I'm team "nature" for sure.

It's pretty freeing. And I use parenting books not to try to change my kids, but to try to understand them better and have better relationships with them.

The phrase I’ve used for a long time is that we are all just “parenting around the margins.” Our kids are who they are. We can not be abusive, which has the potential to screw them up. But other than that, we aren’t making huge changes to who our kids are.

For the PP who talked about “giving up.” I don’t think that is the right term. But there is some ROI work to do to figure out what helps. I have a kid who will never do a sport, but she does dance and musical theater which gives her some exercise. She is never going to be a superstar at dance or musical theater, but she likes it. She has some inattentive ADHD, and I do help her stay focused on homework. I also send her to mathnasium which has really helped her. That said, her processing speed is horrifically slow and I know I can never change that. She is going to have to find a career path wheeler that isn’t a gate. She is in middle school and we already talk about things like finding study partners in college to help her stay on task.

For my kid with profound intellectual disability, I am just focused on making her safe and relatively happy. That means she watches TV all day supervised. It is fine. She will end up in an intermediate care facility. “Screen time” is the least of her problems.

I’m not sacrificing all personal time to maximize my kids’ potential. That would be silly. I also don’t push them to do things they don’t enjoy. Piano and violin are not critical to one’s existence, nor is a sport. I would seriously consider dropping some things that your kids just aren’t that into.

I used to be in the nurture camp but I think I am more in the nature camp now after having two sons who are complete opposites despite being raised in the same household. Their differences were so readily apparently from day 1.

I now try to live by two principles: first, that though I might not be able to influence much or anything in my kids life, the one aspect I can probably influence is my relationship with them. So I will help them with school or whatever they need because I want them to know that I will always be there for them and won't let them flounder and fail. But I try to remember not to put anything ahead of the relationship so I try not to force activities or benchmarks/expectations.

I saw this wonderful TED talk once that talked about nature vs nurture. Her conclusion from research and lived experience is that parents absolutely do influence their children, but just not in a way you can predict, just like how different people can take away drastically different conclusions from the same experience. So parent for today and not for some future goal.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For those of you firmly in the "nature" camp, how do you not throw your hands up in the air on all the hard stuff, like helping a kid who struggles with executive functioning skills get through their homework or helping another kid with no athletic talent try to find a somewhat enjoyable sport? Why am I working so hard to save for college, shuttle kids to activities, pay for musical instruments, etc? Why not just focus on my hobbies and let the chips fall with the kids?

I don’t do a lot of that stuff.
I let my kids with no athletic talent be on the math team and do the school musical and model UN.
I’m saving for college for my kids that want to go, but I’m not forcing college and hiring a bunch of tutors for my child that wants to do a vocational school in high school.
I pay for musical instruments and voice lessons for my kids who are interested, and I help them practice. But if they aren’t interested, then they aren’t interested. And if they move on and stop practicing, then they move on and I stop paying for and driving to lessons.
You should do your own hobbies and have your own life, pp.

I'm the PP. I have a life and hobbies, but I also sacrifice a lot for my kids. One in particular needs a lot of supervision on homework. Perhaps it's pointless if I have no impact on his life trajectory. There are days when I want to drop the rope and let him sink or swim, but I just can't.

I have some identical twins in my mix of kids and couldn’t agree more that it’s mostly nature. Their scores on standardized testing through high school really tracked each other. It is really fascinating.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you firmly in the "nature" camp, how do you not throw your hands up in the air on all the hard stuff, like helping a kid who struggles with executive functioning skills get through their homework or helping another kid with no athletic talent try to find a somewhat enjoyable sport? Why am I working so hard to save for college, shuttle kids to activities, pay for musical instruments, etc? Why not just focus on my hobbies and let the chips fall with the kids?

I don’t do a lot of that stuff.
I let my kids with no athletic talent be on the math team and do the school musical and model UN.
I’m saving for college for my kids that want to go, but I’m not forcing college and hiring a bunch of tutors for my child that wants to do a vocational school in high school.
I pay for musical instruments and voice lessons for my kids who are interested, and I help them practice. But if they aren’t interested, then they aren’t interested. And if they move on and stop practicing, then they move on and I stop paying for and driving to lessons.
You should do your own hobbies and have your own life, pp.

Anonymous wrote:For those of you firmly in the "nature" camp, how do you not throw your hands up in the air on all the hard stuff, like helping a kid who struggles with executive functioning skills get through their homework or helping another kid with no athletic talent try to find a somewhat enjoyable sport? Why am I working so hard to save for college, shuttle kids to activities, pay for musical instruments, etc? Why not just focus on my hobbies and let the chips fall with the kids?

I am 17:03. No, I do not throw my hands up. I use my type-A personality to tutor my kids, get them good outside tutors, we did all the special camps, classes, no TV before 5 years old, etc. In the end, none of it mattered too much - my kids are college/late HS now. I mean I guess I do not know what the outcome would have been with all my hard work to support the kids, but my nurture barely moved the needle. I know I would have regretted not trying though.

For those of you firmly in the "nature" camp, how do you not throw your hands up in the air on all the hard stuff, like helping a kid who struggles with executive functioning skills get through their homework or helping another kid with no athletic talent try to find a somewhat enjoyable sport? Why am I working so hard to save for college, shuttle kids to activities, pay for musical instruments, etc? Why not just focus on my hobbies and let the chips fall with the kids?

Totally genetic lottery. My kids got none of my cognitive abilities and both have average IQ and do not do well in school despite hard work. I went to an Ivy, was always the tippy top of everything, blah, blah, blah. I was blindsided by genetics/ nature winning out and always thought my kids would follow in my footsteps. On the plus side, they also got none of my (non-existent) athletic ability, which has worked out to their benefit tremendously.

I a 10000% nature v. nurture convert.

If people around me knew how I was raised they would be in shock because you would never be able to tell. I am the poster child for a dysfunctional family and no longer have ties to any of my family.

I learned to trust, love, have fun, hope, live and thrive from being lucky enough to learn from those around me - friends, mentors, colleagues, my husband. I was drawn to stability, reason and happiness. I made the right friends and read the right books and most of all I was lucky enough to find my own path.

Nurture would have been nice but nature was enough. You just cannot teach some things. Everything is as it should be.

Anonymous wrote:. Did you ever listen to the “This American Life” episode about the babies that were switched at birth? Both exhibited so many tendencies and personality attributes that were typical of their bio family, not the family who raised them.

We have so much less control over how our children grow up than we think.

Agree x100

I was lucky to survive my childhood. My kid has a lot of my genetic qualities, but her childhood is heaven compared to mine. I would say it's like the difference between raising a child in poverty and wealth. You can only rise or fall so far from the circumstances of your birth. Whenever anyone asks if I have any regrets in life, I don't say it but the answer is the circumstances of my birth.

My DD is so much like me it’s scary, and we have grown up under such different circumstances. It’s wild to watch. I have no control over who she is becoming, really.

. Did you ever listen to the “This American Life” episode about the babies that were switched at birth? Both exhibited so many tendencies and personality attributes that were typical of their bio family, not the family who raised them.

We have so much less control over how our children grow up than we think.

Watching my kids exhibit the same tendencies and strengths and weaknesses I did, despite having a very different childhood environment from what I had, really woke me up to how much of ourselves realy is inherent.

Best we can do as parents is to recognize that and try to nudge in a good direction.