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Comment by maroonblazer | Hacker News Reader

I'm an American and my 10 yr old son is in an organized band that includes a weekly private lesson and a public performance. I agree with skywhopper that there's a time and place for criticism and right after the show, especially at that age, is not it.

Also, part of the objective of having the public performance is to simply get kids comfortable performing publicly. My kid was practically shitting himself before the show, he was so nervous about playing in front of a crowd. So, a healthy part of the applause is recognition that they simply performed publicly. It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again.

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>> It's likely that greeting them with criticism of their playing as they walk off the stage won't do much to encourage them to try it again.

There's a way to frame it. At the end of a band performance, the audience (even if it is just 3-4 people) is encouraged to clap, even if the performance sucked. Usually, they do clap. This is enough of a positive reinforcement.

When the whole thing is over, before packing up, have a 15 minute meeting in which all you do is say,

"Great performance guys. You did a,b,c really well. Jeff, I saw you listened to my instruction. Hi five! Stacy, you did a good job. There were some mistakes in your chord transitions, let's talk about that so you can do it better next time"

Kids should grow up knowing they are doing well but aren't perfect yet. Let's keep improving until we get there.

You don't teach kids I assume. I do. I am a judo coach of kids.

I think the point is : It is not really up to the parents to be so critical of their kids. They should be supportive and positive.

It is really up to the coach to provide the technical feedback and it is more beneficial to assess performance at the next practice when the kids are back in a learning mode.

At that point they are mentally ready to practice over their problem areas straight away.

Parents can set their kids back by berating them at the wrong time.

Yeah, it's really not up to the parents to raise their kids. It's scarry how we get to this point where people write this kind of shit with a straight face.

When I was younger I could not care less about my parent's feedback about my heavy metal guitar skills - I did not expect them to understand anything about the music I was playing and I'd chalk up any criticism on them not liking the style - but I did care whether they were supportive or not.

Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

>Raising the children is supporting them, and helping them get over the fear of performing publicly (or whatever). It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

Would you apply the same to, say, mathematics? Or chemistry? Or programming? Do you think the parents should not give their kids feedback on these subjects, and instead leave it to the teacher (aka technical coach)?

Largely, yes. There can be only a very small amount of subjects of which I would know more than a professional anyway. So no, a part of the job of being a parent is to show self-restraint when you feel that impulse to hyper-correct your child on every small mistake they make.

Look at it this way: you're starting a new job. A very stressful one, where you have to learn a bunch of new things, long days, and not just learning one thing - you're learning dozens of subject every day. There are a bunch of others in your cohort who are also learning and you're all compared and graded against each other.

Then you come home at night and you vent to your wife about your day and how this one guy is an ass-kisser and this other colleague is full of himself, with an example of something he said. And then your wife, who maybe took a college course on one of the topics you used as an example, says "yeah honey that sucks. BTW that example you just used, you're wrong, it's actually xyz". What would that accomplish? Would you think "oh thank you, now I didn't learn 50 new things today, but 51! Great!"? No, you'd think she massively missed the point, and is massively missing the point about you, and she would be.

>Look at it this way: you're starting a new job. A very stressful one, where you have to learn a bunch of new things, long days, and not just learning one thing - you're learning dozens of subject every day.

I think that's the problem right there. When I was in school, the day was not long nor was it stressful. I suppose I'm inclined to agree with you that if the above circumstances are true, a parent should not behave that way. However, if those circumstances are true, and my kid seems at least average or above, I'd as a parent do some hard thinking and consider finding another school for him.

One thing I learned in all of my education: You may learn a lot when you are overloaded, but you learn nothing well. Not just at their level, but at university.

I'm good at a bunch of subjects - likely much better than the teacher (math, physics, etc). If school is so stressful that my kid cannot learn these well, and there is no room for help from me, then it's a bad school.

>It's not their job to be the technical coach of whatever they want to learn.

That's insane. Of course it is!

Until their skill in a subject surpasses yours, you're the only technical coach.

"Until their skill in a subject surpasses yours"

Which for all but one or two subjects, it will.

Look I'm not saying parents can't ever teach their children anything. What I'm saying is that parents need to know their place and role, and they can do much more good by being emotionally supportive and in general creating an environment in which children can and want to learn, than by being yet another instructor who's trying to cram ever more things into the child's head (much of which will be different from what their school or team coach is teaching them anyway).

This is absolutely correct. I learnt this fast with 1st/2nd grade homework - I do more harm than good by actively participating. Sure I know what 32-29=3 but I do not know how that is being taught in the classroom and if I start sticking my oar in it goes sideways quickly. It's far more constructive to be supportive in exactly the way you mention.

I've coached kids martial arts before as well, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say parents shouldn't criticize their kids, I will say that I much prefer the parents that are "supportive in public, critical in private".

It is quite literally my job as a coach to point out a kids mistakes. They handle it really well nearly universally. But the overly critical parents (you can see them coming a long way off) cause so much negative reactions it makes my job harder.

And quite simply, anyone who has coached anything knows that being critical at the time of the event is almost universally detrimental (and not just for kids). Your mind/body is just not ready for coaching at the end of an adrenal dump event.

You need distance to evaluate performance, and the emotional burden of parent/kid relationships makes that more true not less.

It's less an issue of parents raising/not raising their kids, than it is knowing what is productive and unproductive pressure.

Mike Matheny - the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals - wrote a letter to parents while he was coaching his son's little league team that touches on this idea. The whole thing is worth reading, but this is primarily his thesis:

"I believe that the biggest role of the parent is to be a silent source of encouragement. I think if you ask most boys what they would want their parents to do during the game; they would say "NOTHING". Once again, this is ALL about the boys. I believe that a little league parent feels that they must participate with loud cheering and "Come on, let's go, you can do it", which just adds more pressure to the kids. I will be putting plenty of pressure on these boys to play the game the right way with class, and respect, and they will put too much pressure on themselves and each other already. You as parents need to be the silent, constant, source of support."

Link to full letter: www.mac-n-seitz.com/teams/mike-matheny-letter.html

Parents can raise them but the coach is the coach.

I don't allow parents to do the "tiger mode" criticism on the sidelines because it is not objective. The parents have emotional investment in winning.

Judo teacher is right. Having mom and dad be supportive while the instructor is tough can be the right balance. Most kids can't objectively separate their performance from their parents love and acceptance.

The exact timing of the feedback session is debatable. It could be in a wrap up session, next training session or whatever.

More importantly, it should be private and only for the eyes and ears of the team/band/player.

Raising your kids properly means loving them, yes, but not to the point that you outsource teaching them how to be resilient.

You can be supportive and positive... and honest.

Being supportive of shitty performances is dishonest and shitty.

Then again... the "parents" of today cry fits if their kid plays like crap and doesn't get some sort of participation award.

A parent telling their child they had a shitty performance is not supportive or positive.

A negative attitude coming from the parent can really upset the child and they won't learn anything from it.

As a coach I can't tell a parent what to say to their kid at home after they have a poor performance but I usually advise them to try cheer their kid up not cut them down.

It is my role as coach to provide the objective criticism not the parent's. It matters where the criticism comes from.

This is a part of the problem with the original article. Parents are too emotionally involved to teach their kids. They think their kid is special and then they constantly compare them against other kids and then they put the parental pressure on to the child. It isn't helping.

Right: 10yo - agree. But once you're past a certain age, e.g. 14-15, probably not? Then again, I don't think people should be rewarded either for showing up or putting in an effort. But for younger kids (e.g. < 14yo) it's definitely not an issue + good that you want to get them to experience new things.

Maybe I have different view on things, but if I look back at how much focus was put on putting in effort (and not actually achieving anything) during my high school years, then I think we have things wrong to some extent. It's even worse today than it was before -- I have a friend who works in a school and he says it's great that grading is being phased out.. not sure whether I agree on that.

If your friend was learning to code, and wrote a tetris clone, would you congratulate them on their first major project, or would you critique their sloppy code? They had to develop and live with that codebase, maybe for several days or more. They're probably aware of some things that suck about it, but had to stick with it (otherwise you never finish). Having someone criticize your code, variable names, lack of patterns without asking would be really demoralizing.

There's a difference between a well written function, and an entire application that's well organized and thought out. And there's a difference between playing in your garage and playing on stage.

Did the band suck because they couldn't play? Or did they suck because they were nervous? Well the only way to get over that is to play in front of people more.

I also think there should be a difference in expectations depending on where/what you're seeing. You have every right to criticize a group playing Madison Square Garden. But there's a reason the 14 year olds are playing O'Mallys Pub on a Tuesday, or the Ernie Ball stage at Warped Tour, and not the main stages or an arena.

What's particularly awesome and worth congratulating is watching a band of teenagers suck on stage, and then watching them a month later suck a little less. We should be striving for "better" rather than "great", in my opinion.

There's definitely a difference between the result, and the way something was built or put together. I'd congratulate them on the result and tell them what they did right, code wise. I'd also perhaps point out some (major) areas where they could've done better, so they could take that knowledge and use it in the next app or game they decide to build.

In reality it depends so much on the context. People are primed for learning right after finishing a task.

Is my friend just giving coding a go or are they trying to get a dev job?

Is my friend trying to show me what they have built or asking for help improving the quality of their code?

Etc etc.

Likewise is this a 14 year old athlete trying to compete at the state level? Or a 14 year old trying out football because his friends play?

Great points. I imagined the friend learning as a hobby, but didn't mention it in the post. If they were learning for a job or homework I would definitely be more eager to offer criticism and criticize more heavily.

There is a lot of assumption in this discussion like there is nothing between blind encouragement and stark criticism.

You want you son/friend to learn to code and his first project is copy-pasta from a book. Fantastic. Actually doing something is by far the number 1 challenge people never overcome.

Second project is also copy-pasta, that's only fantastic if you son/friend learn to be a typist. He and You both know he can do that. Does not mean you need to trash him, but showing the same enthusiasm as with the first project is counter productive, instead you should probably encourage him to tinker a bit with the program.

Challenge needs to grow. Sure you don't want to discourage a beginner showing how far he is from the mountain summit, but after climbing a step you need to show him the next one.

Exactly. Being supportive is not the same as putting everything they do on a pedestal and never have any constructive criticism ever. It's all about thr situation and how you frame it.

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