10 Essential Life Skills to Pass on to Your Kids (And You Should Have these Skills Yourself)

PJ Media ^ | 04/03/2018 | Susan L.M. Goldberg

[semaj]

Pretty good list. Teaching someone who has no technical experience or understanding, how to build a computer? Good luck with that.

[rlmorel]

Well. The posted PJMedia article is quite practical and all, but about as interesting and sterile as a cardboard box with a jigsaw puzzle inside of it at Christmas.

But you know the difference between the posted article and the article it referenced at Fathers are no longer teaching their children basic life skills like making a catapult, repairing a bike puncture and skimming a stone.

Here is the list:

Contrasted with:

Time Management
Basic parenting, not something to "pass down to kids".

Basic Outdoor Skills
Not everyone needs to know how to build a computer.

How to Build, Not Just Use a Computer
Not everyone needs to know how to build a computer. And they sure don't need lessons on how to use them.

Home Repair and Maintenance
If you learn how to build a tree house, you learn this stuff. But you also have a fort, and can have fun. Stripping wallpaper or paint isn't fun.

Auto Repair and Maintenance
Maintenance is fine, oil change, etc. Not everyone can or needs to know how to repair a car.

Financial Management
This would be basic parenting, not things to pass down.

Basic Medical Knowledge
Yeah. We used to get this in the Boy Scouts before they became homosexualized.

Research Methodology
Research Methodology as something to "pass down to kids? Give me a break.

Critical Thinking Skills
Again, isn't this just basic parenting?

Reverence for God
This would be a good one.

The difference is that this utilitarian list has absolutely zero, nada, zilch about using your imagination. Good God, why don't we skip Kindergarten, Grade School, Middle School, and High School and send them directly to college to get an MBA?

Why don't we let kids go out in a field at night and look at stars, catch tadpoles, and so on.

What is it where kids have to be little adults and not kids? It seems like every kid has to have their time filled with organized activities. I hate seeing it. I wouldn't want to grow up today as a kid. As a boy, I would likely be a prisoner of video games...I am just glad they didn't have them, because I sure as hell would have been.

[semaj]

"Building a computer today is basically just the process of gathering a group of building blocks and connecting the cables. It involves very little understanding of what is actually happening inside."

I don't consider that building a computer. Ensuring that that the CPU, motherboard, and other components are compatible, not just with each other, but with the OS, is not as easy as it might sound.

[PIF]

Heh — Not bad money back in the early 1980’s when tuition was $3000 or less per semester

—

in the 60s it was only $600 or less per semester ...

[Leep]

#12 Don’t trust white people.
Even if you are white!

[Leep]

At the same time?

[Bonemaker]

“The list, topped off with “building a tree house” and “making a catapult,”

Those and all the other skills are probably illegal in England now...especially the catapult!

[ican'tbelieveit]

I think my first degree, an associate of applied science (took 3 years as there were clinical hours that had to be completed) cost me about $3000... in the early to mid 90s.

My son just finished his masters. we won’t talk about how much that cost.

[Leep]

13 Submit to Islam infidel!

[HeadOn]

I refuse to cook a Vegan.

[Leep]

They like being fried..but that’s something else.

[HeadOn]

Those were the days...

I got a BS in Mechanical Engineering at a division 1 school for around $10K total, including room and board and gas money. Graduated in 1982. THAT was a good investment...

[SeekAndFind]

RE: 13 Submit to Islam infidel!

Learn to build a bomb. ( Just a joke, don’t take this seriously ).

[Pollster1]

I taught all of my kids almost everything on that list. All of my boys were Eagle Scouts, and all of my girls reached a comparable level of knowledge of the Scouting skills. We never used jumpers as goalposts, and I didn’t even know what “conkers” meant, but otherwise we had a clean sweep of those skills and many others.

All of my kids can put ten out of ten shots in the black of a standard target at the appropriate distance, with rifle and with pistol. All of them are pure conservatives who can explain why conservatism is the moral choice. All of them are productive, employed, and professionally successful. All of them are planning families, with multiple children - perhaps the greatest hope for America as decent people raise their kids while leftists murder their unborn.

[9YearLurker]

Home, auto and medical can be researched on the fly with research skills.

But the others are great.

[upchuck]

IMHO, the last two are the most important and useful to a productive and satisfying life:

Critical Thinking Skills.

Reverence for God.

[The Great RJ]

Not only critical thinking, but common sense as well. The same teenagers who would lecture us on gun control as pawns of the far left are also the idiots sticking condoms in their noses and holding laundry detergent pods in their mouths. Common sense would tell you that defacing your body with multiple piercings and gaudy tattoos and dying your hair fluorescent colors is not cool, makes you look like an idiot and unlikely to get hired in any professional job regardless of how smart you are. Ditto for wearing jeans with holes ripped in them or your pants hanging down on your thighs

[BlueLancer]

Basic Auto Repair and Maintenance.

I could do that until everything became computerized in the engine compartment.

[xrmusn]

If your credit ‘shaky’ and you NEED 1500 do NOT ask for 1500...you will normally get (maybe) 1000 and in essence not much better off than you were especially if the 1500 is a ‘demand NOW’ type deal.

So, If you need 1500 ask for 1987.58.
You will probably get dropped back to 1500 AND the lender will think you really ‘did your homework’ as the 87.58 will ‘catch his eye’.

(Old estimator ‘trick’.....NEVER give even quote (EVERYONE does that), and sort of explain that you got it down as low as you possibly could in your quest to ‘help’ him/her...)

[rlmorel]

Exactly.

I have to laugh, when I read this article, I went into full curmudgeon mode (which I presume SeekAndFind recognized as such!)

I finally came down from Full Curmudgeon Mode.