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#642 · Dennis Hackethal, 2 months agoThe article says that solving problems is generally difficult and “could take centuries”; “[...] you might not make a major scientific discovery in your lifetime.”
It then says that having the child solve a problem that the parent is unable to solve, as the referenced article suggests, is unrealistic because you wouldn’t expect a child to be able to help with a hard chemistry problem either.
It’s true that problems at the forefront of science are often extremely difficult; it may take a genius a lifetime to solve even one of them, if he's lucky.
But everyday problems in the household are typically much easier to solve.
For example, parents may want to get their child to eat broccoli for dinner, against the child’s wishes. They then take away his dinner altogether so that the “natural consequence”, as the OP in the original article called it, of the child going hungry that night ‘teaches’ the child that he should eat his broccoli.
In such cases, which are common, Deutsch is right that simply letting the child’s creativity take over really does solve the problem easily. The child simply picks something he wishes to eat instead. If the parents just got out of the way, the problem would practically solve itself.