I agree, and will add that kids are expensive, especially if you want good education. "Ramen profitable" is a lot harder to reach when your life gets to that point.
I've got kids myself, and I blogged recently about how having a family is forcing me to keep my fulltime job longer than I would like to:
Most startups seem to embrace 60-80 hour weeks, you keep reading about them and begin to believe that this is normal. After 12 hour marathon coding sessions ‘typical entrepreneurs’ walk 10 metres from desk to bed and collapse in their shared accommodations. Living in such lean conditions makes those crucial first months of business far cheaper. This work ethic and minimial living costs maximises the runway before the seed money runs out.
Paul Graham is one of my favourite bloggers, and his essay entitled The Other Road Ahead he paints a clear picture of how lean a start-up can be, stating "You can literally launch your product as three guys sitting in the living room of an apartment, and a server collocated at an ISP. We did."
No matter how much I’d love to take the lean ramen noodle approach it’s simply not practical for me. I’m a father of two, a husband of one, and an employee. I’ve got a beautiful family with young children, a modest house with a mortgage, and a full-time job to pay the bills. In short, I have a standard existence that I imagine many of my readers share. Living off noodles in a cheap apartment with my co-founders is not the only way that start-ups are built. I’ve taken an alternative route that involves just as much hard graft (harder maybe?) and allows me to remain employed full-time. The food sure is better!
> agree, and will add that kids are expensive, especially if you want good education.
These factors aren't linked if you're willing to put in the effort.
When growing up we lived in one of the worst parts of the state regarding school districts. Parents began to teach us how to read, write, and do basic arithmetic before we ever were sent to public schools. I think I entered first grade reading and writing at an 8th grade level and knowing long division. Took until about 8 years old for me to grasp basic algebra. They held back after that point, otherwise we would've had a mind-numbing experience until at least high school. However the school board was made aware that these first graders could be head of the 6th grade class, so we were allowed to freedom to learn other things (and sit in a few other classes once a week - mostly English, math and history).
Oh, right. College. That was our responsibility. They would help with loan payments a bit, but they certainly couldn't afford to even put us through a state school. We were expected to get scholarships. If we didn't, well, it was that much more we'd have to borrow.
Honestly, I can't blame them. We were certainly a lower-class family. They couldn't afford to move near a nice school district, private schools, or help with private colleges, so they decided to get us WAY ahead of the curve (even though I have memories of crying because at 3 years old I was having obvious difficulties with multiplication. ultimately we were incentivized with spare change). Even then, the nice school districts aren't all that great. What my folks did will still allow any child to get far ahead of any child in the best private schools in your area.
In the end we ended up with extremely large scholarships (that I didn't bother with because I'd still have to take out the equivalent of a home mortgage) and teenage years with an enormous amount of free time. Cost to my parents who only had a high school degree (mom) and a GED (dad)? Some of their free time every night.
Cool story, it is good to look back on your childhood and be proud of the decisions your parents made.
As a parent though, you have to remember that even basic play has a very high value to children. My little 2.75 yr old has dinosaurs in the bath and can count one, two, three, four, lots. He knows the lifecycle of the butterfly.
But I'd much rather that he did what some might consider "useless play" and mastered his social skills and self confidence than any curriculum ideas such as maths or reading. Those can wait until he is ready, though he is a very engaged and switched on little boy.
I think that forcing your children to do certain things that you expect from a 10yr old now is just ruining their childhood and can reduce their delight in learning new things.
Actually, childhood was a blast. The first 8 to 10 years of schoolwork being completely trivialized meant I could be over at some friend's house every day, futzing around in the backyard, or playing with action figures and legos. All the time.
I have few memories of before I was 4 years old.
* Rolling around some cookie monster thing.
* Being sick of flash cards.
* Spraying my grandfather with the hose, and thinking it was hilarious.
* The dog knocking me over to take the entire bag of snausages.
* Playing random games we made up in the backyard with the kids next door.
How much do you vividly remember from when before you were 5 years old? I'm guessing not a whole lot.
Interesting thoughts about memory. My early memories aren't quite that good.
I never found school particularly difficult, and I didn't learn how to read or do maths until school. There is a good chance you wouldn't have found it difficult either - even without the flash cards. Perhaps you are just smart.
It sounds like your childhood was still fairly moderate, it is not like flash cards is the only thing that you did. My main motivation for commenting at all is that I don't want any other parents to get weird, extreme ideas.
Anyway, I think I better gracefully bow out of this discussion before I step on any nerves.
