Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?
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I'm interested in pushing the boundaries of what I can do in order to give my kid(s) a leg up in the future that may not be typical, strictly legal, or within the overton window of parenting.
The typical parenting strategies I already "get" and have plans for. Read early, go beyond school, foster the development of valuable hobbies and life skills, blah blah blah. My parents did a pretty good job IMO so I'm just really taking their formula and tweaking it.
I'm looking to optimize intelligence, SMV, athletic ability, and independence. Examples of things I'm considering but haven't done much research or fact-finding on:
Providing HGH at the optimal times to support height and muscle development.
Figuring out ways to accumulate wealth they can eventually access and avoid taxes.
Ways to give them maximum freedom of movement/flexible citizenship.
Ensuring they're guided away from porn/blue-pill sexuality guidance and (ideally) start off with more information on TECHNIQUE than I did. I think they'll figure this out themselves but I'm struggling to figure out how to do it without a profoundly weird conversation.
Put another way, I'm willing to take on risk to maximize long-term benefit for them, at what I think is a higher rate than the baseline parent. Off-the-wall thoughts and criticisms appreciated.
Selecting their friend group is probably one of the more important things. No idea how to do that though.
Most children and teenagers have no idea how to dress and groom themselves. Lookism is everywhere. Ergo, make sure that they look good. If they want to be cyber-goth and you can't stop them, at least make sure that they dress as good-looking cyber-goth.
Also make sure that they exercise. As in, they have a fitness program and measure progress.
Both of these require you to act the example, but you already do that, right?
In their teenage years, you want them to have good references for their college applications and for job searches: Find a good friend who runs a company. Pay them under the table to hire you kid to a prestigious position for their age, and provide glowing references when asked.
This is pretty far down the line, but there's been discussions in rationalist circles about "speedrunning" collage, e.g. https://old.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/yqtwit/speedrunning_high_school_and_college/
I think the benefits of this are pretty clear, even though most commentators seem to be against it for IMO bad reasons: If you finish college one year faster, it's one less year of being stuck in an institution and one year extra of prime-life freedom. Also, finishing college one year early looks very good on your CV.
Setting your children up for this should be pretty easy. Get an idea of if they want to go into higher education and if so: what school and field a few years in advance.
Find the course material and start working trough it (easier if you homeschool).
Give them permission to do this weird thing: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/secrets-of-the-great-families
Help them make a plan for their university years. What courses go which year? Should they aim to finish as fast as possible with the lowest possible passable grades, or should they strive for a certain GPA?
Hire them a private tutor (it's weird how few university students do this, the gains are enormous)
For the unethical part: help them cheat. Help them write their papers etc. Collage is only signaling anyway.
I've considered a ton of this!
Agreed on Dress Well, this is something I agree with that I came to far too late in life. Sucks cause my parents tried to help out. In terms of exercise and fitness, I did/do OK on this but could be better.
In terms of speed running college, I'm super into points 1-4. I'm down to help my kids cheat in high school because the material is so worthless and such a waste of time, but there wasn't a whole lot of collegiate course work that was worth throwing away.
One challenge I'd find is that I absolutely loved college, more than my first couple years out of it. Perhaps the deal could be that if they finish in 3 they can hang out and audit classes with their buddies/make money tutoring.
Cheating in college may still be worth it even if the material is worth learning. Writing a thesis is a pain, you don't learn much from the constant re-editing and messing with LaTeX. Having some help on that is useful. And there might be a single course your stuck on (happens to the best).
I didn't love university much, but I can see the point of doing it at normal pace if you enjoy it. I've still have a hard time seeing how 5 years of college trumps 4 years of 25% more college + 1 year doing whatever you want.
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