[dyladan]

What is truly astounding about this is the patience to even attempt to explain free theorems to a 6 year old. Most parents would likely answer "math" and that would be the end of it. I don't (yet) have kids, but when I do I hope I have the wherewithal to recognize and take advantage of moments like these.

[ams6110]

It's an immense amount of effort to do it consistently. And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me.

One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that beyond being generally supportive. They are individuals that way.

[minor3rd]

> One of the things you figure out is that some kids aren't interested. And if your kid isn't interested in thinking about prime numbers, you're going to be hard pressed to change that. Conversely they will have interests that you don't share, and it's going to be harder for you to participate meaningfully in that beyond being generally supportive. They are individuals that way.

I grew up in a family with 7 kids and my youngest sibling is just 12 years old. I remember when my younger set of siblings were born, I was thinking "I'm going to teach them EVERYTHING I've learned at a young age, and they will be way ahead of their peers." I failed to grasp just how much of their personality is ingrained in them from their DNA and that they might not have all the same interests as me. It was a great learning experience though -- when I do have kids, I'm not going to try and shove my interests down their throat. I'm going to pay attention to what they are drawn to and give them as many resources as I can so they can pursue that interest as much as they desire.

[virtuabhi]

> how much of their personality is ingrained in them from their DNA

Is this really true? I hope not!

[khedoros1]

I don't think that personality is completely hard-wired, but different people will strongly tend toward different traits, and two people raised in an identical environment will react differently to that environment.

Interests can be encouraged because there's some flexibility in someone's natural tendencies. It's the old "nature vs nurture" discussion, about which one dominates the other.

[singingboyo]

Not to mention that siblings by definition each grow up in a different environment. The addition of a new sibling changes the behaviour of parents and other siblings (sometimes a lot, sometimes a little, but it's there).

Perhaps the above poster's sibling looked for other interests because the poster had already 'taken' whatever interests they were sharing. But perhaps not - it's hard (impossible?) to know.

[icc97]

Yes, it's notable that Brent's son first was interested enough to ask him and then stayed interested as he explained.

You can't start telling your child about maths if they're busy doing something else. All you can do is wait for a moment when their curiosity spots something and try to feed that.

Even when you catch their interest it's easy to break it if you can't explain it, so los of kudos to Brent for navigating it perfectly.

[jimbokun]

My teenage son is a musician and is taking AP Music Theory right now.

I ask him to tell me about what he is learning, and he patiently tries to explain it to me, but I just nod along because I have no idea what he's talking about.

[steamer25]

The gist of music theory: It sounds interesting when sounds with simple frequency ratios are played at the same time. E.g., playing a 440 Hz tone at the same time and 660 Hz tone has a 2:3 ratio. Some combinations of frequencies, when played before or after other combos can establish an expectation and then either fulfill it or negate it. E.g., if you take the ratio above and then play 440 + 587, it'll sound like it's moving forward and that the second combo has 'arrived' as you might have expected. The 587 is derived by fixing the first note but inverting the relationship from 2:3 to 3:2 (and then doubling the frequency of the second so you don't have to move so far from 660).

Most everything beyond is attaching labels to the frequencies and combos. Just as we have names for frequencies of light (red, yellow, blue) and patterns (gradient, checkerboard) there are names for frequencies of sound (A, C#, E) and their combinations (major, minor). There are also more esoteric terms (chiaroscuro in painting, neapolitan flat 9 in music) for people who've spent so much time on a subject that the basics have become boring.

Oh, and there's also divisions of and patterns for time in music theory. E.g., "hold this note for twice as many milliseconds as the previous one".

There have been some good resources here on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=music%20theory&sort=byPopulari...

[andrepd]

That's the gist of music theory as much as "radiation in the order of ~100nm excites your retina and you see colour" is the gist of photography or painting. x) It's the fundamental physical explanation, but there's a world of complexity and subtlety that eludes such a "first principles" explanation.

[steamer25]

I agree that to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound and that text alone won't suffice. On the other hand, your description of radiation hitting the retina might be a decent primer on color theory which has about as much to do with photography and painting as music theory has to do with playing an instrument. My goal was to demystify the jargon by showing that it has very tangible definitions which can be understood by even analytical audiences like HN (of which I include myself).

[steamer25]

> to fully appreciate musical qualities, you have to play around with sound

@jimbokun: It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their vocal folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Explaining it while playing it will probably also help cement the concepts in his understanding ;) .

[jimbokun]

This is really easy to follow:

https://www.lightnote.co/

Already learned some things, thanks!

[HenryTheHorse]

Sorry, but you are way out of your league in trying to explain the "gist" of Music Theory in terms of frequencies. That's so not what Music Theory is about.

[rkangel]

This comment would be valuable if it provided some support to the assertion that the original author was wrong.

[Double_Cast]

The problem with the above explanation is that it starts at a lower level of abstraction than is warranted. Analogously, it explains MOSFET's rather than algorithms. The fundamental unit of Music Theory is the Interval (as in "frequency interval between notes"). A better explanation would have explained Intervals, how particular combinations of Intervals form various Scales, and how Scales influence Chord Progressions and Key Signatures.

There are 12 unique notes in an Octave (yes, octave means 8; ignore this for now). On the 13th note, the octave repeats itself (counting is 1-indexed). But of these 12 notes, only specific subsets are combined into specific scales.

The most popular scale is the Major Scale which follows the pattern "Tonic Major_2nd Major_3rd Perfect_4th Perfect_5th Major_6th Major_7th" (there exist other notations). The Major Scale imparts a generically-happy mood. But there's other scales, including: the Chromatic Scale; the Major Scale; 3 varieties of Minor Scales; 7 varieties of Diatonic Modes (including Major and Natural Minor); the Pentatonic Scales; etc. E.g. Smoke on the Water, Sunshine of your Love, and Fight for your Right (to Party) all sound similar because they use the Blues Scale.

Once you familiarize yourself with the intervals, scales, and their various notations (which is its own feat), you can jump into the meat & potatoes of Music Theory. Which mostly consists of analyzing Chord Progressions and Key Signatures in order to find commonalities in mood. Chord Progressions and Key Signatures determine a song's general mood. It's too complicated for me to summarize quickly. But it's where all the interesting stuff happens.

N.B. I've deliberately omitted various details for the sake of brevity. E.g. I could have mentioned Time Signatures, Rhythms, Tempo, Dynamics, etc.

[khedoros1]

OK. What is music theory about? The explanation using frequencies, ratios, etc matched my understanding of the underlying physics and their effects on human perception.

[HenryTheHorse]

"Music Theory" is a very specific term that's used in music studies.

It is mostly a descriptive theory in that it studies musical patterns (rhythm, melody, harmony, intervals, scales, modes, chords and chord progressions) but it can also be prescriptive (for e.g. - don't use certain note intervals in a guitar solo if you are using certain chords in your song)

None of this has anything to do with Physics. Music Theory is completely abstracted from the physical world.

[Double_Cast]

Frequencies : Music Theory :: Logic Gates : Computer Science.

See my other comment.

[opinionator1]

Wow, that's really not what music theory is at all. This kind of eggheaded simpletonism is grossly offensive and embarrasses the HN community, not to mention engineers in general. Please, the world outside of STEM is not reducible to a few hand-wavy sentences about physics.

[steamer25]

It's more about the ratios than the example frequencies I provided. That's more apparent if you play an instrument with an exposed string and a finger-board but still true if it's hidden under e.g., the hood of a piano. The definition of consonance versus dissonance is basically whether or not the ratio is simple. The overtone/undertone series from which the various scales are derived is also one only one logical step away. One step past that gets you to diatonic harmony which leads to harmonic progression/retrogression which makes up the bulk of my theory text book and the real gist that I was getting at.

If you can provide a better overview or point out how it's anything more than a bunch of terms/shorthand for sonic patterns, I'd love to be informed.

[jamiepenney]

Don't feel bad about that! My dad didn't know what the hell I was talking about when I was learning C++ as a teenager, but he asked anyway because he saw I got excited about it.

[AbacusAvenger]

My mom certainly does that for me. I try to explain non-intuitive programming concepts to her with analogies, but I don't think I succeed most of the time. I love her dearly for putting up with it, though.

[nitrogen]

Wow, more parents should be like that! I'm not a parent, but I try to do the same kind of thing for friends and coworkers in hopes of spreading the idea that others' interests are worth attention and respect even if you don't share them.

[thinkpad20]

If you’re interested in the subject, look up Adam Neely on YouTube. A great channel with a series of 10-minuteish videos on various interesting topics in music, from theory to history to physics and beyond. Not so much a “course” in music theory, morning e of a series of one-off topics mostly accessible by a lay audience. Might be good conversation starters with your son :)

[steamer25]

I was replying to another sub-thread here and had another thought:

It might be easier for your son to express what he's learning if you can catch him while he's got e.g., a piano or guitar at hand. Humans have a hard time generating compound musical waveforms using just their bodies/vocal-folds (though it can be done to a limited extent as in Mongolian throat singing). Having him play the sounds as he explains them will probably also help cement the concepts in his own understanding ;) .

[hycaria]

>And it gets harder with each kid, at least for me.

That is the most depressing thing I've read in a good while.

[nickpeterson]

Yeah, but I find it's true. I think that's why the first born tends to be, at least historically, the most important child. Because parents spend the most focused attention on them.

If it feels better though, as the youngest of three children, I find I was allowed to wander a bit more, and that has actually proved useful.

[slx26]

Well, when you are not the first, most of the time you end up learning a lot from your brothers/sisters. You are almost always the first for someone in the family.

[hycaria]

Then why bother if you're not even trying

[jedberg]

One thing that makes this easier is being rich. What I mean by that is for example, when my kid is asking me questions or wants to "do it myself!", the fact that I have a flexible schedule helps immensely, and that flexible schedule is possible because I can turn down work that doesn't give me that flexibility.

If I had a strict clock-in/clock-out job, and only had limited time to run errands, I'd have a lot less patience for waiting for my kid to do stuff or answering her questions.

I consider myself very lucky that I have that privilege and can pass that on to my kids.

[imnotadoctor999]

Maybe it helps being rich, but just as a counter example, my grandfather was never rich. He was a clock-in/clock-out guy and still managed to spend a lot of time with me while I was growing up. He had a lot more patience than most of the "white collar" adults in my life ever did, and taught me lots of useful skills like how to fix a lot of electrical or mechanical things.

[jedberg]

Sure it’s possible to do it when you’re not rich. It’s just a lot easier if you are. Like many things in life. :)

[pvg]

"It's better to be young, rich and healthy than old, sick and poor" is probably not the most novel insight worth writing down for the benefit of others.

[jedberg]

I believe the insight that I was sharing is that it matters in this case, as many people would not realize that it is relevant here.

[pvg]

You think 'a lot of things that take time are easier when you have the means to do whatever you want with your time' is something that eludes most people? About anything much, really, be it child rearing or laundry? I think that is very, very unlikely.

[cbsmith]

White collar doesn't mean rich. It means never really clocking out because your time is valuable enough it is worth monetizing every minute of it.

[pbhjpbhj]

We actually made a decision to cut our income considerably in order to be as involved as we can in our kids upbringing - we're basically almost always able to go to school concerts, we always eat together, we practically never aren't with them at bedtime, etc..

It's great. But I think we missed the balance a little - there are so many life experiences that are out of reach that we parents experienced when we were kids. Yes being tight with our kids is awesome - but when they get old enough to spread their wings a little, and when they're inquisitive about new things, then supporting that is exceedingly difficult when you're of low means.

School skiing trip? Not a chance, way out of our price bracket. Holiday abroad? Same, the interest is there, they're keen to learn geography/languages/culture. Piano lessons? Same, we've got a keyboard, one child is really keen and show some ability but we don't have means to support him in that and let him find fulfilment through that creativity.

But I do get to talk Fibonacci series; build fires in the woods; teach them about how aliens with 0, 4, 16 fingers count; but buy an up to date globe, or take them for a train ride, or go on a boat, or have a pet, or visit a mountain, ...

My problem is not time so much, nor fostering inquisition, but resources to develop the questioning in to solid foundations. Our kids are not the free-spirits of knowledge-hunger we anticipated because we instead have to follow economics.

[gowld]

It's not "being rich" that helps, it's having a high hourly rate of pay relative to expenses. Many rich people work 60+ hr weeks with travel, and don't see their kids much. Many non-rich people are stay-at-home parents or extended family. Of course, they can hire nannies, governors, and tutors to fill in the gaps...

[insensible]

Dad of 8 here. It makes life so sweet when we acknowledge the child's capacities. Notice it didn't take that much patience...it's almost just a matter of creatively overcoming a language barrier.

[curun1r]

I'd think it would also be a great opportunity to have access to a young, malleable mind that's unencumbered by a significant body of past experience and preconceived notions. Every answer is like a pure function...it's derived from first principles rather than coming an existing corpus of 'state'. It seems like a tremendous opportunity to expand your own viewpoint with perspectives that you'd naturally ignore based on your own past experience.

A good friend of mine was the grandson of a couple that ran a school for gifted children. When they retired, there was a video produced about their careers and, at one point, they were both asked what they liked best about their jobs. His grandfather answered, "Getting to speak to the children every day." His grandmother answered, "Getting to listen to the children every day. I always liked her answer better than his.

[jedberg]

Out of curiosity, did you mean you have eight kids, or your kid is eight years old?

Because if it's the former, I'm impressed you have even one second to be on HN!

[insensible]

It's the former!

[freedomben]

If you do have 8 kids, that's amazing. I have 5 myself and most of the time I feel more like a zookeeper/riot policeman than a dad.

[insensible]

Economies of scale. The kids work together, play together, teach each other, and parents facilitate (often leading to interesting conversations like the one in the article). It's actually probably a little easier than having 5.

[pavel_lishin]

A coworker keeps telling me (I'm a parent of one, and intend to stay that way) that having a big family like his is easier, since the older kids can take care of the younger kids.

Which sounds totally plausible and correct, 'cept it'll take you awhile to get up to that sort of economy of scale :P

[insensible]

This being Hacker News, we can talk about it in terms of graphs, right? Let's look at the sociogram when one parent is present.

The transition from zero to one is of course world-changing. But at one child, 100% of the connections in the sociogram connect to a given parent: zero economy of scale.

At two children they have each other, but that is only 1/3 of the children's connections when one parent is present.

At three, we're up to 50% of the connections that are child-to-child. At this point the sociogram is rich enough to become interesting.

Four => 60%. Eight => 77.8%.

[pavel_lishin]

> At this point the sociogram is rich enough to become interesting.

But the family is poor enough to become boring!

(I can't resist a good pun.)

Anyway, kids aren't raised in isolation with their parents. Our two year old tot already has two kids that I would consider her friends; she mentions them when she's home, and she prefers spending time with them to spending time with other kids.

[hycaria]

How fun that must be to take care of siblings, wow, youth enjoyed for sure.

[pavel_lishin]

Yes, of course, having younger siblings is exactly the same as being a full-time live-in babysitter.

Did you know older siblings don't even get paid for the work they do?

[opinionator1]

It's not wrong, but it's a real dick move toward the older kids.

[insensible]

It can be done that way, but there are alternatives. One family I know, the kids actually sometimes quarrel to be allowed to take care of the youngers. In our family, we have "chore points" that are mutually negotiated, and babysitting is a favorite way to get one's points racked up easily.

[andrei_says_]

And, kids are fascinating conversationalists

[nickpeterson]

My wife recently put up a small message board in our kitchen, where you can press letters into fabric to say what you want. My daughter (5 years old), suggested, "Candy inside your heart." I find the sentiment very sweet. We have not broached free monads yet.

[gowld]

Monadic candy machine: https://gist.github.com/hakuch/484ea9c4e4baaf7b3ab6

[andrei_says_]

Honestly, would you need free monads if you already had (the feeling of) candy inside your heart?

Maybe we need to look at our priorities.

[wikwocket]

As a parent, I agree. One should not shy away from talking about "advanced" topics. Kids are naturally curious and bright and I think we should encourage their desire to learn and understand complex things.

I worry that if you try to dumb down things for kids, they might become interested in dumb things. :)

Also, as the OP mentions, it can be a fun "pedagogical challenge" to try to explain free theorems or turing completeness or MySQL sharding to a young child. And you may find a clever way to describe it, that they can easily understand, which is satisfying for both of you.

[intrasight]

When my daughter was 10 we were waiting in line to checkout at a Home Depot. She asked me what was algebra. I think she had heard the older kids mention it. I responded with a question. "A plus B = 10, and A minus B = 1. What are the values of A and B?" She puzzled it over while I check out. Then her face lit up like a whole realm of knowledge had just opened up to her, and she proudly told me the answer. It's a special moment that we will both always remember. She told me that as a camp counselor that she has challenged younger kids who seemed bored with the same problem.

Do challenge your kids intellectually beyond their years and you might be pleasantly surprised. My daughter heads to CERN in two weeks to study anti-matter, and I have no doubt that our brief intro to algebra at a Home Depot has a small role to play in that journey. Maybe Star Trek did too :)

[bjoli]

As someone who takes pride in having solved the first 100 problems of project Euler, I am slightly ashamed to admit that I probably spent as much time as your daughter to solve that.

I got stuck thinking in integers, and quite quickly left the exercise as an oversight in writing the post (since X + y = even, X - y = odd is impossible for integers)

3 seconds into the first coffee of the day the realisation of my stupidity hit me in the face.

[mixmastamyk]

It's impossible until it's easy, like any good trick question.

[bpizzi]

For the posterity: {a+b=10;a-b=1} translates to {a+b=10;a=b +1}, thus the first equation is ((b+1)+b=10) giving (b=4.5), and from there we get (a=5.5).

[LolWolf]

Another fun way: add the two equations to get 2A=11 and subtract to get 2B=9.

[LolWolf]

I mean, is there any other solution? There are certainly no integral solutions to the problem, but there is a unique (rational) solution.

I feel like I’m missing something entirely, though...

[Sharlin]

I was also stuck thinking in integers for a few seconds, perhaps because of the context. But yeah, a 10-year-old would already know about fractions.

[endeavour]

I also mentally started thinking about integral solutions. I wonder if it's also because of the variable names... a,b,c tend to be used to represent integers (e.g. Fermat's Last Theorem, Euclid's algorithm etc).

x and y are more commmonly used to represent real numbers.

[icc97]

Coincidentally a friend at University had a dad who worked at CERN. His number one goal was to not work at CERN.

[intrasight]

Do you know why?

[inanutshellus]

(My guess)

She spent her teens trying to get away from dad, why spend her working life there? :)

[icc97]

I'm not totally sure why. The life living on the boarder between France and Switzerland seems pretty idyllic (but at the end of university you don't think about that so much). I got the feeling it was just that going to work where your dad is isn't very appealing no matter where it is.

[AndrewKemendo]

I have three very inquisitive kids and I love trying to explain complex topics, like reinforcement learning, to them in a way that they can understand. The best thing I get out of it is clarity for my own understanding, or gaps/lack of clarity, so it's a valuable exercise.

People don't give children enough credit for what they can really understand.

I remember distinctly teaching my oldest daughter how to do a basic cipher - like direct substitution and she got it immediately. I also taught my son how to do pin bumping and pin counting/picking on locks with my lockpick set. I even bought him a transparent set of master locks to practice on and he would sit for an hour at the age of 4 picking those locks. The obvious downside now is that he knows how to get into everything!

Very cool to watch what are basic principals being applied at the very basic level.

[cerberusss]

Exactly. My 4 year old sometimes surprises me like that. Last week she asked me how you can talk into a mobile phone. So I said, there's a tiny transmitter in there, and it sends the voice over waves in the air. So she's like, "OK" and I thought it went over her head.

Then yesterday she asked: "Why couldn't you call gramps when we were on the plane?" I told her that the mobile phone wasn't close enough to the receivers on the ground.

It amazed me that obviously some facts had been stewing for a week in that tiny head. And out comes another question.

[freeopinion]

When my mother died, I was asked to think of one word to describe her. The best word that I could come up with was "teacher." One quick example: when my own child was 2 or 3, we spent some time with Grandma at Yellowstone National Park. Grandma walked with her grandchild through the park and explained geisers, plate techtonics, and many other topics of geology. I rolled my eyes and thought, "Really? He can barely speak and you are delivering a college lecture?" But then I remembered all the college lectures of my own youth. It's amazing how much even the youngest minds can absorb.

One of my biggest failings as a parent has been to assume that my children will learn things somehow without me teaching it to them. If anybody learned 1/3 of what my mother taught them in detail, they learned a lot.

[thenobsta]

Related, "Math from Three to Seven" by Alexander Zvonkin[1] is an excellent book on discussing math with young kids.

[1] https://bookstore.ams.org/mcl-5/

[nickpeterson]

https://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Big-Math-Book/dp/9198282603

I have not read this, but it's from the same person who helped create "anchor modeling" and I find that quite interesting.

[gowld]

From the "Look Inside", it strangely pairs very "childish" pictures with small-font densely-packed pages high-school or college-level mathematical prose.

[avip]

Note kid asked "dad what are you doing", not "what is functional programming". That's a simple call for attention, and it was equally suitable to close the book and play frisbee with him.

[ascorbic]

No. Children like to copy their parents, and want to learn about what they do. If a six year old wanted to play frisbee, he probably would have asked to play frisbee. At the very least he would've made his boredom clear pretty quickly. Yes, he wanted attention from his dad, but best of all was being able to learn about dad's grown up stuff by doing something they both enjoyed.

[ookdatnog]

No, he asked "What are you reading?" and followed up with the question “What are free theorems?”

[freedomben]

The kid was crying out for a math education!

On a serious note, you may be right in that it's a simple call for attention, but at least with my kids those are the opportunities for the best instruction, because the kid is usually bored, curious, and wants attention. If you give said attention, and answer questions in a way that they can think through and reason about, they will grok stuff you never expected.

[dsnuh]

Yes, those are equally suitable choices as you say. Why are you implying that stopping to play frisbee would have been the more "equally suitable" choice in this situation?

[bonesss]

Who's to say you can't talk about functional programming while playing frisbee? Who's to say that 9/10 times the kid gets some rough housing when he asks?

And much more likely: who's to say that the overstimulated little monster that asked 15 questions in 5 minutes doesn't need a little dose of adult life to encourage some self-play?

[rimliu]

The kid got the attention and some more. How would frisbee be any better?

[theoh]

Boo!

[LyndsySimon]

I'm a father of two girls, ages four and nine.

Explaining things to them and seeing the dawn of understanding in their eyes in easily my greatest joy in life. As a parent, I basically get to relive this xkcd[0], over and over, every day.

We take it to an extreme - we unschool[1]. We do our best to treat our daughters as any other member of the family, expecting to act as adults to the extent that they're able to do so. My nine-year-old spends much of her days right now playing Roblox and Star Stable, but even that is punctuated by her coming to us with random questions about things she's interested in. If I'm not head-down on a project I take the time to explain as best I can. If I'm otherwise occupied I always at least take the time to say "Go search for <insert keywords>" and follow up with once I'm free.

The results have, so far, been incredible. Our oldest was a late reader by the standards of the testing done in government schools, but once she ran into something she wanted to do that could only be accomplished by reading, she achieved fluency more quickly than I would have ever expected. For what it's worth, that "something" was an online RPG where she had to do quests to progress. In order to do that, she had to be able to read the quest text.

These days she's engrossed in the "Pegasus" series by Kate O'Hearn, and devouring them at a rate of ~1k pages per week. She'll have finished the series by the end of this week and I'm hoping she'll pick up Asimov's "Norby" series next. If not, she'll find something else that interests her and continue reading well into the wee hours of the morning I'm sure.

0: https://www.xkcd.com/1053/ 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unschooling

[azinman2]

My problem is unschooling is that just because you’re not interested in something (as a kid) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it.

It’d be nice if traditional school had a better balance where personal interests could be explored in a structured and formally accepted way.

[fao_]

> My problem is unschooling is that just because you’re not interested in something (as a kid) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it.

In my experience as an unschooled child who was in constant contact with the parents of other unschooled children, and other unschooled children, if a child isn't interested in something, that almost always changes over time. One example was where one kid did not wish to learn to read, until about the age of seven where he taught himself to read, without much struggle (and without parental intervention -- the parent found out about it because the kid kept the books under his pillow!), simply because he found a topic he was so interested in that he wanted to learn more about it.

I also know someone else who did not learn to read until the age of 6 or 7, after which he rapidly caught up, and at the age of 9 or 10 he sped through all three of the Lord of the Rings series, and was an avid reader. These are only two examples of something that was typical within unschooling circles.

One fundamental idea behind unschooling is that children develop at different rates, and thus in some cases, trying to force them to learn something before they are ready to learn can actually cause damage -- in a lot of cases this damage isn't visible, but that doesn't mean that it isn't there. I experienced this first hand, with a primary school maths teacher. This mathematics teacher misexplained things, and would constantly pile on the stress. It took me 6 years of unschooling to de-stress enough with regards to mathematics enough to simply add up efficiently (it felt like punching through a mental brick wall, I was completely unable to manipulate the numbers, despite being able to see them). Now at the age of 20 I am still filling in gaps in my mathematics education, through the right aids.

Something I would add is that most people learn the skills that are required for them in day-to-day life, so even if a child is not interested in mathematics, they tend to learn the basics just by helping out their parents with shopping. The most important thing that a child needs in their life is the willingness to learn, which is a skill that school rips out of our children.

[Ambroos]

This sounds great! I remember teaching myself to read before I was supposed to (very standard Belgian education), and probably as a result I was from that point on always ahead of my classmates simply because I'm very curious. I tended to read ahead for subjects that interested me, and not really bother for those that didn't. Teachers were sometimes annoyed because they really didn't understand why I could do insanely well for some subjects (or even some parts of some subjects) and do absolutely horrible for others, with no reasonable explanation for it. Especially as soon as I discovered computers and the internet, things changed rapidly as I was learning how to do things (and even program some PHP and create websites with Dreamweaver). You could basically say I unschooled myself almost right up until I finished our equivalent of high school (at 18).

And then I was royally screwed. I always had enough grades for teachers to pass me on almost all subjects, but in my last year of high school I was really stressed out about what I wanted to do at university, and stopped making an effort for a lot of subjects at high school that were suddenly going at a pace I couldn't follow in "zero interest mode". It took me two years and a detour via a central government exam to get my degree.

Then I was screwed again in my final year of university college (software development). While I did great in the actual software development courses, I couldn't get myself focused on subjects I didn't care about (because I never had to, so I had absolutely no study methods for things that don't interest me). So of course after three years when I should've had my degree, I had nothing. Even though I had been to all classes and seen everything, on some subjects I just didn't pass because they didn't interest me at all.

So I just quit and started working, which was absolutely fine. I found enough at work that interested me and I became a pretty decent developer in no time. 26 now and I'm still coding cool stuff, so I'd say it ended well.

Based on how my education went I'd say unschooling would've been a great fit, but I really wonder if an unschooled kid would be more or less likely to encounter the same problems I have. While for programming you can easily get your professional life going without a sign of a degree, for many fields that's not a possibility and you will have to study (a lot). If you've never _really_ had to just process and memorize things that don't interest you, that might get really hard. I fear that being unschooled might be great at the start, but there's a point where (for most fields) you have no choice besides going into a classic education system, and you'd be less prepared than other students...

[wellboy]

Would you say that not getting the degree was justified, since getting a degree is 50% the display of having the intellect to the subject and 50% the display of having the diligence, persistence and discipline to finish something, which is one of the most important traits in the professional world.

Not trying to be snarky, but genuinely interested.

Did the "inability" to focus on things you're not interested in impede you later in life, e.g. with taxes, social life, exercise etc?

[Ambroos]

Absolutely, not getting the degree was justified. I also believe that in some fields (software development) a degree isn't really necessary, and I'm glad most employers see the value in experience and willingness to learn.

Taxes and administration: not that complex in Belgium so I can't say much about that, but I value correctness a lot and that makes my administration easy to do (I never ever postpone doing my taxes, paying bills, ...). I usually find a way to make things interesting too, by keeping my administration as digital as I can. I'm always an early adopter.

Exercise: I struggle with this. Once I get going it usually goes quite well (but always have to combine it with something that does interest me, for example running with "Zombies, Run!", a sort of interactive audiobook/running trainer combination), but tend to stop completely if I hit roadblocks.

Social life: maybe. I have a great core group of friends that I've known since high school but that's about it, and I am not great at forming deep bonds. I have some work friends, but not at the level that I'd invite them over for dinner on a random week night. It's not at all at a problematic level though. I don't really know. I tend to be extremely honest and open about basically everything, and that scares / freaks out a lot of people, so it's not easy to make new good friends.

If you want to chat more, feel free to message me on whatever messaging platform you like. My username is always Ambroos or AmbroosV.

[nicoburns]

7 isn't really that late for reading. Lot's of well respected schoolin systems don't even attempt to teach reading until 7.

[fao_]

> 7 isn't really that late for reading. Lot's of well respected schoolin systems don't even attempt to teach reading until 7.

This is very interesting to me. I come from the UK, and the government's attitude to education is contrary to all of the pilot schemes, studies, and research I've seen. Namely they seem to have warmed their heads with the idea that the only way to advance learning is to put the student into the education system earlier and earlier. Rather than waiting until later (when they are ready), and improving material concerns so that good nutritional health from birth onwards is available to everyone.

[LyndsySimon]

> My problem is unschooling is that just because you’re not interested in something (as a kid) doesn’t mean you shouldn’t learn it.

I was initially concerned about this as well, but my experience so far is that it's not really an issue. We test regularly, both formally and informally, which I feel is very important so my wife and I have a good understanding of where she is relative to her peers. With the exception of the "sight words" portion of language testing in K-3, she has continues to be far ahead of them.

"Child-directed" doesn't mean "no parental involvement". Where a traditional school manages the things that she would be taught, we manage the things that she's interested in. We take care to do things as a family that expose her to skills that we think she needs to know.

If that sounds time-intensive... well, it is. My wife doesn't work outside the home and I work remotely. It's substantially less time-intensive than building a traditional curriculum and teaching it daily, though.

[owenversteeg]

Huh, that's the first time I've heard of unschooling, it seems like a really cool concept. If you don't mind me asking, where do you live and what are the laws like around unschooling there? How are people's reactions?

[LyndsySimon]

We're in Arkansas now, having moved from Virginia at the end of last year.

Virginia requires a Notice of Intent to be filed with the local school district and periodic standardized testing - there are some way around each of these things, but that's the course that the vast majority of homeschoolers take. It's annoying but not onerous.

Arkansas basically requires nothing at all.

[avip]

I often tell my kids "I'll explain that when you're 16", or "you're too young for that, go out and play". This has proven to be very effective in motivating them to think for themselves, or ask someone more collaborative (s.a mom)

[agumonkey]

the more you try the less they want

[tpoblf]

Interesting quote.

[shawn]

It's fun to talk to kids! Many of them are way more curious than most people are.

[sizzzzlerz]

And it is endlessly entertaining to see just how quickly their minds can wrap around a subject you would think is too advanced for them. Its a matter of establishing a common language. Seeing that light go on in their eyes is unbelievably satisfying.