Thread by @diviacaroline

I've thought a ton about parenting over the past ~7 years, and here's what I've mostly settled on as my "parenting philosophy"...

Epistemic status: variable confidence on the different points, attempt to do a very basic breadth-first pass of things that seemed important to me.

1. Treat kids like people

Maybe obvious but not just an applause light. Tweak the person model until it covers kids too instead of special casing them.

It's cognitively expensive to do this, but AFAICT it paid dividends in all my relationships, not just my ones with my kids.

2. Lasting influence on my kids flows through my relationships with them

I think a major parenting crux of mine is that basically the only lasting (non-genetic) influence I have on my kids comes through my relationship with them.

3. Prioritize secure attachment

I think attachment theory is best viewed as a game theory/decision theory problem, where people aren’t punished for closeness. I don’t think getting this right is simple. I do think it’s important.

4. Parenting is partly a governance problem, so review the literature

The biggest difference between parenting and governing anything else (other than your self) is that parenting is much smaller scale, and the interests of the parents and kids are more tightly aligned.

5. In an important sense, I don’t know better than my kids do

The thing isn’t at all about what I’d think of as ignorance on my part, but as process-level humility, roughly as described in Scott’s post on asymmetrical weapons. This one is hard for me to describe.

6. Concern about "super-stimuli" is overblown

I tend to think two things. One is that humans are actually pretty good at handling this type of stuff. The other is that controlling kids has harms that aren’t often adequately accounted for.

I'm more confident in the second.

7. Own your role as a parent

Pretending like I'm not in charge of stuff that I'm actually in charge of is bad and confusing for kids.

8. Don’t punish; have boundaries

I think things can get relationally screwy pretty fast once punishment-flavored intent enters the picture. Correct implementation is subtle, but I know it when I see it.

9. Don't make them go to school

There's so much wrong with school I don't even know where to start. IMO even very good schools impart a lot of toxic stuff.

(If the kid wants to go, that's a different story.)

10. You are the best parent for your child (H/T @askmoxie)

(also applies to your coparent if you have one)

I think it's worth remembering this in a very literal way. But also, we all embody our best guesses about how to live. Kids need that and no heuristics can replace it.

@sebastmarsh This outline is what I was working on during your Work Cycles event last year. Such a useful block of hours—thanks for hosting it!