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Doing well is 95% luck


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Seems to make sense to me. i would say I have a high internal locus and agree with the familial origins stuff in para 7.

 

I also read something recently that linked material achievement in adulthood with feeling able to make meaningful choices affecting your own life in pre-teen years, which I suppose is a similar argument - if in your pre-teens you are included in decision making and this has pay-offs for you then you are more likely behave actively as opposed to passively in later life.

 

I suppose why this interests me is that my experiences at work have made me more conscious of how I parent my children because I've seen what a profound effect doing it wrong can have on kids, even when they've become adults.

 

I think that you can really mess yourself up when you think too hard about parenting, it is a natural process that has be going on since the year dot and as such I feel the best way to approach is to do what feels natural.

 

It is easy for me to say this, because my wife and I are still waiting for the stork to visit us.

 

If do you really want to stress yourself about parenting, you should read what some neuroscientists speculate about how the brains development in the first 12 months can effect it's decision making processes for the rest of the child's life.

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I think that you can really mess yourself up when you think too hard about parenting, it is a natural process that has be going on since the year dot and as such I feel the best way to approach is to do what feels natural.

 

It is easy for me to say this, because my wife and I are still waiting for the stork to visit us.

 

If do you really want to stress yourself about parenting, you should read what some neuroscientists speculate about how the brains development in the first 12 months can effect it's decision making processes for the rest of the child's life.

 

I don't really stress over it, but thanks for the warning! :) I figure, if I pretty much do what my parents did but updated for the early 21st century then it should pan out pretty well. Although god knows what kind of future we've born them into...

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Every day at work I end up sat across a desk from someone who is doing badly, often very badly indeed. After a while I started to think 'why am I on this side of the desk and they on that side?". I started to see that the uniting thread between these people is that their mums and dads did a pretty hopeless job (alcoholism, no interest in education, didn't help their kids make good choices, sexual abuse, that sort of thing).

 

And then I thought that congratulating yourself on where you've got to is vain and dishonest, most peoples' trajectories are well and truly set before they've even started secondary school.

 

Did you mean "sitting across a desk from ?":)

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I don't really stress over it, but thanks for the warning! :) I figure, if I pretty much do what my parents did but updated for the early 21st century then it should pan out pretty well. Although god knows what kind of future we've born them into...

 

As I alluded to earlier I believe that good old fashioned honest love covers any faults that we all have (or will have) as parents, so I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job. I do like your theory about involving your children in decision making processes.

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As I alluded to earlier I believe that good old fashioned honest love covers any faults that we all have (or will have) as parents, so I'm sure you'll do a fantastic job. I do like your theory about involving your children in decision making processes.

 

Early on I was saying 'no' too much to the oldest one, so now I prefer to make him responsible for his choices. So in place of "Don't bend that right back, it'll break" we now have "If you bend that right back it will break". "Daaaaaad, it broke!". "Your father knows all things". :)

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Success is a degree of working hard and a degree of luck. If you are born wealthy and inherit wealth than success comes a lot easier. But then again people like that probably dont appreciate it as much so maybe they are less happy or dont grow as much. If you graft for goals and reach them it tastes all the more sweeter.

 

End of the day we have to play with the cards we are dealt, and its a short life really to make the most of. Not worth stressing about if you ask me.

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There are plenty of people who were brought up well and became total f-ups. Likewise there are people from bad families who did very well. People have to accept that their success in life or lack of it is not totally dependent on their family background.

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If do you really want to stress yourself about parenting, you should read what some neuroscientists speculate about how the brains development in the first 12 months can effect it's decision making processes for the rest of the child's life.

 

 

Interesting point JFK but I don't think the science behind it is new. It's also believed that the "development" process is carried forward from parent to child from conception genetically, although other external social factors play their part as an aside. In order to "buck the trend" usually a mentor is involved somewhere down the line, that mentor doesn't necessarily have to be a living entity...an idea is sufficient, even if that idea is rebelling against watching parents watching soaps..."I can't allow myself to become that" as a self critical component rather than a destructive criticism of a parent.

 

Excellent thread subject teafan.

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My concern is that we then take people like that and give them more money if they breed than if they do not. If that is not willfully perpetuating a problem then what is?

 

Probably not 'wilfully perpetuating a problem', more like ensuring there's armies of thick, drug-addled people who will keep voting them in.

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