Ask HN: How far should parents control their children?
I have a 16 month old, so I&#x27;m struggling with these same questions. Here&#x27;s what I&#x27;m thinking (now), with the caveat that this is subject to change a dozen times in the next week. :)<p>Study:<p>My parents never forced me to study and I turned out okay. Instead, they used to praise me for working hard while working obscenely hard themselves.<p>For me, this combination of strong models and positive feedback accomplished more than forcing me to do homework ever could have.<p>Religion:<p>I was raised in a very religious family. My Mom grew up extremely religious and my Dad converted. Thing is, I was never told what to believe. Both of my parents wanted my sister and I to be critical of our religion and think carefully about what was just doctrine from a different era and what was true morality.<p>In the end, I pulled away from my religion because I couldn&#x27;t see through all the mindless restriction and the hypocrisy.<p>However, now that I have a daughter, I am religious again. In fact, she&#x27;s getting close to her baptism. The way I see it is that if I raise her religiously, she has a chance to be religious when she gets older. Or, she may choose a more secular life. Either way, she has a choice. If I don&#x27;t raise her within our religion, she still has the choice, just a more difficult path.<p>I think parenting is about giving our little people options. It is not about telling them what to think.<p>As for media, I wouldn&#x27;t dare put parental control on any form of media. Instead, I would prefer that Lauren grow up knowing that there are predators online, but that she should trust her judgement and tell me or her mom if anything confuses&#x2F;scares her.<p>Frankly, I hope that Lauren is smart enough to beat any kind of parental control scheme that I could come up with. But, if she is and she gets in trouble, she might be scared to tell me.<p>Straight up, I want her to tell me that she tell me that she is being bullied, or pressured into sexting. And, if she&#x27;s afraid that I&#x27;ll get mad because she broke the rules, I&#x27;ll lose that.