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The Education of Our Children
I was looking through some old pictures. My kids are 19, 21, and 22 now, and I miss the days when they were little girls. They grew up on a mountaintop in northeast Tennessee. We had 60 acres, surrounded by National Forest – it was a great place for kids to grow up. Anyway, I noticed a pattern in these old pictures. See if you notice the same thing I did, in this series of pictures of my youngest daughter, when she was 8-10 years old:
Ok, so what do you notice about these pictures?
The first thing I noticed was that she seemed to spend a lot of time doing stuff that eight-year-olds aren’t supposed to do. Too dangerous. Riding in the back of pickups (while carving a stick with a knife), riding 4-wheelers (overloaded with other kids), climbing up a slippery hot metal roof to help her Dad sweep the chimney, and so on. You may be thinking, “Didn’t she get hurt a lot?” And I admit, yes, she did. But she was indestructible (like most kids), and bounced back. Nothing serious – lots of scrapes and bruises, a couple of broken bones. But valuable lessons learned each time.
I also noticed how often she was working. Not playing frisbee with her Dad, but helping me do jobs that needed to be done. She was expected to contribute to the family at a very early age. We went fishing too, but we worked a lot. And she helped.
But the big thing I noticed was how many of the pictures were of her learning a new skill from me, or my Mom, or a friend from church. How to knit. How to shoot. How to sew. How to fish. How to cook. She can operate a chain saw, various power tools, impact wrenches, etc. She can drive a stick shift, operate a skid steer, change tires, change her oil, fix a toilet, replace light fixtures, and split firewood. And so on and so on and so on.
It’s incredible how much time we spend teaching our kids. Not schools or tutors. Family. Families spend so much time teaching kids, that the contribution of schools to their education seems almost insignificant. Now that schools are teaching less and indoctrinating more, their contribution becomes even more insignificant.
My daughter just got back from her first year of college. She goes to a very elite university on the east coast. It’s so expensive that I wouldn’t have even considered it if she had not gotten an athletic scholarship. Very selective school. Top shelf students. But she was amazed at how spoiled, and how helpless, her housemates were. She lived with four other girls, none of whom knew how to mop a floor, clean a toilet, cook a meal, or any other basic skills. My daughter basically ran the household for the rest of them. She was amazed.
She was also dismayed – “Are all the kids my age this helpless?”
I told her that it may not be all bad. As kids become more and more soft, spoiled, and helpless, kids like my daughter will stand out more. And as schools get worse and worse, and parents get softer and less self-sufficient, kids that are raised well will have more and more of an advantage. This isn’t good for our society, but it may be good for the kids out there who aren’t completely helpless. I guess.
The world is getting stranger, people are getting softer, and they’re raising some helpless kids. So raise your children well.
And if you can’t do that, you might consider my approach – just do the best you can.
It’s important. Your kids will thank you. Even for all the hard work you had them do. They’ll thank you even for that.
Well, eventually…
Published in General
Walking on a roof that steep, especially a metal roof, she’s lucky she didn’t get killed a lot.
Kil’t her a b’ar yet?
Not just riding the four-wheeler – driving it! I think the other kids are in more danger. :-)
I got my AB in applied statistics from George Washington University in 1970 and my MS from Georgetown University in 1976. Degrees from these universities were prestigious and pricey at that time. I was pleased to earn these degrees in night classes since I had a family like @drbastiat (wife, 2 daughters and one son) and I was working a full-time day job . Okay, it didn’t cost me anything but my time, all the costs were covered by my GI Bill benefits augmented by my employer. I think the attitude and the circumstances were really different then than what we are seeing today. Huh?
Yes, your daughter looks busy and interested. I like that.
She had big feet? :-)
Now she’s 6’4″ and wears a size 14 women’s shoe.
She shot up two feet between 8 and 10?
Looks like a lot of the same stuff my sons were doing at that age. Yours turned out all right and mine turned out all right. Probably a coincidence.
She’s 19 years old now.
She was never unusually tall. She was about the same height as her friends. But she just sort of kept growing…
All kinds of things do that, when well tended…
Maybe it’s just an optical illusion.
It wasn’t as bad as it looks. For a few reasons. Mainly that there was a nearly flat roof at the base of that valley she’s climbing to land on if she goofed up. But for other reasons, it’s not as scary as it looks. If I thought it was truly dangerous, I wouldn’t have her up there. Of course.
I am happy that your genes will persist after the zombie apocalypse.
She just exudes Achievement. However, she might find it difficult to find a husband, as it’s not only today’s young girls who are soft. The boys all spent their childhood behind a computer playing video games, when they weren’t at Occupy Wall Street or BLM demonstrations.
And then add in being so much taller than most men.
The competition will be fierce, but no doubt she’ll be up to the challenge.
I dunno. When I was in my late teens and early twenties I always found tall women a visual treat.
Lots of boys/men are… interested in… women (actors, models…) taller than they are. Then they get older and marry women who aren’t as tall as they are.
It wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. Or my brothers. A couple of my cousins ended up marrying women taller than they were. They told me tall women were hard to put down.
Let me answer before I proceed: What I notice is a young girl enjoying a lot of “boy stuff.” (Perhaps not sewing, but fingers can be pricked!)
These may well be activities that boys gravitate towards and may be better at, but I can say with confidence that a lot of boys today don’t do any of them.
Careful, Doc! People may accuse you of empowering women. 😉
Well, my late father used to say you should marry someone taller so you don’t beat yourself to death against the headboard. But he never followed his own advice.
Cultural comparison point: In many, if not all, Japanese schools the entire student body cleans the entire school every day. Yes, including the toilets.
By the time they graduate after 9th (With a Junior High diploma, a 15 year old is legal to work and not required to continue school.) or 12th grade, they know how to do it all very well.
Which is probably a good thing, considering how many of them seem to end up living alone.
What about learning to cook, by working in the school cafeteria?
etc.
🤣
Randy, I swear you are one of the funniest members on Ricochet. I don’t even know if you mean to be, but you crack me up.
Guess who serves lunch (delivered to schools daily from a centrally located kitchen facility) to their classmates in home room? Cooking skills and thorough clean up are taught in a required home economics class.
Which is probably a good thing, considering how many of them seem to end up living alone.
A gig as a line cook ain’t a bad substitute. Even so, I never really cook.
Don’t wear smooth-soled shoes, step flatly on the screw heads, and you’re unlikely to make the Big Slide.
DrB, you got yourself one Competent Alpha there! She’s likely to attract (and only tolerate) other Competent Alphas as partners. You’ve done some double-plus good prep work there.
Sometimes I mean to be.