Parenting myths: Our topic in April

There is this image that has remained ingrained in my childhood memories to this day: Little Niklaus sitting at the kitchen table in front of a plate of saffron rice - and fighting the urge to vomit. «What's on the plate will be eaten,» my parents told me. And: «The poor children in Africa would be happy to get a bowl of rice once a day. Why are you making such a fuss?»

Don't get me wrong: I had a sheltered childhood, there were few arguments with my siblings and my parents were (mostly) relaxed. And yet there were these beliefs that mum and dad followed and often repeated mantra-like. The thing about eating up, for example. Or: «First work, then pleasure», which meant that I always had to bend over my homework first while my friends were already out roller-skating.

«Many of us plan to use a different parenting method to our parents. But that doesn't mean we can automatically implement this in our everyday lives,» says psychologist Felizitas Ambauen . «To do this, we first have to realise which parenting myths shape our behaviour.» I highly recommend the «Parenting myths» dossier by my colleague Sandra Markert to help you examine your own beliefs. She puts 22 common what-parents-believe-to-know phrases to the expert test. I guarantee you will have an aha moment when you read it.

What is intelligence? The Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget once put it like this: «Intelligence is what you use when you don't know what to do.» Which brings us to Chat GPT, the text robot that some believe will do nothing less than change the world. While others see it as a tool of the devil.

Anyone who has ever tried Chat GPT will be fascinated by what this tool can already do: Formulating texts, summarising books, solving mathematical problems. And writing essays. You'd have to be pretty ignorant not to realise where this revolutionary invention can lead. Especially as the chatbot gets a little smarter every day thanks to the analysis of new data.

Before parents and teachers panic and journalists fear for their future, psychoanalyst Peter Schneider offers a little consolation: «Even the smartest computer can only output what was programmed into it at the front.» What the learning and teaching of the future could look like, what the opportunities and risks of Chat GPT are and what you need to know about the mighty answer machine.

Sincerely,

Yours, Nik Niethammer

PS: By the way, the saffron rice thing miraculously worked itself out. At a birthday party, I ate Riz Casimir for the first time in my life and was astonished to realise that a) I liked it and b) rice is not naturally yellow. When I later told her about this unusual culinary experience at home, my mum unobtrusively banished the jar of saffron powder to the back of the kitchen shelf.