Paul Graham

A competition where 10% of kids win awards is ok, and one where 100% do is ok too (though it fools no kid over 4), but a competition where 80% of kids win awards is cruel.

One of the best things you can be for your kids is an audience. Which doesn't mean being uncritically approving. That doesn't fool kids over 2. It means caring about what they care about.

To lecture someone on morality is implicitly to assume moral superiority over them. Adults do this to children, but not (unless they are clergy) to other adults.

One of the most surprising things about being a parent is the amount you have to improvise. Way more than in anything else I've done, despite this being probably the most commonly done thing I've done. I think it's because kids are incomparable generators of chaos.

Kids think their parents are experts, but in many respects they're complete noobs. If you're the oldest child, you're probably the first n-year old your parents have ever had to deal with.

Good thing to do with a 6 yo: type stories they dictate. At that age, the physical act of writing is a bottleneck, so this can release a torrent of imagination. They love seeing their stories printed, like “real” stories they read in books. And it's a fun thing to do together.

Good game to play with small children: go through the alphabet naming some category of things (countries, animals, professional football players) beginning with each letter.

When your child is 5, the two of you are actors in a play. When he's 10, it's more often the case that he and his friends are the actors, and you are the stage crew. One tends to mess up this transition. My trick is to make a conscious effort to notice which times I'm stage crew.

One of the surprising things about being a parent is the degree to which the instinctive protectiveness that kicks in transfers to other kids. You don't just notice when your kid gets too near the curb; you notice when any kid does.

Taught my kids a way to trick bad people. Most bad people assume everyone else has the same motives, so they'll believe you want to do x if they'd want to. E.g. a selfish person will believe you'd want to do something selfish.