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How to Get Kids to Do Chores: Does the Maya Method Work?

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233 points Xcelerate | 1 comments | 04 Sep 18 00:03 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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interatx ◴[04 Sep 18 02:15 UTC] No.17906150[source]▶
We pair program with new hires on simpler tasks and gradually build them up. Sounds very similar.
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ngngngng ◴[04 Sep 18 02:26 UTC] No.17906184[source]▶
I'm having my first kid soon and have pretty high ambitions for teaching him to program. Maybe I'll try the pair programming/Mayan chore method to get him up to speed.
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aikinai ◴[04 Sep 18 02:29 UTC] No.17906201[source]▶
Maybe better to first wait and see what he/she is interested in?
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tokyodude ◴[04 Sep 18 03:51 UTC] No.17906517[source]▶
I don't know where the balance is and I'm not a parent but... I feel like I wish my parents had forced me to learn a musical instrument. My whole fathers side of the family plays/played. Some famiously so. My parents took the "if he shows interest attitude"

I know of almost zero kids that enjoy practicing their instrument as a kid yet I believe the majority of adults are happy for the experience. (I have no data tho). I certainly just wanted to do other things (play with friends) so I showed no or not enough interest for my parents to push/encourge learning an instrument.

Assuming I'm correct following the advice of "see what they're interested in" would seem to lead to worse outcomes at some level.

of course I'm not suggesting shoving things down their throats so to speak rather it seems like there's room for some balance between only encourage their interest and require them to do x?

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1. aikinai ◴[04 Sep 18 05:04 UTC] No.17906776{3}[source]▶
You're definitely right there's a spectrum and a balance each family has to decide for themselves, but I just wanted to share my anecdotal evidence that there are kids that are passionate about practicing.

My son is learning an instrument from a very young age and almost all of the drive comes from himself. Of course he doesn't always want to practice right now, so we have to push to encourage consistency, but he's so passionate he wants to keep at it even when it's hard work and stressful for all of us.

I'm sure one day, "I don't want to practice today" will evolve into "I want to quit" and I'm dreading having to determine if that's really a life choice or just temporary (week? month? year?) hurdle we should push through.