Piss-Weak Parenting
mrfireside.medium.comWhy on earth is this on HN, I wonder? I feel like the author needs to be told “yes, you’re a much better parent than all the other parents you know” so that they can relax a bit and stop gunning for attention on the internet. If only this was in the form of a TikTok video, then the irony would truly have eaten itself.
EDIT: this post wants me to sign up for a newsletter named “CryptoFireside”? Is it a weird content strategy to improve SEO for a crypto shill or something?
I find it relevant since it’s at the intersection of parenting and algorithmic hyper-media. It’s one person’s experience, and we can agree or disagree, but all the same, it’s one real parent with real children trying to navigate around this monster we have all built, go us!
Meh, I found it insightful. Some parent get caught in a quagmire of indecision when contrasting what they feel is right with their insecurity around what society deems right. In some cases, that should prompt re-evaluation. But in many, it’s needless paralysis. (The author appears to be railing against that paralysis, not any specific position.)
This. It's also a very common and controversial topic where everyone has their own goddamned opinion they think is right - hence it's going to generate a firestorm of debate wherever it's posted.
Except on HN because it's probably going to get nuked.
I'm constantly seeing stories about how TikTok and social media are ruining kids these days when, like its always been, its the fault of the parents.
One brief note from our experience, while we tried for years to put limitations on screen time for our kids, we found it to do some measure of harm. Our kids are naturally quiet and reserved. Social media and online friend contact turned out to be beneficial for them, I think. We let plenty go because both our kids would refer to the fact their friends were playing a game (with chat) or joining some online channel, or even doing homework together at a specific time. Knowing you as a parent are taking social time away from kids that are light-social to begin with, especially seeing the look of importance in their eyes, its a bit heartbreaking. We could have done some things better but based on their personality, I think having some discussions about the effect of too much social media and online consumption has done more than imposing strict limits. But I'm guessing here and I have the benefit of hindsight. Not to mention I recognize this was us trying to do what we thought was right for our kids and may not apply for other families.
To me it feels like if the majority of parents are onboard with limitations and timeline then it would be a lot easier. Ironic how the asynchronicity of tech doesn't help in this case.
Because bad parenting 'feels' (I have no data to back me up) like it's on the increase, due to the ease with which "real parenting" can be delegated to an electronic device because of the incorrect assumption that a quietly occupied child is the goal of a positive parental experience.
> a quietly occupied child is the goal of a positive parental experience
Being quietly occupied is great for a child if they are productively engaged -- i.e. they felt bored but then decided to do something productive about it. With a few guardrails, boredom in otherwise well-adjusted kids is a superpower.
My daughter (11) has been producing a family newspaper. She was complaining of being bored, so I gave her an old 2011 MacBook Pro with lots of preinstalled apps and no Internet access.
On a wider note, why parenting should be on HN at all?
Great article. My wife and I are 29 year old parents (young by today's standards). She is part of some mother + baby groups and the stories she comes back with...my goodness. So many mothers and parents complain of problems that are OBVIOUSLY their own doing.
Other mother: Oh I'm tired we were up all night with our two year old who kept standing up in their cot.
Her: Yeah ours used to do that but we just let them cry until they settled down again.
Them: I've read that causes long term anxiety so we bring them into our own bed or just give them our phone for an hour.
Me: The Bible is right - people do choose to live in hell.
The article hits it on the head - your kids are NOT your friends.
It’s not exactly great letting your child crying either… I am not convinced you are the better parent here.
If you have a better idea (that works), I'm all ears.
Edit: My daughter went from crying 3 hours every night with us comforting her every 10 minutes to sleeping 12 hours a night without interruption.
I have quite a few thoughts, but this really struck me:
> It’s not my kid. So I just did the right thing, I nodded in showing my understanding and I made sure I didn’t open my stupid mouth and say something dumb.
I’m not known to be quite on topics, ever. But when someone presents an opening like “hey I’m struggling with this, I think this is the problem”
I wouldn’t keep my mouth shut. I’d ask follow up questions. “Has this only started happening since X was introduced”. I’d also offer what / if anything I’ve seen — “yeah, we try to avoid X, saw something similar in our kid”.
You don’t have to tell them what to do and shouldn’t, but as part of a community, share experience.
Regarding the general premise — kids, phones and social media I’ve written on the subject:
https://austingwalters.com/talk-to-yourself/
I think constant tech kills internal dialog, even with adults. But in children it probably breaks some cognitive development.
Put simply, your internal dialog probably helps reprogram you. Anyone, who’s read Gödel Escher Bach should be familiar with the idea, though the details are vague. I find that children who grew up with moderate to heavy social media use end up being far less thoughtful than those who read or play more often.
I hate writing like this—common sense old-timey advice mixed with dangerous replicators.
What’s the dangerous replicator? “Piss-weak” what the heck does that mean? Who knows, but it’s placed in an article about parenting and pre-adolescent children. So is the author trying to suggest the child or parent have bad toilet behaviors? Or is that question so obvious and uncomfortable idea, that it can’t be anything but fluff—-just substitute any other explicative (or ‘pizza’).
Why is it dangerous? Because if you’re having the problem the author suggests, you might think this sassy writer is trying to give you some “secret to parenting”—be piss strong. “Weak” immediately suggests “strong”. That’s not ‘good’ advice, but a mind frag.
I also commented recently on HN that words matter, and in support of comments on HN which take writers to task for the words they choose.
This is the tip of the alt-crazy world disguised as alt-lazy or alt-cool. It’s insidious use of language. 24h cable News-Infotainment, Fox News. Etc. all with common sense, off the cuff comments on world events and manufactured outrage.
This isn’t advice. This is undermining and something else.
Piss-weak is commonly understood vernacular where I'm from.
Don’t be shy. Share.
Just yesterday, WNYC/NPR radio host Brian Lehrer had a program on “far right” talk radio.
One caller said they listen, because the discussions reflect their beliefs. Another caller said they listen to get an idea of the opinions of far right; they’re shocking.
There is a pattern of speech here, where you strengthen affinity with your inside group and you trigger the out group.
I suspect piss-weak is a vernacular that also has an in-group. Maybe it’s military? Or professional sports? Nursing? Farming? Trucking?
I’ve heard piss-poor, but that doesn’t add meaning to the word poor for me. Only emphasis that the person, place or thing is very poor.
Seems like this piss weak is also operates like a joke. If you question it too much, you don’t get the joke.
Is this funny to you? Do I make you laugh? Hehe
I’ll share first. I worked in marketing, design and art. We’re always trying to decode culture, but then think we’re outside of culture (unless always quoting it is a culture in itself—poetic?)
https://www.wnyc.org/story/divided-dial-medias-exploration-f...
Australian. I've heard it since I was a kid. No offence intended to those who haven't heard it at all.
It's so familiar to me that there's no thinking twice about it's use in a blog title.
I'm also sure there are more cultural phrases and terminologies that I'm not familiar with than the number I am familiar with, but the usage of them on the internet wouldn't offend me or make me feel like I was on the outer.
Piss weak essentially means you didn't even try, you gave up before you'd even given yourself a chance to actually fail.
Commonly used in the sporting arena, but also applies to children's (or childish) efforts at various things that children often don't like to properly try at.
Hmmm. I’ve never heard it. You Aussies take after British English, so I’m not surprised. I mistakenly jumped to the conclusion you were in the US. And this was a new dangerous replicator
This reminds me of a classic Mad TV sketch: Parody of Al Jazeera, Death to America
All writing is in some form writing for _some_ audience, or an “auditor”.
However you choose to speak with your friends, the use of profanity—is ‘piss’ profane? I’d say it’s a subset whose parent term is the male/female organ—is controversial in writing. Profanity is by definition offensive, and that excludes people.
I believe we all should consider our words more carefully, and also be able to call a ‘spade’ a spade when it’s a shovel.
This does seem to happen. The opposite may also be a problem. I know several families with concerned and involved parents who are constantly diving in and helping out with things, coming up with new activities, and planning schedules. Their kids have some input, but are never really left on their own to choose what to do or to finish what they decided on.
Now their children are getting older and have serious problems with executive function. Their attentions constantly wander. They don't know what to do and they never finish anything on their own. This is sometimes diagnosed as ADHD and results in medications, but based on my observations it is primarily a state acquired through conditioning. Helpful parents can be helpful, but too much of that leads to helpless children who eventually run in to problems trying to function without the helpful parents present.
Kids need discipline. This was true 10000 years ago and it's true today.
While I agree with your point, I think the article more accurately describes that they need constraints, rather than discipline.
They need to be told no, to be given chances to understand that their behavior has considerations outside of just how it makes them feel. They need to be exposed to challenges like being bored or any other feeling so they can learn how to self-regulate their emotions when adverse situations present themselves.
Children without constraints seem unlikely to want, or be competent at leaving the safety of their parents protective bubble.
As a parent, I find the first part relatable.
Monster trucks are for boys or girls or whoever wants them IMO.
I kinda agreed with the article until the part about the monster truck. That felt sexist to me.
My daughter received transformers and trucks too.
And yes we gave a doll to our 1 year old son (but the train got all the focus).
To be clear, I agree with doing something about it, I disagree on bounding toys to gender
Piss weak posting.
> Why would the kid want to be canoeing with boring people when there was a whole world of smart, interesting, beautiful people in 30-second, filtered, buzzing, sing-song videos that snap-crackle-and-pop and make all your senses light up?! ...
> TikTok? No way!
> These apps themselves are weaponized to the point adults have trouble putting them down. They hire marketing geniuses and psychologists to design the games and user experience in such a way that it becomes physically addictive. We know this already!
Author thinks they are way smart & has all the answers & has already fore-decided the villian and all problems are definitely the pre-determined villian and the so smart author obviously knows better.
Gross article from gross person. Thankfully now flagged.
There may be some real material here perhaps but the constant cock-sure sermonizing attitude & willingness to lay blame at probably fairly side-show factors as the source of all problems... it's embarassingly awful.
“A person I know” will get surgery videos on a fresh TikTok account within 20 minutes. “Another person I know” gets Ukraine battle footage. The algorithm is incredible and terrifying. I would never let any child use it without sitting next to them.
My friend has kids and I think you can lock them on some sort of kids content setting? At least that's my understanding.
Seems like wishful thinking.
Might tiktok be why that one particular kid is depressed? Maybe, nice anecdote bro. But on the otherhand, maybe keeping your kids away from cellphones is going to make them complete outsiders in highschool. We just don't know.
Re the thing at the end -- It sounds like the author is hypothesizing that trans is caused (only caused?) by permissive parenting. Again, wishful thinking. Truth is we really don't have a darn clue, and if people care so much they should set aside their assumptions and support research.
Too many parents have basically abdicated their responsibility towards their children these days. I don't know when it started, but it has really made out society so much worse.
They are afraid to exercise actual control over their children. They are afraid to pass on their values for fear of 'suppressing' their child's individuality. They turn their children over to government schools without even a moment's concern to see what is being taught (more like indoctrinated) to their children. And then, even when they recognize that something is wrong, so many of them are more concerned with how they will look to the outside world if they react the way any rational person would react.
They're doing so much harm to their children by shirking their duty to protect and guide their children.
Whilst I agree wholeheartedly with the article, I'm going to try and see it as analagous to bad leadership / bad management.
Electronic device = Task with no context. Just go and do it and leave me alone.
Long enough of no context in one's work and it leads to anxiety and existential-type questions around their purpose and role in the company or the value of the company itself.
Engagement is what adds value; understanding what motivates each individual to do / be better and work on that. It requires paying attention. It's hard work, it doesn't scale, it's per-individual, but, hey, they're humans, not robots.
Management or Parenting, it's your responsibility to make them better (than you are).
Edited to add: I'm finding the presence of defensive reactions to this post very interesting and somewhat depressingly informative.
Edited further to add: The post has now been flagged. Increasingly interesting and informative.
Wow, the attention-seeking in this blog post is really something. "Piss-weak parenting", "-ism" and "-ist" bait. And the point is presented with no nuance, just "TikTok bad, other parent bad, I am good." I suppose a certain degree of edginess is needed to stand out from the many discount-bin opinion pieces like this online.
There's hardly any substance to it if you take away one guy's strong opinion and snark. He has a point, but argues for it with one anecdote. This article could have been written so much better if it just focused on the importance of telling your children "no" and why that helps in general. Now it reads like Jordan Peterson's advice on parenting - very situational, clever, but also very opinionated and superficial.
Other articles on the blog are, of course, about crypto and hustle culture. Par for the (edgy internet personalty) course, I suppose.
The article was fine until the swipe at trans people (nurture not nature) at the end. That was unnecessary and literally reads as "don't let your kid do gay shit and they won't turn out gay". The author would probably say they were just doing good parenting, but spotlighting it whilst also chuckling and remarking about how spicy your -isms are and how people are going to call you offensive kind of gives the game away.
Anyway, I agree with the premise, a lot of parents have no control over their children and are letting them be raised by the internet. This is probably the second generation of kids this is happening to.
Not seeing the anti-trans/gay angle here at all. He's doing the kid a favour, teaching him that jokes shouldn't be repeated if he wants to be a good entertainer.
Well, that's fine, but as a person at least adjacent to that community it reads like a swipe when explicitly called out this way.
I think you’re jumping to take offence. This ain’t anti trans. Kids pretend to be lions and cats and trucks and stuff all the time. There’s a time for fun and sometimes that fun is over.
Highlighting the oversensitivity is how I read it, although it may have been better off not pre-disclaimering by pointing it out; just let it flow naturally, just like the described situation.
I initially read it as just a random example situation as well, but the disclaimer clarifies the intended meaning.
I think the disclaimer clarifies precisely the not-intended meaning.
> A final story to those that will say I am an ist or ism. A little more fuel for you.
Why would telling kids play time is over be fuel for -ists and -isms? It seems like the author is approaching this from an angle where that story is supposed to be inflammatory. But fair enough, maybe it's just unfortunate phrasing or bad writing (the whole article isn't really Pulitzer material).
Replying here as your other post seems to have been deleted. I feel for your situation, and I might be coming across as using a sledgehammer when a scalpel was the right tool for the job. Electronic devices are a tool just like any other, neither good nor bad, where the 'juice' is in how they're used. Unmonitored, unconsidered, overused pacifier = bad in most circumstances.
My kids are on electronic devices more than I'm comfortable with, but I work with tech and am potentially more of a techno-nerd than a number of the SWEs I work with, and so I potentially set a bad example. But I also engage with my kids about it, and have done so since they were able to understand words, plus they also have real-world friends and hobbies that balance it out, that we've made sure to encourage and model as they've grown up. It takes time, and any unconsidered 'banning' can well be as bad as unconsidered permissiveness.
I think "considered attention and understanding of the context" is closer to the scalpel type answer in regards to shaping a child into a functioning adult, no matter the topic.
Thanks for reading my other comment. Yes, I removed it. It could have become a heated topic and I did not want to start such a discussion. Sorry if it got deleted while you were replying.
I agree with your thoughts. It is very important to understand context when offering parental advice (and especially judgement), just as it is important to understand what our kids do with technology.
In my opinion, a lot of bad parenting stems from not bothering to spend time and engage with one's children enough. That is why I don't engage in debates about quick fixes in parenting anymore. I think that the entire idea that off-the-shelf parenting advice works for complex problems is a bit toxic.
Cheers for engaging. I'd like to write my own blog post on parenting, but it'd be long and contextually detailed and would therefore be off-putting to anyone looking for the easy answers, because the easy answer is: if it's easy, you're doing it wrong*
*except if you've done the hard work early, it's eas(y|ier) later
Yes it would have been fine. The framing is what makes it read political.
> nurture not nature
It's fair to say that such identities are often adopted later on in life, e.g. those who take the autogynephilic pathway.
I don't have statistics on such things so I am not inclined to agree with such a generalization.