We took our kids to Disney World once.

When asked what their favorite part of the trip was, they responded..

The hot tub.

At the hotel.

My kids light up the most when I am fully engaged with them, fully present, entertaining their ideas, and asking questions.

Their favorite family trip so far? When we traveled to Arkansas to mine for crystals. AKA, dig in the dirt all day. They saw it on a YouTube video. They asked to go. So we obliged. I had never been to Arkansas. It's beautiful.

We stayed at a resort, Diamonds Old West Cabins, with a huge playground outside the cabins, archery, and a bubble party every evening at 6 pm.

They still talk about that trip.

We live in a walkable part of city. In a park 1 block from our apartment, there are "baby trains" (small electric trains, on rubber wheels). They cost ~$2 for 5 minutes, plus 10 minutes of your kid screaming "want more". Subway in Almaty is $0.2 (for adult), unlimited time. So when my son was almost 2 y.o. and walked well, I decided to take him to the real subway instead of enduring that vulgarity (granted the station is just 2 blocks away). He loved it a lot. Shouted "too-too" when the train was departing. Wanted more and more. He couldn't speak then, so he was turning my head with his hands, to make me see the approaching train. Also, it was a hot sunny day of +35°C, but in subway, it was 10 degrees cooler. The first time, we travelled 1,5 hours strait, 2-3 stations back and forth. I sweated because I had to carry a rucksack and a 6 kg of folded stroller. But that was unforgettable.

Certainly it's true that kids can get a lot of joy out of something that to an adult seems really small or boring. But the flip side is kids can get totally emotionally distraught or enraged over tiny things.

Are these two sides of the same coin, and come from having just a smaller world, where small things can feel very big to a developing brain? Or as an adult with a fully-formed brain and access to the larger world, can we separate them and find that kind of unrestrained joy in the small stuff without also being swept away by small disappointments?

This really hits home. Like everyone, I tend to fall into routines and get comfortable with the familiar. But having kids constantly pushes you out of that comfort zone because they're excited by things that might seem small or inconvenient to you. Embracing their enthusiasm is not only good for them but for you too. It brings some variety and breaks the routine. I always have to resist the urge to tell my kids, "No, we're not doing that because..." Just going with the flow and joining in their little adventures is incredibly rewarding. It's not just about making them happy—you gain just as much. Their joy is just the bonus.

When I was a kid in suburban Australia my parents would organize a semi-annual ‘bus-train-ferry’ trip. It was a school holiday tradition where - in hindsight - we’d do the sort of daily commute that thousands of working adults would do every morning…except for a kid the magic of a bus to a train station, a train into the city, and then a ferry across the river was just great fun. A day ticket for a family back in the 1980s? Probably next to nothing, but a priceless memory.

I went to the transport office and got a map of all the local tram routes - we hung it on the wall, and my child and I rode every tram from one end to the other.

Took a few weeks to ride all the trams in Helsinki, and it got a bit boring towards the end as several tram routes terminated in the same location. But every tram we'd get on in the middle, ride to one end of the line and go out for a walk, then ride to the other end.

Recently I suggested we do it again, as the trams have been renumbered a little, and there are two new lines available but he's lost interest. Shame, but doing the original routes was a lot of fun and I still have the route map on my wall along with the star-stickers we placed on it to mark the route numbers we'd completed!

For my middle child's 1st Birthday we realized we could give him everything he ever wanted for about $8. He opened a few boxes of bandaids, tissue boxes, and a roll of toilet paper. Played for hours.

Premise of article is wrong. Kids do get excited about the same things as adults; novel and intriguing things within reach. These things just aren't exciting any more to adults. That's the only difference. An adult that's never been on a train, but never could, or was never allowed, will find it exciting too.

I took a bus home with my toddler one day when waiting for the planned ride was going to take a longer time than I was originally expecting. I didn't think much of it, but for him the bus ride was WAY more interesting than the zoo we had just visited!

For their 3rd Birthday the daughter of a friend just wanted to ride the bus. So all our friends and their kids got on the right bus at the right time and place so we were all on the bus by the time the Birthday girl got on. We had a riot of a time going around our little town, and the bus driver and other passengers all sang Happy Birthday and “the wheels on the bus”

Brilliant idea for a memorable 3rd Birthday!

The issue is you don’t know which of the 0-5 dollar products to spend that will make them excited.

A strategy is therefore to buy lots of cheap stuff and experiences, and let the kids have the option to choose. Then throw away the stuff they don’t care for.

If you buy expensive things, you tend to try to force that thing onto the kid, which can be counter productive.

This sort of content feels good in the immediacy but ultimately lessens the quality of hn.

I'm not concerned about this post specifically, but I feel that we should be more critical of things like this making it onto hn. I come to hn to mostly hear about tech, tech advances, startups, etc. I don't come here to read feel good (and admittedly, very cute) stories. They have their place, but I feel that place is not hn.

When I was five or six, my grandmother took me and my siblings on a train to Toronto (maybe a two hour trip) around Christmas to walk down some street (no idea which) and look at the Christmas displays in shop windows. It was all magic to me.

I don't think we ever bought anything although she must have fed us something. It's one of my favorite memories and I still love trains. I'm hoping to ride Via from Toronto to Vancouver in a cabin car someday soon!

Yesterday the rain was torrential when I picked up my 5yo from school with my 2yo. I brought wellies and we walked up and down the streams of water running down the hill. The kids were more excited than anything we've paid for recently.

When I was growing up, it was a Christmas tradition for my family to take the local train system (SEPTA) from Delaware to Philly to visit the exhibits at the old Gallery mall. It was a rough, dirty, and crowded ride, and it felt like forever as it stopped at every station. My grandparents would take my mother when she was growing up.

Decades later it still left a positive impact on me.

My son loves to ride a bus too, I'm not a fan, and near me buses are single deck, quite old and unpleasant and really quite expensive.

I discovered they city park and ride scheme was the perfect solution. It's cheaper than parking in the city centre and unlimited bus rides to and from the centre on nice new double decker buses.

Spending time with kids > giving stuff to kids.

If you're a bit stable yourself (& used to skateboard yourself), try long-boarding (4 year old in front of you with plenty of protection, there's enough space on a standard longboard to fit an adult & child).

Or biking them in a bicycle trailer to the store/school.

Surfing is one I'm looking forward to myself, I've never done it either myself!

Tangential anecdote: When I went to a buffet as a child, I loaded up on mashed potatoes, fries, onion rings, etc. I would be told by family and friends that I was effectively wrong for choosing those foods because seafood, meat, etc., was more expensive and therefore more valuable and worth choosing.

I don't think that was a bad outcome necessarily, because I picked foods that were super unhealthy and cater to thin dopamine hits. But I do think the reasoning (value vs. health) was off as it started instilling a sense of letting perceived/imagined value reign over personal instincts and inclinations.

Reading this felt like a call to be more present, pay more attention to the small things, do things for their own sake, etc.

> "No, no don't play with the wrapping paper! Look at the truck vroom vroom!" to no avail. She preferred the wrapping paper.

Your daughter a cat, by any chance? It's just the same with cats. They don't give a shit about anything you buy them, sometimes not even food - if there's packing peanuts, packing paper or Amazon cardboard boxes, that is more important.

This was very sweet :’) I wish my dad would have said yes to the train more when I was a kid. Now he’s the one asking me to ride one.

I've been spending my entire adult life trying to rediscover this spiritual joy of being a child. I remember it so fondly. My daughter is about to turn 2 and I'm secretly hoping that she can help me find at least a little of it.

I didn't have that particular kind of idyllic childhood, that fairytale cherished time of having engaged, caring parents whose primary goal was to spend quality time with me. But with that came a different kind of freedom, different experiences.

For example, on one occasion my mother and stepfather wanted a week together, and obtained it by taking the three of us for a full week stay at a big amusement park during a school holidays... and oh you better believe that I have an extremely joyous set of memories of spending all day every day unsupervised in a happy dream of endless roller coasters and water slides!

Our mum used to take us for short hiking trips. I don't remember the hiking, but I still do remember the train rides to get there. Those are some of the best memories from my childhood.

I have similar memories. And I remember drawing similar conclusions. When children are little a little walk with Daddy was great. We used to walk about a whole mile for me to get a coffee and for her to get a fruit juice... and guess what ? on the way back it was bus time.

I think many adults also get distraught or enraged by tiny things - it is an emotional regulation problem, not an age problem (but adults can and should be better than children).

An analogy I've heard in the past is that emotions are like a button fixed in a box with a ball in it. When you're younger the box is smaller so the ball hits the buttons more often as there is less free space. As you grow, your box grows too, so your ball has more space in the box and more empty space on the walls for the ball the bounce off of, making the buttons less likely to be pushed.

>But the flip side is kids can get totally emotionally distraught or enraged over tiny things.

Oof isn't this the truth. The tiniest things will drive my son into full meltdowns right now.

From what I've read, children's brains haven't fully developed the capability for emotional regulation. So not only are they less experienced, they might actually be physically incapable of managing their own emotions. Keeping this in mind helped me survive the toddler years. :)

When you're a kid, so many experiences are new, so the emotional response is higher.

A kid might fall off their bike, get a minor scrape on their knee, and cry because while the pain is pretty minor, it might actually be the greatest pain they've ever experienced in their life.

As an adult, you're probably not experiencing a lot of new things, and the new things you're experiencing are likely variations of things you've already done.

Though uh...I've seen my wife's boobs thousands of times, yet my brain still reacts like it did the first time. >.>

Yes. Basically kids can have strong emotional reactions to seemingly small things.

I don’t think it’s an either or. They are two sides of the same coin in that “kids experience stronger emotions”, but my experience leads me to see multiple reasons for that.

There’s the external trigger and how it fits into their life experience. Something that may be a 6/10 fun for you may literally be the most fun the child has ever had because they have less life experience. Something that’s a 2/10 pain might be literally the most pain they ever remember experiencing.

Which plays into how much practice they have managing these emotions. You get better at dealing with pain and frustration with practice. But no amount of practicing dealing with a paper cut will ever prepare you for being stabbed. Curling a 5lb dumbbell every day won’t get you to curling 100lbs.

But this is also impacted by the options they have available to respond to these emotions. As an adult if you’re frustrated you have the practice, fully realized autonomy, and societal trust to make real changes to address the issues in front of you. You don’t need to deal with this entirely internally. As a child, often your options essentially boil down to “deal with it”. And even as they expand, it takes time to practice with the new options available to you.

So an adult will experience the emotions less heightened and they also have more practice and better tools for handling them. The child will experience a stronger emotion, have little practice in managing the emotion, and few other options to address the overall situation.

Which can easily get into a negative feedback loop. Something is frustrating. The emotion is strong and you don’t know what to do about it. That’s frustrating. You can’t fix the situation. That’s frustrating. Now you’re more frustrated, GOTO 10. Pretty soon the emotions have compounded into something overwhelming.

And a child, much like an adult that hits this point, is going to have a meltdown. I don’t think adults are much better equipped at handling themselves when they are experiencing overwhelming emotions, it’s just much more difficult for them to get there in the first place.

As an adult, I think you can absolutely learn to find more joy in the small things. We have to, by necessity, filter some of the small things out of our days so just being an adult doesn’t become overwhelming. Making a conscious effort to be present and aware can go a long way. This is, I think, what’s happening when people have these mundane experiences with children and find them magical—simply having the child there to point things out and force them to be aware can bring back a lot of that small joy. It will never rise to the same level as the child’s because you come into it with a greater range of experience and it often lacks the novelty, but it can be made into much more than it normally is for you. And you will certainly be dragged down much less by any negative parts of the experience.

Anyway, my two cents as someone that spends a lot of time thinking about this both in terms of managing my own emotions and happiness as well as being a dad… And someone that’s trying _very_ hard to procrastinate right now.

IMO the near constant dismissive, negative, and / or non-constructive criticism is what devalues HN. Genuine curiosity, sharing of contextual and tangential experiences, and constructive criticism are what makes it great. At its best its only about technology because thats where many inquisitive types end up.

In this particular case, the spark it ignited in me and others was precisely that inquisitive nature - about eschewing the expected value in lifes activities and instead reaching for that inner genuine interest can turn many experienced upside down. Maybe in reaching too far, but that was my take away from it. If similar stories were reposted ad nauseum i doubt they would make the front page and thus for me at least i am unconcerned with its presence.

Maybe a little bit of humanity and feel good is just what HN needs! These computers and software and such are after all for... humans mostly.

I come to HM for technology matters, but I am genuinely interested to see that the many geeks here from hardware nerd over full-stack developer to investor or founder are all also human beings that have ordinary lives and ordinary problems.

It is valuable content to read on HN how fellow geeks see other spheres of life.

You may check out the mess of LinkedIn. Fully professional, almost no "off-topic" posts. People always write they're happy, proud, excited. Future tech vids. Productivity porn vids. "Check out our next feature." Successful success 24/7.

Another collective blog I read turned into a flood of corporate "why work with us" or "how to patch KDE under FreeBSD", or "Zuckerberg just said X. This news was translated by XYZ personal brand consulting co.".

Tech blogs that I read, turned into either stream of USB gadgets, or into big tech geopolitics. "Google wants to flank Facebook with X, Nvidia won't let AMD do Y, Altman thinks Z, waters changed."

This post about kids and normal life is what makes HN different.

OP here. I see where you're coming from and I even agree with you. I seek and like tech posts on HN.

That being said, I enjoy reading (and writing) human stories as well! Plus, it's nice to read the many stories people are sharing in the comments of this post. It shows that our community isn't as cold/ruthless as some may think :)

At the risk of sounding old and cranky I'm inclined to agree with you. The story made me smile no doubt. But I was not expecting a public transportation story.

I don’t mind it in small doses and trust the community to vote appropriately.

Even the Wall Street Journal has lighthearted “A-hed” articles, which have occupied valuable space on their front page for 83 years and counting.

I think the comment about the kid liking the puddle the best at the zoo is the best comment I have read on HN in the past decade.

90% of HN is off topic drivel, pointless ranting , overall tired and unoriginal, when it’s not flat out wrong. I include most of my contributions in these 90%. Genuinely interesting contributions are then few and far between amongst the 10% which actually desserve to exist. If it’s quality you seek, you can close your account right now and go do something useful with your time instead.

At least, this post is soulful and happy.

The article spurred a bunch of interesting comments. The comments are why I come to HN.