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scythelast Thursday at 2:43 PM0 repliesview on HN

I think there are basically two kinds of micromanagement that need to be distinguished. The first one is encouraging your child to do something which you think has direct benefits, like learning to swim, which is good exercise and prevents drowning. The second is encouraging your kid to do something because you expect indirect social benefits: either some admissions officer will be impressed by an applicant who plays the oboe or the child will socialize with "the right crowd" or something like that. It's the second kind that can become pernicious because it creates an opportunity for the parent's own status anxieties and prejudices to be projected onto the child, like "lacrosse players are smarter than basketball players" so you want the kid to play lacrosse and not basketball even though they are basically comparable activities and this is dismissive of the needs and capabilities of children to learn to navigate social environments and pressures for themselves.