Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids
423 comments
·February 13, 2025RheingoldRiver
forgotoldacc
Another thing is there's the difference between getting a guaranteed reward that you want (two marshmallows) vs waiting for the unknown. What good is waiting if a kid could potentially have 15 minutes of fun time with a toy, but they instead wait for two gifts and all they get is a pair of socks?
But I was also a kid who'd beg nonstop to open my presents early. I knew if I opened something early, that was more time with a cool game or something. If I waited, well, that was less time with the cool game. Plus most of the presents weren't interesting. There was just one thing I wanted in particular and the other stuff could be forgotten.
watwut
Marshmallow test is one of those things real psychologists (whether practical or science) just do not care all that much about, but pop culture is sure obsessed with it.
rahimnathwani
The original paper has been cited 2000 times: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&scioq=...
That's a lot of citations for something they 'just do not care' about.
DiscourseFan
Psychologists, in my experience, seem to be strangely unaware of what is taken seriously by other psychologists. They're generally 50/50 on Freud, for instance, and the half who don't care much for him also don't think anyone does.
michaelt
I agree.
But do bear in mind, an intro textbook for a 101 class aiming to correct popular misunderstandings; or an experimental guide wanting to give examples of mistakes one should avoid; or an article on the replication crisis would also count as citations, even as they sneered at the original faulty work.
watwut
Some keep writing whether it replicates and usually conclude it does not or only weakly.
They do not actually care about it as something valid relevant to practice or to build new research on. Because it frequently fails to reproduce.
christophilus
I think you’re right. It is one of the many studies that has failed to replicate[0].
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/jun/01/famed-impu...
Aurornis
Not quite. Psychology is a big field and the range of educational practices is very broad.
There are some excellent psychologists out there, but there are also a lot of trained psychologists who embrace all of the pop-culture and even pseudoscience trends in full.
rusk
They do care about it. It’s an immensely important milestone in the development of the field, and is pretty much axiomatic as a developmental marker and has been widely and consistently replicated.
Where modern day psychology diverges is (as discussed in the article) on the conclusions and analysis.
TheAlchemist
"Another thing I’ve noticed is how much modeling matters. My daughter watches everything I do. If I tell her to wait and then lose my patience two seconds later because the internet is slow, what’s the lesson there?"
As a father of 3 kids, I can confirm 100% this is true. Once you understand that, your life changes completely. You realize there is somebody in this world, who will model their life after yours. What kind of example you give them is up to you.
Suddenly, "be the change you want to see in the world" gets a whole new meaning !
nemo44x
It’s 100% true. It’s heartbreaking when a toddler does something you don’t approve of and you ask them why and they point to something you did.
dtgriscom
You know the world by what you experience. Infants and toddlers have a very small world (mostly their home); whatever that world is like becomes their expected reality.
tayo42
Maybe that's true of little kids but idk if that going to 100% dictate the adult they turn into. There's alot of things my parents did that I never took on.
rusk
There’s a point where you realise you are now supporting cast in the movie of your life.
axegon_
My mom has this very interesting theory: A parent needs to be by a child's side for the first 6-7 years of their life and devote all their time to it. Which is what she did with me. My dad stepped up for the challenge and provided for both of us. My mom had one goal: to make sure that I'd stay curious. She taught me how to read at the age of 4, signed me up for piano lessons(I haven't played piano at all nearly 3 decades later but I can still read notes), she made sure I'd be interested in different cultures, which subsequently pushed me to learn a few languages(which is the biggest contributor to the fact that I am doing very well for myself by a huge margin, forget software engineering, speaking English was the one thing that truly opened up the gates for me). Which on a slightly lower level did exactly what the article says. For contrast, I was old enough to witness and evaluate the extreme opposite - my mom's brother and his wife, who had children when a dog would have sufficed their needs. Their children were pushed aside, no one ever spent any time with them, whenever they started crying, someone jumped over to the toy store, get a bag of toys and shove them in their face so they would shut up. To such an extent that their rooms were filled with unopened toys and I'm not talking about 1 or 2 in a box, I'm talking dozens if not hundreds of toys still in their boxes. Last time I saw these children, they were >10 years old and they had no clue how to use a fork and a knife.
lazystar
> Last time I saw these children, they were >10 years old and they had no clue how to use a fork and a knife.
Shoutout to the adults like myself that grew up like this. On the one hand, you develop outside the box thinking, because you had to learn everything via trial-by-eroror - no one taught you how to think inside the box. On the other hand, it's tough to trust or ask anyone for help.
robbomacrae
You've just given the perfect example of Attachment Theory [0].
lazystar
what the hell...
how so?
lcnPylGDnU4H9OF
> it's tough to trust or ask anyone for help
I recommend that you read things that Pete Walker has written, if you haven’t already.
desunit
I think your mom did a great job, and that’s the whole point of the post. We need to focus on bonding with our kids and building trust with them. I’m actually a father of three, and being a father to my youngest while being much older is an entirely different experience. I pay attention to all the small details with my kids (which is actually why I wrote that post! ).
guappa
We learnt how to read notes in school. But the stuff you read at 7 is not the stuff people want to hear at concerts :D
ralfd
How did your siblings do? And where are your cousins now?
axegon_
No siblings. Cousins? Don't know, don't care.
Aeglaecia
"give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man"
lupire
Your father is a parent and didnt parent 6 years by your side.
Why didn't your mother step up to support that?
If a mother can replace a father in this role, why can't a teacher?
Why doesn't a child need some freedom and independence to discover their own internal motivations and creativity?
arkey
> Your father is a parent and didnt parent 6 years by your side.
I don't think you can imply this from parent. My wife is the parent who spends most of the time by my children's side. Meanwhile I am working to support and provide for the whole family. Still I am lucky and able to spend quite a lot of time with my children.
> Why didn't your mother step up to support that?
She was probably already busy being a mother. It's a full-time job.
> If a mother can replace a father in this role, why can't a teacher?
Nowhere it is implied that the mother is replacing the father. Both have a different role to fulfil.
> Why doesn't a child need some freedom and independence to discover their own internal motivations and creativity?
Again, all sorts of assumptions. There can be guided freedom, protected independence... etc. Even if you decide to throw your kid into the swimming pool to 'encourage' them to learn how to swim, you won't leave them there on their own, will you?
axegon_
Cause they sat down, discussed it like rational adults and came to some logical conclusions: my dad was more entrepreneurial and a bigger workhorse whereas my mom has a much wider scope of interests and knowledge, which is to say, more knowledge to share, even if they ultimately graduated the same university. And now that I'm an adult (and have been for a long while now), I do appreciate the sacrifices they made and can safely say that they genuinely did the absolutely best job they could have done with very limited resources and a lot of compromises on their end. Something which I did not see when I was a child or a teenager, even though it was in front of my face.
To the second question - for most teachers, looking after a child is their job. 18:00, work's over, adios. To most teachers, children are just that: work. Which is not the same as rising your own child. I don't have children to say that with certainty and the closest thing I have to a child is a dog. I love all(most) dogs but I'll walk the extra mile for my own dog. Also, welcome to eastern Europe, where the biggest struggle in the 90's was having food on the table, so tough luck having a teacher.
I'm also a prime example that being near a child does not mean that the child will follow your path: my parents: artists. Me - software engineer, who can't draw a straight line even if my life was on the line. My parents - terrified of fast speeds or extreme sports. Me - well I have double digit scars all over my body from skateboards to bicycles to head butting a flower pot.
noisy_boy
> Why didn't your mother step up to support that?
Maybe she wasn't fortunate to have the level of education required to support a family and the father did. Don't be so judgemental - people have complex lives and come from all sorts of background.
gretch
People always use the marshmallow test as a sign that the participant can’t delay gratification.
But what if they just understand time-value-of-marshmallow. Sometimes marshmallow now is better than marshmallow later.
latexr
Yes! I personally find marshmallows underwhelming. If you gave me one or two I might eat them. But if the choice is between “eat one now and you’re free to go do whatever you want” or “stay locked alone in this room for a quarter of an hour and you get two”, the latter is a worse proposition.
I’m perfectly content with being with my own thoughts for hours, but being forced to do nothing for a crummy reward when a better alternative is right there is not compelling.
HDThoreaun
Youre locked in the room either way.
a12k
Are you a child between the ages of 3 and 5? Because that's the typical age of a participant in the marshmallow test. This is like scoffing a kid not finding something on Dora the Explorer.
latexr
I’m not criticising the kids, I’m criticising the conclusions of the experiment. I certainly wouldn’t have been able to explain my reasoning this clearly or perhaps even consciously understood why I had made that choice, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have been able to intuitively make that tradeoff. Which is precisely the point of the article: kids subconsciously performing an action based on psychological and environmental factors not fully within their grasp.
Within the parameters of your analogy, my point is closer to scoffing at the experimenters for making sweeping conclusions based on kids being able to find a single item on Dora the Explorer. Sure, maybe the kids who failed to find it had a learning disability, or maybe they weren’t that stimulated by being forced to watch a show they disliked when they could just go play something else. Even with the conclusions having been drawn years later, where the finders performed better academically, that could still indicate the non-finders were simply uninterested in the way most schools work by forcing you to be there and listen to certain subjects at certain times. Perhaps they would’ve thrived in a freer environment where they had greater freedom to pick the subjects for each day.
autoexec
There's a lot of things the marshmallow test might signal, but most kids probably aren't spending a lot of time performing cost benefit analysis when faced with the problem. I wouldn't doubt that kids with trust issues would tend to do worse. Certainly the ones with behavioral/executive function/developmental issues do worse than others.
silvestrov
> kids with trust issues would tend to do worse
They don't do worse in the household they live in. They do better because if they waited for the 2nd marshmallow at home then they would end up with nothing.
Better with one bird in the hand right now than waiting for two empty promises.
So many of these psychological tests are based on values in upper-middle-class families. They are not always valid when the parents are drug users or alcoholic.
Kids of alcoholic parents know that most promises are empty promises. You are a fool if you take a "we will go to Disneyland on saturday" promise seriously.
krisoft
Yeah. Just the wording "trust issues" makes it sound like the issue is with the kid. When in reality it is possible that they have a well grounded, rational, and evidence based belief that adults tend to not fulfil their promises. Exactly as you say.
makeitdouble
Kids are pretty used to calculations related to stuff to eat.
I think anyone who grew up with siblings has an extremely developed sense of how much they're willing to risk vs how much reward. Like would I eat my brother's pudding knowing we'll be fighting to death when he's also back from school ? Yes, of course. That's risk/reward that made sense back in the days.
itronitron
Whenever my sister and I had to share a single food item, like a brownie. Our mom would have one of us cut the item in half, and the other would get to pick their half first. Deciding which half was never a casual assessment.
vintermann
Exactly, it's nonsense to talk about "executive function" as if it's some internal liquid that some kids have and others don't. Kids adapt to the realities of their situation, if they feel - on an intellectual level, or maybe on a more instinctive level - that things are precarious and options you have today won't be there tomorrow, and promises made to you won't necessarily be kept, of course you eat the goddamn marshmallow.
zmgsabst
You have a lot of people that take that last fact and then assume the converse.
But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
motorest
> But in a poor household, taking the marshmallow now is likely the optimal choice since there might not be any later — even if your parents tell you to wait. That’s not necessarily a sign of anything but having adapted to a particular environment: times you listened led to a negative outcome, so you stopped.
You've repeated the whole thesis from the article: people are conditioned for delayed gratification if that is possible/predictable, and then asserts that parents have the influence to develop that trait in kids by fostering predictability.
bell-cot
"Poor" isn't needed here. If the kid has siblings, or the family has an "opportunistic" dog, or the kid has spent time in a daycare where treats are sometimes grabbed, or ...
Or the kid is getting bored by the stupid researcher and her stupid test, and is trying to get it over with as fast as he can.
autoexec
You're right. Although it can hint at the possibility of those types of problems, the marshmallow test shouldn't be used to make those kinds of assumptions, especially in isolation. Like I said, it can signal a lot of very different things (even hunger).
tonyedgecombe
One of the criticisms of the test is that children who fail it are more likely to have parents who regularly fail to deliver on their promises. From that perspective it doesn’t make sense to wait.
namdnay
A marshmallow in the hand is worth two in the bush
simonebrunozzi
Marshmallow test has been debunked by a recent 2021 study [0].
[0]: https://anderson-review.ucla.edu/new-study-disavows-marshmal...
MrBuddyCasino
Like most everything else in social psychology, the Marshmallow Test is (largely) bullshit [0].
[0] "Delay of gratification and adult outcomes: The Marshmallow Test does not reliably predict adult functioning" https://srcd.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/cdev.14...
watwut
Don't fault social psychologists for what pop culture does with what they wrote. Even author of the marshmallow test experiment is arguing against this simplistic interpretation of it.
IncreasePosts
Marshmallows in hand have diminishing returns as well. The difference between having 0 marshmallows and 1 marshmallow is much larger than the difference between having 1 and 2, or 2 and 3.
aqueueaqueue
> time-value-of-marshmallow
Bravo! Love that phrase. Some freakonomics shit happening there...
echelon_musk
> unwashed orange
People wash oranges?! Why? You peel the skin off and discard it. Is the worry that if the skin is dirty then you eat the insides with dirty hands after peeling it?!
desunit
She is 1.9 years old and anything that looks like food will be bitten. But to tell the truth you even need to wash bananas: pesticide residues (you can transfer chemicals to your hands and then to the editable part), can collect dirt/bacteria/rodent excrement.
necovek
Unless your or your kids immune system is compromised, that's probably a bit too much care (we did go to similar lengths with a preemie, but not with our second kid).
desunit
Yes, for dirt I wouldn't worry at all... but e.g. rodent excrement is quite dangerous: leptospirosis (kidney damage, meningitis, liver failure), hantavirus, salmonella, LCMV. I know, chances are low but I'd be happy to reduce them as much as possible.
zeristor
This article mentions the marshmallow experiment.
I am confused do people actually like eating marshmallows, if so why?
It always seems to be taken as read that they’re irresistible. Why on Earth
krisoft
> It always seems to be taken as read that they’re irresistible.
Nah. It wouldn't work if it was irresistible. You need a candy crapy enough to be resited by some people sometimes, but good enough to be desired by some people sometimes.
Experimenters tried the same setup with a turkish delights once. Things went sideways so fast that they needed to get a talking lion to calm the situation down. Kids were betraying their own siblings even without further prompting or promises of more turkish delights.
pak9rabid
Reminds me of the the Simpsons scene with the pixie stick:
"Don't hog it all!"
"Go to hell zitface!"
ozim
Normally I don't eat marshmallows and I don't crave for them.
But once a pack is open and I get one, whole pack just goes. I find texture quite satisfying and since I eat them once in couple years it feels like something new and different from normal stuff I eat so it ends up "just one more" until there is no more.
imp0cat
Yeah, the texture is probably more interesting than the taste. But a small pack is enough.
oblio
Amusingly, in my experience, it should be the "pasta experiment". I'm not 100% sure why they're that way, but pasta is super appealing to kids. I guess it's because they're funny (especially spaghetti).
cheema33
> do people actually like eating marshmallows, if so why?
Everybody around me likes them. I have no idea why. It could be cultural. I moved to the US when I was about 19. Tried my first marshmallow when I was maybe 25. Ick. Its mostly a ball of sugar. I don't like Vanilla ice cream either. For similar reasons.
dochne
I mean, it's asking kids if they want a ball of sugar - that does feel like a pretty sure thing.
weaksauce
i'm not particularly fond of sweets in my adult life but in my child years it was something i loved. i don't know why anyone would think a child wouldn't like a sweet ball of treat
watwut
Sure, but it is ball of sugar is worst possible form. You can make so many tasty things with sugar ... but someone somehow decided for this.
autoexec
That seems terribly unfair to marshmallows. Smores, lucky charms, rice krispies treat/bubble slice, and hot chocolate wouldn't be the same without them.
CTDOCodebases
Giving sugar to a kid is like giving meth to an adult.
oblio
> Giving sugar to a kid is like giving meth to an adult.
Giving sugar to a kid is like giving sugar to an adult.
Have you seen the meth usage rates? Awesome.
Now compare them to obesity rates. I'm not saying sugar is the sole factor, but the fact that I've seen off the shelf sauerkraut (literally "sour cabbage") having sugar[1] as a listed ingredient in the US, tells you all you need to know about sugar's addictiveness.
[1] Yeah, corn syrup or whatever the cheapest sugar substitute is.
lemper
yea mate, my kid and his friends love to eat marshmallow. i, on the other hand, quite dislike sweet things.
dyauspitr
Marshmallows, twizzlers, any of those corner store “cakes” like twinkies, the McRib, pop tarts etc. are absolutely disgusting hyped things I don’t understand. It’s like they manage to take sugar that most people like and make it inedible.
edferda
I don’t have kids. However, this same concept can be applied, and verified, with dogs.
I have made it a rule to never deceive my dog, and she trusts me because it. If I pick up her water bowl to refill and clean it while she is in the middle of drinking, I make it a point to always give it back with fresh water. I have several water bowls around the house , and the one in my room only gets refilled when I see she is actively drinking from it.
She sees this removal of something she wants (and needs) as a good thing, because I have never deceived her. I always give it back.
If I say we are going for a walk or I grab the leash, we go for a walk. I try to not do things that she would interpret as something not intended. For example, grabbing the leash and not taking her out.
With dogs you become really mindful of your actions. They learn so many of your subtle non-verbal cues, that you start to notice how much your body speaks.
I often think about this, and it has been a valuable learning experience. If I ever decide to have kids, I will make sure that what I communicate (either verbally or non-verbally) is congruent with my actions. I believe that this, is the surest way to build trust.
bloomingkales
"With dogs you become really mindful of your actions."
Dogs hold you accountable in the most beautiful way. The best boss.
Everything is a trust relationship. I recall finding myself offended when I had difficulty pitching ideas at my workplace. A lot of times it felt like "hey, why don't you trust me or my idea". I only had maybe one or two of those moments, but I have also witnessed other people going through a trust battle just like the one I described at work.
This can happen in a family, in a romantic relationship, work, or in society. When the arena becomes entirely about trust, people act out. That's why kids rebel, that's why marriages fall apart, and that's why people leave companies.
kodt
So if your dog required medication, you would never hide the pill in peanut butter for example?
gretch
It's not a deception, in the same way that a chicken nugget is not chicken hidden inside of breading.
It simply is pill with peanut butter
kodt
I think you would feel deceived if given a peanut butter sandwich, and after eating it someone revealed they had mixed powder from a pill into it.
eawgewag
My dog trainer explained this to me like this: trust is like a bank, you build up and store a lot of trust, and sometimes you spend some trust, but if there's a lot banked up it will be fine.
The first day I got my dog, he had parasites in his ears and stomach. We had to force down gross medicines into his ears and his mouth, and he hated it and us for it.
Three years later we have built up so much trust that I clean his ears every bath and he stands still and waits for me to do it. He still hates it, but he trusts me and knows that I'm not trying to hurt him.
aucisson_masque
A dog isn't a kid obviously, the dog you leave him outside of the home once you're done and it requires maybe 30 minutes of attention a day. a kid, it's constant attention.
> I will make sure that what I communicate (either verbally or non-verbally) is congruent with my actions. I believe that this, is the surest way to build trust.
Everyone think that way during the beginning, until having an hour of free time during a week becomes a dream, you don't sleep at night anymore, things get exhausting to do.
Then you get the belt out and teach the kids how to behave. i have been taught that way, most kids until 20 years ago were taught that way.
Physical pain is part of life, the very first event of a kid's life is his mother tearing herself painfully to get him out of her belly.
mrexroad
Sure, physical pain is absolutely part of life and unavoidable. Yet, it is not an effective tool for either parenting or raising dogs. This has been consistently shown, both for raising children as well as dogs, in research over past few decades. All you do is condition fear and creating emotional trauma that will leave them less able to cope and process emotional pain later in life without resorting to “getting out the belt” for their kids.
Patenting is brutally hard, exhausting, and often unrewarding work. But if you’re burnt out and find yourself reaching for the belt because your hour of free time is being disrupted by some undesirable behavior then just step out of the house for a few minutes. Young kids (and puppies) crave attention and removing the attention is more effective than giving attention by conditioning a fear response.
crooked-v
> Then you get the belt out and teach the kids how to behave.
This in fact teaches kids to not behave. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3447048/
eawgewag
> A dog isn't a kid obviously, the dog you leave him outside of the home once you're done and it requires maybe 30 minutes of attention a day. a kid, it's constant attention.
You can have a relationship with a dog like this, but you don't need to. You can have a relationship where lots of attention and love is shared. It's very meaningful and powerful.
edferda
I have found that it’s way more effective to reward good behavior than to punish bad behavior.
Rewarding good behavior takes more effort than punishment though. It requires more patience because you don’t immediately see the results of your actions. Over time, they add up.
And I totally understand this. I have gotten angry at my dog , and I have shouted at her. However, after some reflection, the situation is always caused by some fault of my own. After all, I am the highly intelligent being, and I should know better. But it’s easier to shout than to critically examine your own behavior.
But hey, we can totally disagree on this. I think that hitting beings (either animals or humans) is not correct. Clearly, you think otherwise. You’re entitled to your opinion. Even if I think it is not morally correct.
I would encourage you to think about whether that’s a belief you acquired by your own means or just something you believe because you were hit yourself.
Have you consistently tried to discipline with positive reinforcement? Have you found it to be ineffective? Have you consulted with professionals? Maybe you have. Maybe not.
Sometimes we do things just because that’s how we grew up and not really because we believe in them. That’s how we end up in these never ending violence cycles. But it only takes one brave, and introspective, person to stop :)
autoexec
I'm not sure why the focus on "young" parents. Consistent parenting is very important at any age. Kids need their parents to be reliable and dependable with clear expectations and boundaries or things can get bad very quickly.
Inconsistent and unpredictable parenting is a common factor in children with oppositional defiant disorder and treatment often includes working with the parents as much as working with the child.
dmurray
This got me too, but on reading, it's clear the author means parents of young children.
Since the focus of the article is on child development, it's reasonable that it limits its scope to parents of young children, and not e.g. parents of 50-year olds, even if building trust might be nice there too.
freddie_mercury
The word "young" doesn't even appear in the article, so not sure what you're talking about. The author never once mentions young parents.
autoexec
> The word "young" doesn't even appear in the article, so not sure what you're talking about.
The title of the post we're both commenting on, which reads: "Why young parents should focus on building trust with their kids". I was assuming that the title was oddly editorialized, but it's also not that uncommon for articles to change their titles too so it's possible that posting guidelines were followed and it was the article itself that specified "young parents" at some point. Considering the age of the article though, I kind of doubt it.
nmeofthestate
It was posted by the author I think. I have no idea why they went with the different title. Isn't HN usually pretty strict about titles, to discourage clickbaiting?
desunit
Yes, I mean every parent, but the whole post started with an observation of my youngest child and later expanded to marshmallows, culture, and so on.
silisili
I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
The rest is spot on. I became a parent before I was ready, and man, they are little sponges. They learn everything you do, everything you say, embarrassingly so. My 5 year old would lay on the couch to 'rest her back' like me. She'd say weird country sayings I learned from my own Dad, like 'kneehigh to a cricket.' I had a habit of saying 'dicking with' to mean 'messing with' until she got scolded by a teacher at the ripe old age of 7.
The hardest part for parents today seems to be putting their phone down. It's what the kid and Mom have fought about forever, then applied to me. It's so easy to lose yourself in your social media, work, reading, etc. and kids are super receptive to it. But not as that effort, but as having a parent who stares at their phone unattentively. Our kid made her own 'phone' out of cardboard as a child, pretending to read and chat on it. That struck me deeply.
I never had social media, but as a voracious reader still find myself falling into the trap. Kids notice. Kids today have it harder because of that. My parents didn't have the Internet, they created the world we lived in and tailored it to us. I think that's incredibly rare today.
Now she's 13, knows it all, and doesn't want to be picked up anymore. And I tell you, I wish I never had a smartphone at all.
lolinder
I'm going to quote the paragraph you're responding to so that those just reading the comments can see what it actually says:
> The marshmallow test also doesn’t account for cultural differences. In some cultures, waiting is baked into daily life. Think about Japan, where kids are often taught to wait quietly for meals or gifts. Compare that to the US, where instant gratification is practically a way of life. These cultural norms shape how kids approach situations like the marshmallow test. It’s not just about personality; it’s about the world they live in.
That's it. That's the entire quote about the effect of culture.
I see no mention of race or location—I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in.
Given that this is the actual text you're responding to, I'm not actually sure you disagree with them, because you go on to point out that smartphones are a dangerous component of modern culture.
Swizec
> I see an argument that "the world they live in" affects children's ability to wait, and that culture is an important aspect of the world that kids live in
Followup studies on the marshmallow test also showed that how well kids do depends on whether they trust adults. In less stable environments, kids learn that adults don’t (or cannot) keep their word. They simply do not believe the researcher who says there will be 2 marshmallows later.
Better take 1 marshmallow now than risk losing even that one. If your life experience thusfar shows this is a more likely outcome.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-marshmallow-test-suggests-t...
diob
Wow, thanks for this. I can relate to this instability, but I'd never seen or heard of this follow on study.
the__alchemist
Culture comparisons are a notoriously touchy topic. For some people, the topic itself is a taboo. I believe that's why the poster you're replying to had that reaction. For others, it's a topic to discuss and learn from.
bluefirebrand
It is important that we stop taking people who treat this topic as a taboo seriously at all
This modern mentality of "all cultures are equal and valid and none are superior to any other" is just ridiculous
Culture is something we are always looking to improve on. In this way, we are comparing our existing culture against hypothetical future cultures and deciding that one of them is more desirable
If we can compare a real culture with a hypothetical culture, then we can certainly compare two real cultures using similar criteria
pmarreck
If all cultures are forcibly considered equal, one corollary to that is that a culture itself can also never improve, or fail, because then a comparison to itself from a different age would also be forcibly considered to be equal.
In that spirit, I welcome your dissertation on how the Germany of 2024 is equal to the Germany of 1944.
ujkhsjkdhf234
This is a White America thing and it is why we are in the situation we are in as a country but people want to pretend that race and culture doesn't play any role in anything. It does. You don't need to feel bad about it. Just acknowledge that it is a thing.
redcobra762
It's not a White America thing to reject race as a biological concept, it's consistent with scientific study.
joelfried
> I see no mention of race or location
Location: "Think about Japan", "Compare that to the US" - this is a pretty straightforward comparison by location about culture based on location.
It presumes a bunch and I'm grunching (and showing my age by using that term), and I'm not trying to disagree with you . . . just highlight the comparison you said you could not see.
simplify
No, that isn't right. It's the culture differences, not locations, that are being compared here. Location is only correlated to those differences; being in Japan vs being in the US doesn't guarantee the comparison.
motorest
> I feel like this article is good, on the verge of great, then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason.
Is it really for no real reason, though?
> Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You might not be aware, but different cultural backgrounds do result in different life experiences. You might have even noticed that that's the whole point of the article. What you try to downplay as "race or location" is actually different social environments and contexts where kids grow. They are used as concrete examples lending support for the hypothesis. It is a behavioral issue that is determined by each one's experience living in a specific social circle with specific social norms.
lupire
Some people get really hung up on rigid thinking around "correlation is not causation" and throw the baby out with the bathwater, bending over backwards to avoid leaning on correlation at all. They focus on strict causal-logic, to the point of ignoring the truth value of of statistical reasoning under uncertainty.
CMCDragonkai
I call this motivated reasoning.
silisili
I reject that premise.
It's completely fine to point out societal norms. Neither were particularly offensive.
But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
I'm not at all against pointing out or even flexing cultural differences, but they don't matter at all when raising a child(other than of course, if you teach your child by that example.)
I have a math brain. I've been teaching her math since she could speak, mainly because she seemed to want to impress me and it's how she would get my attention. Should she instead be bad at math because the Chinese value that more? Should I have stuck to teaching her big macs and bald eagles instead?
pjc50
> I have a math brain.
You're applying the math brain wrong by using the "single counterexample invalidates whole article" mode, rather than just inserting the words "most" or "on average" or "in general" where necessary.
A specific kid will have individual behaviors. A group of kids will have behaviors that can be averaged. Different samples will have different outcomes.
I know sociology has poor reproducibility, but cultural and behavioral differences are definitely a thing.
I used to have a Korean colleague who'd moved to the UK specifically because he did not want his kids growing up in the Korean school system. They will always be ethnically and "genetically" Korean, and I would assume he would teach them the language, but he wanted them to be less culturally Korean because he thought they would be happier that way.
lolinder
> I have a math brain.
Where do you think that math brain came from?
There are only three factors that could really influence it:
1. The way you were raised.
2. Your genes.
3. Some metaphysical explanation.
I'm going to set #3 aside for a bit because there's no way to test that hypothesis. That leaves the way you were raised and genes.
What correlates with the way you were raised? Culture. Your parents' culture is tightly correlated with the way they raised you, and when speaking about groups and averages it's fair to say that in general affects outcomes. So if you take this explanation, TFA is not wrong to say that culture would affect outcomes.
What correlates with your genes? Your ancestry, which is (imperfectly) correlated with race. So if you take this explanation, OP would not have been wrong to say that on average race would affect outcomes. (That said, I don't think they actually do—they strictly mention culture!)
opdahl
You reject that peoples personalities are shaped by their environment? What if instead of focusing on location but instead focused on time period. Do you think there would be behavioral differences between a child born to a middle class family now compared to one 1,000 years ago? What about 10,000 years ago?
Rejecting the premise that the environment shapes who we are and the type of people we become sounds extremely ignorant of the realities of history.
rusk
It’s all social conditioning. You are socially conditioning your child to be good at math. Good for you. It would be very hard for me to group you together with others and formulate a trend. As we zoom out and evaluate the aggregate picture your outlier datapoint is swallowed up and culture becomes the dominant mediator.
You can reject all you want but your [personal, anecdotal] data point is irrelevant.
It takes a village to raise a child.
[rejecting an analysis because you disagree with the premise is unscientific - this analysis exposes a trend - it does not make a prediction - but gives pointers for further analysis]
hector126
(Throwaway as this topic can be inflammatory for those unfamiliar with the literature)
Behavioral patterns and personality traits have been pretty conclusively proven to be genetically inheritable. "Behavioral Genetics and Child Temperament" (Saudino) investigates this, as does "A genome-wide investigation into the underlying genetic architecture of personality traits and overlap with psychopathology" (Priya Gupta, et al).
There's no doubt that nurture and culture play a massive role in one's later personality and behavior as an adult, but it's incorrect to disregard genetics in this conversation. Some people are predisposed to be shy, some people are predisposed to be aggressive. Smart, critical people are able to appreciate genetic differences amongst broad human groups without letting that lead to unsavory viewpoints.
rayiner
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.
Sorry dude cultural differences are real. When I got married to my American wife, my Bangladeshi mom pulled her aside and said, “you know, we don’t get divorced.”
sanderjd
Since you have a math brain, you can probably conceptualize the concept of statistical distributions, right?
In any discussion of this sort of thing, what people are saying is that different circumstances lead to different distributions in outcome.
Does that really seem surprising to you? To me it would be very surprising if wildly different characteristics turned out to have identical distributions across every metric.
But this constantly gets lost because some people want to ignore that distributions differ, and other people want to ignore that the distribution is not destiny for any individual.
starfallg
> But assuming a Japanese child will have patience where an American will not is the same weird thought that leads to weird guys wanting Japanese wives for 'obedience.'
You are making several jumps in logic to get from A -> B.
Japan has an education system which teaches the importance of certain values, patience and self-discipline among them.
Here is the short-film "Instruments of a Beating Heart" currently on the Oscars shortlist about this very point -
bluGill
> I became a parent before I was ready
Me too, and I was almost 40 before I had my first. Worse, the affects of age is already showing in my body and so physically I'm less prepared than when I was 20.
For others reading this, you will never be ready. However it is still worth it. I encourage you take the plunge, and don't wait to long. You will never be ready. (of course not having kids is the right choice for some of you, I'll let you judge your own reasoning - if it is just fear go for it, but there are plenty of good reasons not to)
silisili
Yeah, I wasn't and didn't mean to imply I was too young, late 20s, just wasn't emotionally prepared or 'mature' enough I felt like, at first. Maybe that's normal for everyone. I don't know how 18 year olds do it!
> For others reading this, you will never be ready
That's probably a sage takeaway.
Thanks, it's comforting to hear others experience similar thoughts.
lr4444lr
This is a beautiful comment, but take a step back here: parenting today is more child centric than it has ever been in the USA, with parents spending more raw hours with their kids (because they are spending less time independently with each other or extended family) and more direct paternal involvement to boot. I do not mean to minimize the scourge of adult phone overuse or the importance of being sensitive to a child's emotional world, but kids today overall get a ton of time with their parents, and parents are exhausted.
EDIT: and the kids are not all right.
demosthanos
I've caught myself using my smartphone as a socially acceptable way to create distance from my children and get time to myself. Having noticed that trend I'm trying to do better at setting boundaries in healthy ways.
If it were socially acceptable to just tell your kids that you need some "you" time, I wonder how less prevalent smartphone usage among parents would be.
netcan
Well written comment... compliments the article well.
I think you inserting the objections to the culture/country part yourself. I don't think they are present in the actual article.
The central idea here is that children are shaped by their environment, the people around them and those people's behaviour. They sponge up behaviours of their parents, peers and such.
But... it's not all mimicry and habits. It's also a response to incentives in their life. That's the writer's point about trust... and the marshmello test. Does the child live in a world where trust and patience pay off... or a world where you get what you can while you can? The socio-economic correlation to patience in the marshmello test is a proxy... demonstrating his point.
desunit
I think you’ve raised a great topic, and it could serve as the foundation for another post. One study found that the environment plays the most significant role here, especially the nonshared environment (outside siblings/family). This challenges the traditional view that growing up in the same household has a major influence on personality and intelligence.
rayiner
> then makes cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
Cultures differ significantly in how they raise their children. My dad grew up in a Bangladeshi village. He has this story where a cousin was sick and asked for lobster (which back then was a widely available food in the villages). His parents told him they’d make it for him the next morning, but he died overnight. My dad always invokes that story when I try to impose limits on my kids. When my brother and I were growing up, they put a lot of expectations on us academically, but no gratuitous self denial in terms of food or toys or anything like that.
By contrast my wife is an old stock American WASP. She has a very different parenting style than my parents. She makes my kids wait for everything and tells them everything they want is too expensive (even though we could easily afford anything they want).
Terr_
The good news is that most kids very good at modeling themselves after the adults they see, without specific prompting to do so.
The bad news is that they can be too good: It's hard to change yourself if you don't want them to learn something. ("Do what I say, not what I do.")
silisili
Spot on. A child will take every annoying habit you don't even know that you have, and put it on full display. It's quite humbling.
bluGill
Sometimes you can get a child to not get into your bad habits, but only if they are really bad. I know a women who never drinks because her parents were alcoholics and she doesn't want to follow their path. (her mother went to rehab for it, when she got back the first thing her husband did was pour her two shots and ordered her to drink).
Most of the time you are right though, kids see and follow their parents.
Ygg2
> cultural comments that invalidate the point trying to be made for no real reason. Like the race or location of the parent determines their childhood?
You have two kids, one ate ten boxes of marshmallows yesterday, the other didn't eat for two days. Which one is going to wait more for marshmallows?
It's pointing that the Marshmallow test was flawed. Which doesn't surprise me (most social experiments are very flawed).
Basically, when you account for socioeconomic factors, the correlation goes away, or so I heard. Rich kids are more successful in life than poor kids, who knew?
ipnon
There are no iPad kids in Taiwan. You go to a restaurant and all the toddlers are quietly eating. When the tantrums flare the parents gently put a lid on it. It’s truly remarkable, and I don’t have a good theory for it. But it makes going out for dinner a consistent pleasure.
I don’t know how to raise kids with an even keel but I am certain that putting a nonstop algorithm in their face and becoming outraged when they inevitably become overstimulated is not the way.
eloisius
Must not be the same Taiwan I live in. When I go out to eat I constantly see mom, dad, and kid all zonked on their own devices (usually a phone, granted, not an iPad) instead of having a meal "together." I've also seen plenty of meltdown tantrums. If I had to square your observation, I'd say it's just because there are fewer kids, period, than almost anywhere because people aren't having them.
jaapz
I love threads like this
One person going "X doesn't happen in Y" is almost always followed by someone saying the exact opposite, solidifying the fact that we all live in our own bubbles, often experiencing the same things in completely different ways
Kind of reminds me of when you buy a certain car, you are suddenly primed to see that same car model everywhere, while before you weren't aware of them at all.
kaptainscarlet
That is why they say an anecdote is not data
watwut
Frankly a lot of people go by what they see in media rather then reality. People who belive a country X have only well behaved toddlers especially.
audunw
Yeah, I’m also in serious doubt about this. At least for Taipei (could be regional differences)? I don’t live in Taiwan, but visit often. Last time we had dinner with another family and the kids got iPads/phones immediately.
spacechild1
I would never think of giving my toddlers a mobile device in the first place...
null
efdee
My kids love their screens. They use it for "productive" things (Minecraft, ...) and "unproductive" (shorts, ...). We have certain time restrictions and there are two days a week where they're not allowed to use them. We also don't let them take screens to restaurants. They get to take a bunch of crayons and a book and they're very much fine with this.
I feel that it's a matter of sticking to principles and being predictable for the kids, but maybe I'm biased and just have "easy" kids.
eloisius
Sounds like you give them some reasonable guardrails without being a hardass. Some digital indulgence is impossible to enjoy with tight time limits (e.g. Minecraft) but taking two days off is a good way to stay anchored in real life.
ksynwa
> iPad kids
How old are these iPad kids generally? Never heard of this descriptor before.
wazoox
This applies to adults, too. When you're really poor, it's actually a reasonable strategy NOT to keep money but spend everything as soon as you hit pay day, for instance on storable food. Why's that ? Because money on your bank account can be seized, because you're late on rent, or because you unexpectedly got fined because your rusty old car has a broken light, etc. Food can't be seized, therefore at least you know you'll eat next week, even if it's only cheap pasta and canned sauce, and Nutella basically lasts forever.
Frieren
The main challenge that parents face today is on-line culture. Creating trust may mitigate that.
In the same way that teachers cannot educated children instead of their parents, even that they help. Social networks should not educate children but they are doing that. Being the problem that social network incentives are misaligned with education. Ad driven feature development and content promotion plus total deregulation make the on-line world a minefield for children.
If children at least trust their parents it is possible to mitigate the worst parts of on-line culture.
n2dasun
Agreed. I imagine it as the same conundrum discussed in this book, but a "connected" kid's peers now include the entirety of the internet
mgfist
I think the far bigger problem is ipad kids. Social media is a problem, but it's not something that young kids understand. But young kids do understand ipads and youtube and mobile games.
Seeing 3 year olds zonked out is what worries me. That's a lot harder to untangle, imo.
> Think about Japan, where kids are often taught to wait quietly for meals or gifts
Author got the country and items correct but not associated correctly. In Japan, kids pass the marshmallow test with flying colors but fail the same test if it's a gift. In America kids generally pass the gift test (hypothesis is that they're used to waiting for presents on Christmas).
source - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-culture-affec...
another source - https://www.colorado.edu/today/2022/07/21/new-take-marshmall...