{"id":83,"date":"2016-01-21T08:20:19","date_gmt":"2016-01-21T08:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/?p=83"},"modified":"2016-01-21T08:23:10","modified_gmt":"2016-01-21T08:23:10","slug":"parenting-advice-from-reddit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/2016\/01\/parenting-advice-from-reddit\/","title":{"rendered":"Parenting advice from Reddit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/np.reddit.com\/r\/Parenting\/comments\/3yagfv\/parenting_is_a_lot_like_sysadminning\/\">https:\/\/np.reddit.com\/r\/Parenting\/comments\/3yagfv\/parenting_is_a_lot_like_sysadminning\/<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t rely on technical solutions to administrative problems.If you lock them out of things, you just encourage them to work around your restrictions.\n<ul>\n<li>Use technical solutions as a backup &#8211; but your first lines of defense should be policy, supervision and a review of the needs driving the problem behaviour.<\/li>\n<li>What are they seeking, and why aren&#8217;t they getting it from what they are allowed to do? How can you provide it in a safe and appropriate manner?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t rely on security through obscurity.\n<ul>\n<li>If the only thing preventing them from doing something is not knowing about it, you are fucked. Not only will they find out, but they&#8217;ll find out from exactly the kind of people you don&#8217;t want them learning things from.<\/li>\n<li>Tell them about it, and then tell them why they shouldn&#8217;t, so they can&#8217;t get blindsided or scammed. Tie it into the policy-and-supervision methods above, and you&#8217;ve got your best chance of controlling the outcomes.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The more orders and rules you throw at them, the less attention they&#8217;ll pay to any of them.\n<ul>\n<li>Nagging is the first thing to get filtered from their awareness, and resentment obliterates compliance.<\/li>\n<li>Keep the rules as simple and as few as possible.<\/li>\n<li>Wide latitude with iron boundaries works a lot better than micromanagement with wiggle room.<\/li>\n<li>Make their needs a fundamental input to policy formulation; if you have to keep giving them a hard time about things, your system is a bad fit, and you&#8217;ll both have stressful lives.<\/li>\n<li>Every time you give instructions, you reduce the effectiveness of your communication. Work towards a target of zero interventions under normal conditions, and build systems that contribute to this.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>The more requests they throw at you, the less capable they become and the more stressed you get.\n<ul>\n<li>While you need a degree of control in order to enforce policy and usefully manage resources, you should treat authority as a cost, not a benefit. Don&#8217;t hardwire yourself into every decision loop, or you&#8217;ll just end up resenting each other.<\/li>\n<li>Instead, facilitate their independence as far as possible &#8211; and try and design the system towards this end.<\/li>\n<li>If you find yourself proxying or rubber-stamping requests, you&#8217;re doing it wrong. Hook them up directly, or give them the authority to do it themselves.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>When you&#8217;re acting in a support context, don&#8217;t be a grouchy, judgy asshole.\n<ul>\n<li>This is your job, and they are people too. Yes, they can be frustrating as hell, but they&#8217;ve come to you for help, so look at the problem through their eyes.\u00a0What do they need out of the experience?<\/li>\n<li>Yes, this is the Nth time you&#8217;ve told them not to do X, or Y would happen, and they&#8217;ve gone and done X again. Yes, you need to teach them &#8211; but acting like a dick about it won&#8217;t make them remember, it&#8217;ll just make them less likely to report the problem in future.<\/li>\n<li>Being jaded, cynical and frustrated at how useless they are at everything is feels good at the time, but it&#8217;s unfair to them and corrosive to you. Avoid this trap, and just be helpful and cheerful instead.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/np.reddit.com\/r\/Parenting\/comments\/3yagfv\/parenting_is_a_lot_like_sysadminning\/ Don&#8217;t rely on technical solutions to administrative problems.If you lock them out of things, you just encourage them&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":85,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83\/revisions\/85"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kiwiwi.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}