Life skills
Recently I cleared my shelves of 20 or so parenting books I've bought over the years. Frankly, most were unread. I rarely get past the list of contents (top tip to authors of these kinds of books - it is great if the chapter titles essentially briefly explain your entire philosophy!) I don't read them partly because I somehow just haven't had the time, and partly because I find the books... depressing. Such books often start with a description of everything you are doing wrong and that is often where I get stuck in a miasma of self-doubt.
Having cleared the shelves I promptly then bought a new one called 'How to Raise and Adult' by Julie Lythcott-Haims. I have actually been skim-reading this one, and, to quote her very useful chapter titles, the gist of her argument is that 'We must stop over parenting' because 'Our kids lack basic life skills' and 'They've been psychologically harmed'. The author actually lives just up the road in Palo Alto (home to Stanford) where the pressure on kids to achieve must be extreme, but it is a message that resonates strongly throughout Silicon Valley, and I think North America. She makes a compelling case for 'Another Way' that includes things like unstructured time, normalizing struggle, and teaching life skills.
Consequently I've become a broken record, harping on to the kids about independence and trying to impart pearls of life skill wisdom at every opportunity. The book has a handy list of life skills arranged by the age they should be acquired. It turns out our kids were functioning brilliantly as seven year olds. We had some work to do. With our new shelter-in-place lifestyle I excitedly thought woo hoo - life skill bonanza!
So far our days at home have been going pretty well. We are on day four of the schools being closed and day three of the 'shelter-in-place' order. The teachers have provided an online curriculum and both kids have been pretty easy going about doing their work, interspersed with breaks to chat online with friends, watch TV, and generally goof off. I've thrown in little life skill moments - Tom learned how to tie the bow of an apron behind his back yesterday! And when I was rueing at the end of the day with Alice that she hadn't done any life skills that day she said, "Oh but I did, I learned how to get someone to stop asking you to do an online chat with them when you are busy doing something else, that is a life skill!" Indeed. "How do you do that?" I asked. "You just send them a LOT of emojis!"
Inspired, my middle-of-the-night musings led to the idea of 'Life Skill Bingo'. I would make a bingo chart of age-appropriate life skills from the book such as 'take care of personal hygiene without being told' 'learn simple sewing' 'straighten up the bathroom after using it' 'learn to use basic hand tools' 'prepare a simple meal'. And of course, when the kids had joyfully skipped around the house completing their lines on the bingo sheets I would glowingly reward them with loving affirmation of their increased knowledge, independence, and self-sufficiency. Gifts to last a lifetime!
And then the day dawned.
Everyone woke up grumpy today. We've run out of cereal, milk, eggs, and yogurt. We're low on bread and fresh fruit and veg. I spent another fruitless hour trying to sort out an online food delivery. The system is completely broken. So frustrating. Mr Husband will have to go hunt and gather. But he is having a tough time at work and retreated growling into his work cave. The kids didn't want to do their school work, or shower, or eat porridge and oranges for breakfast (fresh picked oranges for god's sake!).
I realized these were not ideal circumstances to launch my little utopian plan for life skill development. So I had to work on a life skill that I find really tough but would probably be better at if I'd read one or two of those parenting books. I had to parent, I had to make it fun. I held on to the bingo and let go of the cultivation of young minds.
The result: the kids developed 'shelter-in-place' bingo.
Over the course of the day both kids have sidled up to me and said 'Hey Mom, I don't think I have learned a life skill today, what do you think I should do?' And the hilarious thing is that both times I have fallen for it and said 'Oh yes we definitely should do life skills - let's see, how about we plant some seeds/get out the sewing kit/build a squirrel-proof bird feeder?' only to have the kid cackle hysterically and run off to cross off the first square on their sheets.
I guess they are learning life skills today - cunning and manipulation!
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COVID-19 Update:
In the US the number of confirmed cases has gone over 13,000, in part due to expanded testing. In California, the Governor just sent a letter to the White House requesting a US Navy medical ship be stationed off the coast of Los Angeles to help with the shortage of beds/equipment. Apparently rates of infection are doubling every four days in some areas of the state and a predicted 56% of the population (25.5M people) could contract the virus over the next 8 weeks. Jesus. Even if it is a 2% mortality rate that is 510,000 people.
It is hard to find visualizations of our local county data - I wonder if this is intentional - but anyone can track the data and I just found this good visualization by a student at Stanford, but the number of confirmed cases is still too small to show whether there is exponential or linear growth in our immediate neighbourhoods.
Update: this is funny
Having cleared the shelves I promptly then bought a new one called 'How to Raise and Adult' by Julie Lythcott-Haims. I have actually been skim-reading this one, and, to quote her very useful chapter titles, the gist of her argument is that 'We must stop over parenting' because 'Our kids lack basic life skills' and 'They've been psychologically harmed'. The author actually lives just up the road in Palo Alto (home to Stanford) where the pressure on kids to achieve must be extreme, but it is a message that resonates strongly throughout Silicon Valley, and I think North America. She makes a compelling case for 'Another Way' that includes things like unstructured time, normalizing struggle, and teaching life skills.
Consequently I've become a broken record, harping on to the kids about independence and trying to impart pearls of life skill wisdom at every opportunity. The book has a handy list of life skills arranged by the age they should be acquired. It turns out our kids were functioning brilliantly as seven year olds. We had some work to do. With our new shelter-in-place lifestyle I excitedly thought woo hoo - life skill bonanza!
So far our days at home have been going pretty well. We are on day four of the schools being closed and day three of the 'shelter-in-place' order. The teachers have provided an online curriculum and both kids have been pretty easy going about doing their work, interspersed with breaks to chat online with friends, watch TV, and generally goof off. I've thrown in little life skill moments - Tom learned how to tie the bow of an apron behind his back yesterday! And when I was rueing at the end of the day with Alice that she hadn't done any life skills that day she said, "Oh but I did, I learned how to get someone to stop asking you to do an online chat with them when you are busy doing something else, that is a life skill!" Indeed. "How do you do that?" I asked. "You just send them a LOT of emojis!"
Inspired, my middle-of-the-night musings led to the idea of 'Life Skill Bingo'. I would make a bingo chart of age-appropriate life skills from the book such as 'take care of personal hygiene without being told' 'learn simple sewing' 'straighten up the bathroom after using it' 'learn to use basic hand tools' 'prepare a simple meal'. And of course, when the kids had joyfully skipped around the house completing their lines on the bingo sheets I would glowingly reward them with loving affirmation of their increased knowledge, independence, and self-sufficiency. Gifts to last a lifetime!
And then the day dawned.
Everyone woke up grumpy today. We've run out of cereal, milk, eggs, and yogurt. We're low on bread and fresh fruit and veg. I spent another fruitless hour trying to sort out an online food delivery. The system is completely broken. So frustrating. Mr Husband will have to go hunt and gather. But he is having a tough time at work and retreated growling into his work cave. The kids didn't want to do their school work, or shower, or eat porridge and oranges for breakfast (fresh picked oranges for god's sake!).
I realized these were not ideal circumstances to launch my little utopian plan for life skill development. So I had to work on a life skill that I find really tough but would probably be better at if I'd read one or two of those parenting books. I had to parent, I had to make it fun. I held on to the bingo and let go of the cultivation of young minds.
The result: the kids developed 'shelter-in-place' bingo.
I guess they are learning life skills today - cunning and manipulation!
--
COVID-19 Update:
In the US the number of confirmed cases has gone over 13,000, in part due to expanded testing. In California, the Governor just sent a letter to the White House requesting a US Navy medical ship be stationed off the coast of Los Angeles to help with the shortage of beds/equipment. Apparently rates of infection are doubling every four days in some areas of the state and a predicted 56% of the population (25.5M people) could contract the virus over the next 8 weeks. Jesus. Even if it is a 2% mortality rate that is 510,000 people.
It is hard to find visualizations of our local county data - I wonder if this is intentional - but anyone can track the data and I just found this good visualization by a student at Stanford, but the number of confirmed cases is still too small to show whether there is exponential or linear growth in our immediate neighbourhoods.
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