[HN Gopher] 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifeti... ___________________________________________________________________ 75% of the time we spend with our kids in our lifetime will be spent by age 12 Author : gmays Score : 77 points Date : 2022-10-18 21:58 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.1000hoursoutside.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.1000hoursoutside.com) | JoeAltmaier wrote: | Can confirm. | | If you put a penny in a jar every time you spend time with your | kids until they get to school, then take a penny out every time | after that, you will never empty that jar. | silisili wrote: | Do you mean high school, or college? Surely not elementary... | gamerDude wrote: | This is also a reminder of the opposite. For those of us on here, | we have less than 25% of our time with our parents left. | | I lost my father earlier this year. I count myself lucky that I | felt very satisfied and complete in our relationship. | netsharc wrote: | Long, but at the end he does the stats about approximate time | left with his parents: | | https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html | Arrath wrote: | Fuck. | scarby2 wrote: | i likely have < 5% left. I moved internationally and have | parents in their 70s i will likely see them less than 200 days | in total. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | One of the things I have a hard time conveying to non-parents is | that the most time-intensive parts of parenting don't last | forever. | | I've talked to a lot of young people who say they don't want kids | because they think their personal lives will permanently halt the | moment they have kids. I spend a lot of time trying to explain | that: | | 1) I still spend a lot of time with friends and can do most of my | personal hobbies/activities on weekends. My wife and I are good | at sharing the load. You don't need 2 parents watching kids 100% | of the time. | | 2) The sleepless nights and diaper changes are a mere blip on the | scale of a lifetime with kids. You deal with it, then the kids | grow up quicker than you think. Don't let the idea of the first | few months/years define your entire decision for how you want to | structure your family for the rest of your life. | | 3) You actually _like_ hanging out with your own kids. I talk to | a lot of people who are anchored to some negative experience they | had 10 years ago babysitting for someone else 's kids, as if that | was representative of parenting life. It's not at all. At the end | of the day, I actually rush to finish up my work so I can have | more kid time. It's fun. | nathanaldensr wrote: | I wish the author had provided a source for their claim. | msufan wrote: | exactly -- it's almost like the author just made the number up | out of thin air or something... | dcotter wrote: | It looks like a back-of-the-envelope calculation to me: twelve | summers before the developmental changes she mentions divided | by sixteen, when they start driving, get a summer job, start | dating, etc. You could probably plot a curve of hours per | summer, starting to decline at twelve and declining fast after | sixteen... | EGreg wrote: | I don't. | hanoz wrote: | Quite. It's too depressingly plausible a thought as it is, | with digging up evidence that it is actually true too. | wang_li wrote: | While it may be a true statistic, it seems to dramatically miss | the boat. Time spent with a newborn, with an infant, with a four | year old, with a ten year old, with a sixteen year old, with a | twenty year old are not the same. You can have more interaction, | more contentment, more sense of continuity, and more sense of | family, in a Thanksgiving weekend spent with your adult child and | their family than the entirety of your kid's first year. | barbariangrunge wrote: | What percent of statistics are made up again? 75% maybe? | luxuryballs wrote: | 75% are made up, 62% are made up on the spot. | sklargh wrote: | My dad's death caused me to reevaluate the relative value of time | during my child's very early years. Prior to his death, I | primarily saw them as developmentally critical but personally | unfulfilling. After his death I reoriented much of my day to | maximize time spent. I regret that it took this event to make me | realize this but hey, personal epiphany has costs. | | Also - many thanks to the OG Nest team; thanks to your hardware I | have high quality video of my son and my father together. They | were only able to meet outside due to peak COVID. | ourmandave wrote: | This reminds me of that song I really hate, _Cat 's in the | Cradle._ | | I've long since retired, my son's moved away | | I called him up just the other day | | I said, I'd like to see you if you don't mind | | He said, I'd love to, dad, if I can find the time | | You see, my new job's a hassle, and the kids have the flu | | But it's sure nice talking to you, dad | | It's been sure nice talking to you | | And as I hung up the phone, it occurred to me | | He'd grown up just like me | | My boy was just like me | | And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon | | Little boy blue and the man in the moon | | "When you coming home, son?" "I don't know when" | | But we'll get together then, dad | | We're gonna have a good time then | bombcar wrote: | Search out _Cat 's in the Kettle_ it may help the ear worm. | abraae wrote: | This is a verb between my grown son and I. | | "You're cat's cradling me, aren't you!" | davidw wrote: | Well that's a downer. | [deleted] | ProfessorLayton wrote: | A huge asterisk here is that this varies _greatly_ by culture. | For better or worse* certain cultures value strong family bonds | and time spent with the parents, as well as bilateral support | well into adulthood. Many cultures also encourage | multigenerational living within a single household (or in | extremely close proximity like my parents did). | | For example, my parents were happy to have me live at home as | long as I wanted, and in fact encouraged me to stay so I could | save up. Ideally in their eyes I wouldn't even move out until I | was married. In my parent's culture, I'm not seen as a loser or a | burden because I'm living with them as an adult, only if I wasn't | contributing to the family's prosperity. Of course I wanted to | live my own life sooner than that, but that doesn't mean I left | as soon as I was 18. | | Because of these strong family ties I live within minutes of my | parents, and still make sure to visit often, even if it's just | for dinner. | | *Where this can breakdown is if one does not fit neatly within | the boundaries and expectations set by cultural norms. | daveslash wrote: | As a stepfather who came into my stepdaughter's life when she had | just turned 10, I'm not sure how this makes me feel..... | bombcar wrote: | If it makes you feel better, _her_ memories will mostly be from | the post-ten year old era. Think how much of your elementary | life you can remember, and then your high school. | | As CATS famously said, "You have no chance to survive make your | time." | | We're not going to get out of life alive, and how we spend the | time we have is the only real decision we can make. | jameshart wrote: | For you the stats will be different. And that's fine. | | It's not like it's the _best_ 75%. | thenerdhead wrote: | A nice reminder to call your folks more often and encourage | different ways of communicating until you find the right way. | (calls, letters, emails, etc) | cgsmith wrote: | The statistic might be accurate but what a terrible way to | explain it. "75% of the time we spend with...." what? You already | lost me. | | Just say that by the time a child is 12, you have 6 more summers | left. The impact is greater even if the premise isn't true. Which | it isn't. It's a false premise. Now you have X years as an adult. | keithnz wrote: | on the flip side, a lot of kids experiences before 12 will be | forgotten, some will be super memorable for their entire lives, | but a lot of their memories of you as a "parent" and who you are | as a person will be after the age of 12. | JamesSwift wrote: | That was a bittersweet realization for me. Thinking back to my | own childhood memories and what age they correlate with. I have | a couple school-specific memories from 4-8 or so. Then they | kick in more fully from 8-13ish. Then it becomes more "normal". | My oldest is 8, so he probably will only now begin to remember | our life together. | bombcar wrote: | It's even more scary when you realize that many of your | memories from that far ago are "enhanced" by photos, etc (the | brain isn't great at distinguishing) - so take pictures/video | of the things you'd like to remember, it lasts longer. | PragmaticPulp wrote: | > on the flip side, a lot of kids experiences before 12 will be | forgotten, | | A lot of children's life experiences before 12 will shape them | and their worldview for the rest of their lives, whether they | actively remember it or not. | Teknoman117 wrote: | Feels odd writing this, but for me, being able to defy this was a | positive consequence of the pandemic. | | I lived alone after I finished college and started working. 3.5 | years later this whole pandemic things starts. I ended up moving | back home for 2 years because my job went full remote. My | siblings and brother-in-law (sister's husband) joined as well. | | It was surreal living together again as adults. | andirk wrote: | Who got the top bunk? | | I love visiting my family but after a couple weeks, I feel like | a kid again and start acting like one. Asking for dinner, | sneaking out to smoke, staying up late watching cable TV. Any | extended amount of time feels unhealthy. | | But now that they're about to start getting actually old, I | want to visit constantly because nothing is forever. | etrautmann wrote: | Isn't it crazy how much context changes behavior? I've found | the same. Hard not to be my high school self when back with | those friends. | Teknoman117 wrote: | > Who got the top bunk? | | If I'm being honest, my parents had an enormous house, so we | all got our own rooms and there was still an office space | available. They sold it after we all moved out again. | | We all made a tremendous effort to stay adults regarding | keeping the place in order and cooking. We'd cycle dinner | prep through all of us based on work schedules. It was | interesting, and since all of our collective friends took | lockdown extra seriously, there really was no one to go see. | | My parents are in their early 50s, so they're definitely not | young anymore, but they're still some time away from | something I'd consider "actually old", but my definition may | be a bit skewed because 3 of 4 of my grandparents are still | with us and 2 of them have a clean bill of outside of being | in their late 70s. | chrischen wrote: | It's amazing how many people did this during the pandemic (me | included). | [deleted] | thrown_22 wrote: | Well yes. There's a lot less need for dipper changes after 12. | 1-6 wrote: | Darn, wish I learned of this advice 10 years ago. | bmacho wrote: | Every human has exactly 1 testicle, or why you can't just take an | average and claim that for the group. | danschumann wrote: | "Spend all the evenings you can with the people who raised you | 'Cause all the times they will change, it'll all come around" | -Lorde ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-10-18 23:00 UTC)