite for that, but at least this article discusses it.
ChristianKl’s suggestion of drama lessons doesn’t seem like it would increase verbal abilities more than say reading, but I’d be interested if anyone has evidence to offer about that.
Drama lessons train the ability to act in a specific scripted way in a social situation.
Thanks, your comment is helpful.
That’s interesting. May I ask in what capacity?
What if you restrict YouTube, then give them enough free time to get bored of their toys and “generally being annoying”?
What are verbally focused activities? Like competitive debating?
Maybe it would be a good idea to generate a list of such subjects so we can try to avoid letting the kid get interested in them in the first place. :)
Father of four, teach a programming class to some kids in my area, attend many social gatherings full of kids.
YMMV, but I haven’t seen much progress happening as a result of boredom. As a child I was in this situation and spent most of my time pointlessly reading fiction. Got serious about math and programming only due to having amazing teachers in high school (actual math and CS researchers).
On the other hand, if you’re asking about your kids, maybe they’ll turn out like you and get interested in stuff naturally :-)
At preschool level it’s games like broken telephone or I Spy. At school level I’m not sure, but I feel that my verbal abilities are low because I never did anything like debating in my teens.
Interesting, how do you motivate the kids to want to learn?
Reading fiction hardly seems pointless, compared to other pursuits a parent might push a child into. It develops vocabulary and reading comprehension (helpful when you later want to read non-fiction), general knowledge and social abilities, and can lead to other interests. I got interested in crypto and the Singularity from reading Vernor Vinge, and philosophy in part from reading Greg Egan.
It seems like boredom as a strategy requires a lot of time and patience, even when it succeeds. I wasn’t that serious about programming (despite learning the basics as a kid) until I got into crypto and decided that writing an open source crypto library would be a good way to help push towards a positive Singularity, and that only happened in college after I read Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep.
Your verbal abilities don’t seem low to me (at least in writing). Maybe low compared to Eliezer, but then he is just off the charts.
I’m worried that competitive debating trains for the wrong things (e.g., using arguments as soldiers). ChristianKl’s suggestion of drama lessons doesn’t seem like it would increase verbal abilities more than say reading, but I’d be interested if anyone has evidence to offer about that. I’ll probably have to do some research to see what other activities are good for increasing verbal skills.
That’s one of those questions like “how do you play the violin” :-) There’s no trick, you do it the hard way. I give lots of tiny exercises that are solvable but mildly challenging (typing, arithmetic, 2D coordinates, loops, etc). I make some simple game that fits in a screen of code, make the kids type it in from paper, then they naturally come up with tweaks and new features and add them with my help, so everyone ends up with a personalized game to show off. And so on.
(Why typing code from paper? Because kids start out unable to type. They need to practice it each lesson.)
The hardest part is getting the difficulty right, otherwise the kids run out of focus in 15 minutes and the rest of the lesson is wasted, or they solve everything too fast and get bored as well. I still get it wrong more than half the time, but when it works it feels great.
Reading, writing, speaking and listening are all somewhat distinct skills; my guess would be that if you wanted to optimize verbal abilities, you’d want to encourage all four. Drama lessons sound like they would help with the speaking and listening skills in a way that reading doesn’t.
Also I’m under the impression that if you have four interrelated skills A-D, even if you were only interested in optimizing A, spending some time on each of B-D also lets you learn A better. I don’t have a formal cite for that, but at least this article discusses it.
Drama lessons train the ability to act in a specific scripted way in a social situation.
Drama lessons seem to be a classic verbally focused hobby.