# Resources for parents

According to [recent](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/gpZBWNFxymsqnPB92/2024-unofficial-lesswrong-survey-results) [surveys](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WRaq4SzxhunLoFKCs/2023-survey-results), the average age of LessWrong readers is 30±10 years, and about 15% of readers have one or more children. That means that although most readers are childless, there are enough parents here to have a discussion about parenting.

There are various topics that parents can be interested it.

Some advice will apply to *children in general*. Why should we discuss it on LessWrong, if there are already thousands of websites dedicated to this topic? The other websites disagree with each other, and we may want to separate good advice from superstition.

But we also need advice that applies more specifically to our community. According to surveys, the average IQ of LessWrong readers is 135±10, which means that many of our children would classified as *gifted*.[^2g3206j3n2h] That introduces specific opportunities, but also requires us to do some things differently from what most parents do. Finally, many of us will probably want to raise their kids as sharing the values of *science* and *skepticism*.

There are also different stages in life, and different contexts, so we might discuss e.g.

*   pregnancy and childbirth
*   taking care of infants
*   kindergarten, school, or homeschooling
*   educational resources (books, web courses, movies)
*   fun (e.g. toys)
*   extracurricular activities (clubs, projects)
*   dealing with problems

There are also different levels of rigor. I am interested in what the current science says. But I am also interested in your personal experience and opinion. Both are okay, but require different kind of response. If you say "this worked for my child", I can either try it or ignore it, but I won't assume that what works for one child must necessarily work for another. If you say "this is science", get ready for a scientific debate with lots of nitpicking and quoting contradicting sources. Everyone, please keep this distinction in mind.

In my imagination, a perfect outcome of this thread would be a concise wiki page with advice and recommendations, with links to longer debates. Parents are often busy, and may appreciate if you keep it short. But of course, first we need to have the discussion.

Feel free to post your ideas or advice. Also post links to existing resources (e.g. blogs), ideally with a short summary. If you link a scientific article or mention a popular book author, please provide a summary of the key ideas.

If there is a reason to suspect that the advice is not universal but differs from country to country (e.g. how to navigate the school system) please state your country explicitly.

If you want to say multiple unrelated things, considering splitting them into multiple comments, so that each can be upvoted separately. Don't worry about too many comments; if some subthread becomes too large, we can later have a separate discussion about that specific topic.

[^2g3206j3n2h]: I don't really care about the official definition of "gifted"; especially whether your children are slightly above or slightly below the line. (I am saying this explicitly, because there are people who care a lot about this distinction.) Human intelligence is a continuum; good advice for a child with IQ 125 will not be too different from good advice for a child with IQ 135. The individual differences in character traits and interests will probably matter more.