I confess:
I did not learn how to sweep a floor until I was working at a country club at
age sixteen, and I did not know how to wash dishes by hand until I was being
paid to do so in a New York City bar at age twenty. I taught myself to clean a
toilet soon thereafter, when it became painfully clear my bachelor apartment
would not otherwise pass muster with visitors. I did not learn how to properly
fold laundry until I was in a West End musical at age thirty and my dresser
taught me. (Yes, I had a dresser.)
How did I
arrive at adulthood so ignorant? As a member of Generation X, with an often
otherwise-occupied single working mom, I was a classic latchkey kid, coming and
going unsupervised from a very early age. Some things went by the wayside. Mom did
teach me to do the laundry, to use a stereo, wrap a gift, and to make pancakes.
Priorities.
Nowadays,
even in two-parent households, it is actually more common for kids to not know
the aforementioned skills, and many others.
As Deborah
Cruz writes in Cafemom.com, “Somewhere between Gen X and Gen Z, society
decided that kids should be overextended in full-time extracurricular
activities, train for sports like they're going to the Olympics, and make
TikTok videos like it's their job. Parents are scared to disappoint their
children and chores seem to be a thing of the past.
But it’s
baffling how the same 7-year-old who can master social media can't water the
plants or load the dishwasher. We need a happy medium.”
READ MORE: Teaching your kids life skills
I concur.
Though I confess that, when my son was heading off to college in 2016, I was
ashamed to realize that his mother and I hadn’t taught him some basic cooking
and cleaning skills. (He could – and can – make a perfect cup of tea, however.
Priorities.) But in my defense, I should note his childhood had been quite
different from his mom’s and mine. For one thing, his schoolwork was much, much
more demanding than ours had been (really off the charts). We often reasoned he
needed a break. Nevertheless, I scrambled to fill in the gap just before he
left the nest.
Cruz has
created a list of skills she deems most important, and, needless to say, not
complicated. According to her, every eight-year-old should know how to do these
things, and no parent should be scrambling like me to impart certain skills
before a kid leaves home. Fair enough. Behold. Your eight-year-old should know
how to:
- Feed Pets
- Help with
basic laundry chores
- Dinner
prep and clean-up
- Wash the
dishes
- Use basic
household cleaners safely
- Basic
bathroom clean-up
- Simple
sewing skills
- How to use
a broom and dustpan
- Preparing
an easy meal
- Grocery
shopping process
- Wrapping a
gift
- How to use
a hammer
- How to
clean a bedroom
- Treating a
wound with basic first aid
There's no better time to get started than right now.
You’ll thank me when the kids head to college.
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