The Briggs book referenced in the article is a really interesting read. I tracked down a copy after several articles like this one appeared shortly after her death. I assumed that the book primarily focused on child-rearing, but while that aspect of their culture is certainly an aspect of the book, her study of the concept of "ihuma" and how it applies to interactions between her host family and other adults in the same band were even more interesting to me, and her general observations about day to day life both on and off the ice were very enjoyable. It's not a tale of adventure unless you're really excited by cleaning fish, but as a voracious reader of native american culture it provides a great glimpse into a way of life which tragically would not last much longer.

Some of the stuff in here is obvious stuff that nonetheless is great to get reminders of, like leading by example. There was a unique piece that really intrigues me: Putting on a play/putting on a drama.

"Putting on a drama" seems like a pretty romanticized way to say it, but if I understand correctly, it's practicing better responses to events that led to bad behavior. "Johnny, I'm going to steal your toy, and instead of hitting me like you hit your brother, use your words." That kind of explicit practice/rehearsal of skills isn't something I'd have thought of, but it makes total sense as a valuable way to teach and learn.

This was discussed a year ago at length: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19396563

My kids heard this story on the air while we were in the car. My then-eight-year-old remarked, "Yeah, that wouldn't work with us."

First, we mustn't discount the importance of properly expressed anger. Just as there is such a thing as excess or inappropriate anger, there is also such a thing as deficient and inappropriate anger. What "inappropriate" and "excess"/"deficient" anger are will require mature situational judgement on the part of the parent. There's no way around that, and defaulting to "no displays of anger" is not a true substitute. Anger is in fact necessary to convey, both to children and adults (though the degree and manner will vary), the gravity of an injustice and this communication enables remorse, repentance, seeking forgiveness, and edification. It is one elements in shaping discipline and character. That doesn't mean flying off the handle like a madman, of course. Reason should remain intact.

Second, lying to children with silly stories is not a solution. It's one thing if you tell the child a funny story with the understanding that the child doesn't really believe it, but rather finds it both amusing to imagine and comprehends the underlying message. It's an entirely different thing to outright lie. Lying is never admissible, certainly never noble, and will only work to undermine trust toward parents and consequently parental authority.

P.S. Is there perhaps an element of romanticism in this article?

One Inuit parenting technique that works on my kids. If a child hits you or bites you, don't yell at them. Instead pretend to cry in an exaggerated way. I have found this to be way more effective than yelling or timeouts. My oldest is almost 4, so this might not work on older kids. But then older kids do not bite very often anyway.

Tangentially related: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2018/06/09/6169288...

Also something from indigenous cultures.

So a large part is to lie? I don't know. I mean, yes, I get angry by my children, and I don't know any parent that does not. Probably I get angry too often too early. But I really try hard never to lie to my kids. I even show them that I am angry because I think that's part of the game. Kids need to learn that other people have emotions.

But telling stories about horrific creatures to avoid dangerous places? I don't know. I mean yes, I guess it works, but why not tell them the (horrific) truth?

It's easy to shape children so single mindedly when the cultural context of that child is completely controlled.

More simply, public schools and Youtube would break this sort of conditioning in short order. It only works if you only expose a kid to that singular unified world view until they lose easy plasticity. And as a personal note, I don't think that reserving kids to a single world view like that is net good, even if you view numbed anger as benefit (which I also don't).

CBC interview/documentary from Ideas with Paul Kennedy “Never in Anger” parts 1 and 2 -

1) https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2263114454

2) https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2263120301

leading/teaching by example. Show, don't tell. I wonder though what selection pressure made for anger to be a non-beneficial trait in the Inuit society. In our typical society anger, while definitely not always, is a beneficial trait frequently and sufficiently enough to be practiced by many. It seems that in Inuit society anger is almost never a beneficial trait and thus is actively suppressed (so behavioral adaptation while curiously not fully selected out at biological level - probably the key here is "to control anger" in the sense of being in control, not eliminating completely, so that means an ability to deploy only when needed in a very controlled/measured/managed fashion. So may be by showing no anger while it is clearly supposed be there the Inuit parents teach not a "no anger" (which would be a lie as the other commenters pointed out), and instead they teach of how to be a master of your anger instead of a slave to it).

I always find this kind of title weird.

Coming from a relatively "homogenous" (for lack of a better word) ethnicity, I think I can see a point to generalize something like "this is how X people teach their children math", but "control anger"? This seems to me a very personalized thing that varies wildly from family to family.

The article seems fairly problematic.

https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/b0so4h/how_...

EDIT: Well this is proving to be a pretty wild ride. As far as I can tell both this post and its replies (by TheAdamAndChe and ebg13) are getting voted down, which is very surprising to me (I would've expected either/or not both).

That leads me to believe there's something wrong with my link.

Does HN know something about my link that I don't?

You can witness something similar in many rural areas, specifically where people are surviving off the land. Rarely does mother nature or anything else cooperate with plans or expectations. People just get used to it and develop a very workmanlike attitude.

I had to read the title a couple times to make sense of it. I was reading "Intuit Parents", thinking it was some new product...

Highly counterinuitive.

> Winter temperatures could easily dip below minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit

Trivia: you can omit "Fahrenheit" after -40 without introducing ambiguity. -40 F == -40 C. (You can assume it is not K or Ra because those place their 0 points at absolute zero so -40 K or -40 Ra is not possible).

it's funny how the world works

> a Harvard graduate student made a landmark discovery about the nature of human anger.

the article doesn't credit the inuits with the discovery.

> By contrast, Briggs seemed like a wild child, even though she was trying very hard to control her anger. "My ways were so much cruder, less considerate and more impulsive," she told the CBC. "[I was] often impulsive in an antisocial sort of way. I would sulk or I would snap or I would do something that they never did."

but instead credits Briggs, who is the one exhibiting primitive behavior and being exposed to the higher path

Inuit people have terrible life outcomes with disease, alcoholism, and suicide, and while there might be a lot of reasons for this, I would still take any of their examples with a grain of salt.

"P.S. Is there perhaps an element of romanticism in this article?"

Totally. With all the readings about controlling anger, I missed a reference to the inuit custom of violence towards women.

https://www.pauktuutit.ca/abuse-prevention/gender-based-viol...

Although, maybe that violence is without anger. Would that be better?

>Second, lying to children with silly stories is not a solution. It's one thing if you tell the child a funny story with the understanding that the child doesn't really believe it, but rather finds it both amusing to imagine and comprehends the underlying message. It's an entirely different thing to outright lie. Lying is never admissible, certainly never noble, and will only work to undermine trust toward parents and consequently parental authority.

Were you one of those kids who never figured out the Santa Claus thing on your own and is still salty about it?

Obviously just being angry but keeping cool while saying something like, “I am angry” is fine. I think that the point is that usually anger comes with raised voices, yelling or worse which is not going to work. I don’t know if you have kids but I noticed that yelling at my 3 year old son only lead to him yelling at me in other circumstances. Similarly, even yelling at the dog to stop barking had the same result. I was teaching him to yell not how to behave. I do disagree with the article in that timeouts are highly effective if you get rid of the yelling aspect.

Your entire point is relative, perhaps to your individual views or your society's norms. "Properly expressed anger" can be a stern talk in one culture and violence in another. Perhaps it's best to keep in mind that there is never a universal solution, only different options that have different effectiveness based on a particular situation

In the Western culture, lying is primarily connected to deception. In cultures where Semitic religions have not influenced, lying and deception are not same: one can lie, without intending to deceive. That's how one has to look at.

One can lie for multiple reasons. For instance, to avoid conflict; or because one is not in a mood. Deception is one among many reasons.

Why the western culture focuses so much on the unity between lying/falsehood and deception? This has to do with the secularization of Christianity: Christian ideas becoming less Christian, more 'universal'. Satan, falsity, lying, deception--all form the unity in Christianity; in secular thinking, Satan is pushed out, but the unity between lying, falsehood and deception is present. This unity does not exist for Inuits or Chinese or even east Indians. It is part of child rearing practices in China and in India, to teach kids to lie.

This isn't a lie- it's mythology. The information is stored in the emotion and values presented in the story, not the literal details.

Most native american cultures have a complex mythology that explains the worldview, values, and philosophy of the culture. This is how the culture is transmitted, and even young children in these societies are used to mythology, and understand how to use it without interpreting it as a simple literal explanation of 'fact.'

The 'literal truth' doesn't work in place of mythology, it is hard to remember and interest kids with unless they've experienced it directly... unlike mythology, it fails to serve as a stable and effective way of transmitting cultural values over long time spans. The emotional content is critical for memorization, and attention... and also serves as a sort of 'checksum' where erroneous changes to the story generally reduce the emotional content, thereby causing the original 'correct' version to remain dominant.

Humans are really bad at estimating certain kinds of dangers.

Invisible and slow acting dangers are consistently under-estimated, immediate & physical dangers are recognized easily.

Teaching a very young kid that even if they are warm right now (especially inside, before going outside, or in the sun) that they still need to keep their hat on because they might lose it or not put it on correctly when it becomes cold and cold can kill.

Cold is invisible, it's not immediate. Replacing it with a captivating story about a mythical monster that will come and get you should serve to stay in their mind better & they might even enjoy hearing about it.

This isn't a lie in the way we'd typically talk about lies. It isn't meant to deceive. It's a myth.

As a child grows and discovers that there isn't really a monster in the sea, are they going to resent their parents when they understand the explanation?

I think that's the difference here.

It's just reverse Santa Claus.

Besides, I think of education as a series of increasingly small lies anyway. If you can get the kids to model correct behavior, you're just helping them visualize success. Is it a self delusion to visualize success for yourself? Maybe, but so what?

That's what I took away as well. At some point all these stories have to be retracted and the truth told. It was a big deal for us as kids about Santa, the Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, etc. What if there were hundreds more though? What if the parent only corrected a portion of these? What if the situation never arose again where the child would identify the lie and instead propagate it to offspring?

Perhaps we've just solved how religions start... /s

You could compare oral cultures to mnemonics (memory aids) — the more extreme the story, the easier it is to remember / recall the underlying message. That's how our brains work. I recommend a book about oral cultures (and storytelling) called: The Spell of the Sensuous.

If you told a child "you see, when you go in the water, your lungs stop being able to absorb oxygen and your brain shuts down - after long enough - we cannot start it back up again" they aren't going to understand.

Using allegories you can put things into terms the child understands more easily. As they get older you can explain the truth behind the "lie" or story, if you like.

I remember in high school learning electrons were balls. Then, later I learn they are actually fields. Was I lied to?

I suppose you'd count the exclamation of pain after strike that a parent asked their child make against the parent as a lie, too.

But, then I would know for sure you have missed the point.

You can just base the story on the truth, you don't have to lie.

Curious on your comment... Do you do Easter bunny, Tooth Fairy or Santa with your kids?

So you told your kids Santa Claus doesn't exist at the first possible opportunity? There are many positive reasons to lie.

You mean like how we lie about Santa Claus?

> why not tell them the (horrific) truth?

Because kids are not capable of understanding it.

No offense, but "problematic" is a weasel word[1]. Based on your link, a better way to describe it is inaccurate or misleading. The link describes how intuit used to spank their children in the past, and how the studies the post is based off of were poorly designed.

[1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/weasel%20word

Any discussion of parenting and Native peoples needs to include the context of the Indian Residential Schools. The state (Canada and the US) would force Native children to attend boarding schools with restricted parental visitation rights (legally compulsory in Canada 1894-1948, and de-facto compulsory for the 20 years before and after). The schools would punish the children for 'acting Native' (wearing traditional clothing, not speaking english, etc). It was a program of forced cultural assimilation (sometimes called 'cultural genocide') which was supported by saying that Native parents were bad influences on their children.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_sc...

Any attempt to remove Native children from their parents needs to acknowledge the use of children by the government to attempt to wipe out Native culture. Around a quarter of Native children were removed from their homes in the US by child protective services and permanently placed in non-Native homes. This was such an issue that the Indian Child Welfare act requires that Native tribes and Native family have the first opportunity to claim custodianship over Native children removed from the home.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Child_Welfare_Act

So for the comment you link to, I have the following objections:

- Native people were raised in government schools (until 1970) which used corporal punishment regularly. They're criticizing parenting styles which the government taught parents as kids.

- Canada and the US have a long history of removing lots of kids from Native parents. Of course Native leaders are going to care about CPS rules

- The SSC guy is completely ignoring how shitty White Canadians have treated Native people when he compares abuse rates between Inuit and "Western" (White) populations. This reeks of a long history of calling Native people "savage".

If people find this link valuable can somebody please just rephrase this comment however it's meant to be phrased and repost it so that it doesn't getting buried due to my poor wording?

It's surreal to me to see a bunch of sibling comments higher up arguing over its conclusions when the article's premise is in serious question.

I think your downvotes are entirely because you used the word “problematic” which some people feel is often used to shut down debate.

A shame, because your link pretty convincingly shows that the article’s claims about the Inuit are simply false.

Please don't go on about downvotes like that. It's tediously meta and breaks the site rules: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.

"Problematic" is a kind word for cherry-picked, misinterpreted, hypergeneralized, and contrary to available evidence with a hefty dose of noble savage xenoromanticism thrown in.