Scott Alexander

Comparatively tame, but still unfortunate.

Is that bad enough that my parents were right?

If my kids end up as weird compared to me as I am compared to my parents, will I tolerate them as graciously as my parents still somehow tolerate me?

At this age, none of this affects me as much as my visceral reaction when I see a phone-addicted toddler.

I shudder to see a three-year-old in the grocery store screaming, phone, phone, until her parents relent and let her watch algorithmically recommended YouTube videos of dancing monsters.

And I know my kids would fall for it.

I got them a toy keyboard-like object once, the kind where you push a button and it plays terrible nursery rhymes.

Sometimes I would not want to hear terrible nursery rhymes and would turn it off.

And this is part of a more general argument against super stimuli.

I used to let my kids stand on top of the table under supervision.

They loved it.

Every time they saw me, they would grab me and point to the table.

But sometimes I didn't want to supervise them that closely.

Or there were breakable objects on the table, and then they, okay, mostly my son, would throw tantrums.

Eventually, my wife made a no-tables rule so that they would lose the expectation that pestering us might work.

This has expanded into a broader principle.

Don't let toddlers know a super stimulus exists if you're not prepared to fight them about whether they get to have it all the time.

Here is a picture of a table, with a tablecloth draped over it, and a child is peeking out from under the tablecloth with a cheeky grin.

It's captioned, under the table is fine, I guess.

So, I'm not giving in yet.