Please please please...
Please please please...
213 comments
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And have your daughters come to the garage and help replace brakepads on their bikes, install curtain rods, etc... etc...
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You should be doing that all year long. These are not ferral kind. You have a responsability to parent them.
Actually, the rush of the holiday is the time when they should participate slighty less if they are not old enough to do some task independently. Because you must move quick and there is less time for teaching. -
Dad taught us that there is no such thing as women's work ..... there's just work.
Once you live on your own or in a space without women, you quickly realize how no one cares who does the dishes, washes your clothes or mops your floor.
Unless of course you want to live like a wild animal.
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There is fair division of labor, though.
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"We are equal partners sharing responsibility for maintaining our shared living space" is vastly different from "I don't do dishes because that's a woman's job"
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Bonus: partners of every kind appreciate it if you do chores.
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Every male in my family can cook and clean house.
And they cook better than their girlfriends/wives.
So yea, maybe hold your sexism.
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Have you considered your family might be the exception and not the rule
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Everyone better stay out of my kitchen. I'm all for teaching kids to cook. But I don't want amateurs on the field during the Super Sowl of cooking days.
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I like Super Sowl. I'm pretty sure it was a typo but please leave it as is. It's got Sowl.
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I’m with you. I don’t want any boys, girls, or anyone else in the kitchen while I’m cooking, unless they’re there to bs and chat while I cook. This is not just on Thanksgiving, this is any day of the year.
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My brother is the best chef in the family. You will always miss out on good food if you don't screen all your kids for chef talent. Gender roles often lead to people not doing things they might be good at.
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Considering gender roles, commercial kitchens are primarily and historically male dominated. The idea of the woman always being the cook is extremely antiquated.
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And make your kids help with stuff regardless of gender. So many people grow up without basic life skills bc parents didn't involve them in activities regardless of the gender-coded-ness of those activities.
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My mom deliberately didn’t give us chores, because she grew up with a strict father who overwhelmed her with them.
It backfired. I entered adulthood not even knowing how to use a broom. My first boss thought it was hilarious.
Please, teach your kid these skills. However, don’t use them as punishment! That just makes them all the harder to do independently. I have an ex who associated cleaning with being punished and, as a result, never volunteered to do it. Every household chore fell on me.
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Please, teach your kid these skills. However, don’t use them as punishment!
This is the line to walk. I've framed chores with my son as 'personal responsibility'.
While at 12 he still struggles with the broom (I'll let him hand vac if that's what he prefers), he knows how to do his own laundry and cleans his bathroom himself often enough too. Chores are a part of living, do your part, I say. I grew up the eldest daughter of a home with no mother, everything fell to me. But I'm not going to ricochet that back and have my son be useless. It's a balance, to be helpful and responsible, this is the goal.
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At our home, cooking and cleaning can for some reason bei either a punishment or a treat. Even the exact same action. It kinda puzzles me.
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I have a friend who's wife refuses to let anyone in the house do chores because "Nobody does it the right way". Then gets completely overwhelmed with the amount of chores she has to do, and takes it out on my friend.
She seems to completely miss the point of teaching people "the right way" or "practice".
My kids are expected to do a chore a day, I have a list of available options with the only rule that most things can only be done once a week. I don't need the windows wiped down every single day, but Dishes and Laundry are always available. Even if they do something poorly, it is less than it was before and eventually they will get it done correctly.
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I assume the families that need to hear this won’t listen.
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Overheard a conversation a few years back where a group of guys were talking about how they didn't know how to cook or do laundry because that was woman's work and how they expected their mothers and / or wives to do that for them. It was so pathetic how proud they were that they could not take care of themselves.
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Weird. Imagine thinking like that. How old were they?
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60? 20? Does it matter?
It's an entire culture that hasn't gone away.
My father is 65 and could not cook a Kraft dinner to save his own life. Forget laundry. His son (my brother) believes the same. Whenever he is single his apartment goes uncleaned, he exclusively eats take out, and his clothes are barely laundered.
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If I were to guess, I would say early 30s.
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In our house Mom was the chef and us boys were the su-chefs. If you want to live under this roof you'd better help with the cooking, serving, cleaning and everything else in the household. That's the best way to learn how to do it all yourself.
I was already rolling meatballs and frying schnitzels when I was in early high school.
Edit: I have been informed that I use Linux too much and that it is sous chef, not su-chef or sudo-chef. Although my mom is the root user.
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It'll also make it so much easier to find a soulmate. Knowing one's way around a kitchen is a godsend for all.
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I know my way around the kitchen. You stabbed the plastic film with a fork and then you put it in the microwave. If I'm feeling really adventurous I'll use the air fryer.
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a step up from that would be frozen protein and veggies in the air fryer, maybe with a sauce packet that you just heat up in water, or maybe just ketchup. i recommend trying that because you usually get a wider variety of available food to try. and trying food you've maybe never eaten before is usually a good thing to do. it broades your vision.
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I can't dance, but I sure can cook. More than one way to meet a mate.
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They're survival skills that everyone should know.
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“Meme”
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I always wanted to help my mom with the cooking when we were growing up, but she was such a control freak that she would hardly even allow anyone else into the kitchen. I’m sure plenty of other mothers are like that, too.
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Brother?
Even more frustrating, because when she turned 70, she admitted that she never liked cooking anyway, but will still tell us we're doing it wrong.
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My wife's mother was like that. Then she was confused as to why her daughter couldn't cook (and so had to teach herself after she moved out).
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This was my wife. She didn't know how to cook, run a washing machine, run a dishwasher, any normal household task. Absolutely nothing because her mom wouldn't let her in fear she would mess something up.
I had to teach a 26 year old how to do everything to be self-sufficient and simply function day to day.
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As a child we always did the girls cook and boys clean method, which isn't as bad as it could be, but still leaves a lot to be desired. Instilled that boys need to be part of the work, but needlessly gender divided the work anyway 😐
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I like the “who cooks does not clean” and vice-versa idea. Can just change who does what every so often. Plus it can be a great opportunity to show that you have to consider your impact on other people(don’t create a massive pile of work for them where it can be helped).
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That was it for us but realistically it was more A generational thing. Especially after divorces and stuff - all the aunts didn’t cooking, my uncle and my brothers and I did the setup/cleanup.
At one point they tried to get us do the cooking but I’m sorry but I’m flying in late the night before or early the morning of: that’s up to the locals. I can stop at the store to buy wine or something but cooking isn’t a realistic choice
But when we do Thanksgiving locally: if it’s my house I do most of it and my ex brings a couple sides. If it’s her house then vice versa
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Do people not normally involve their kids in this sort of thing equally?
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Growing up, no.
Will my potential kids be sharing the work equally? Definitely. I always got into so much trouble for asking why I had to do housework and my brother didn't.
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I hadn't realised quite how different the female upbringing experience was to the male one until I talked about it with my partner. Quite different it turns out. We're both about 40, and from Ireland, and she was absolutely expected to do shit like this when the men weren't.
Event today some of her siblings families are heavily heavily sexist.
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No kidding. The enforcement is often kind of brutal too. As a couple the house not being clean creates a pervasive sense of judgement that falls on the feminine half of a couple. It doesn't matter if they are a killer breadwinner with an amazing career and winning at life the messaging and conditioning from childhood and enforced by older friends and relatives is still that they are at their core a failure if their house doesn't meet regulation. That judgement is not extended to the masculine partner because he's kind of expected to be a hapless subordinate who maybe helps but is not responsible for it. That old "sorry about the state of the place" is practically just begging for social leniency from deeply ingrained shame.
If your fem partner is neurotic about cleanliness that's basically why. They are made to feel horrible about themselves when company comes calling.
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Not in my family. Us women were expected to be the cooks, cleaners, everything. Every family get-together the men would just sit and talk and the boys would go out to play, and the older women would do the cooking, then come make the girls do the dishes.
My sister and I finally called them out on it, and to their credit they did try and make the boys help with the clean-up… although they never did that great of a job, because they’d never been taught how.
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And how old is that?
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My mom involved my brother. I took the opportunity to play video games all day.
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All the uncles on my wives side of the family are so useless at Thanksgiving. They don't cook, clean, clear their plate or even make their own plate. Its one of the most infuriating thing I have ever seen.
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For those who are talking about how this didn't happen in your household growing up, please remember you are 1, at best 2 generations removed from full on enforcement of gender roles suppressing things like this, many times physically enforced. So yea, maybe your dad was the one who baked the turkey or did the dishes, but you can be damn sure his dad didn't.
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Society being agender-by-default, with gender being opt-in, would solve a lot of problems.
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Thing is, biology ain't.
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Treating a person's sex as arbitrary is part of the plan
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The heck is a thanksgiving?
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Ritualized Turkey Murder
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Note: Turkey is optional. Mostly because nobody ever does it well. It is always dry and tasteless.
We're doing home made pizzas.
It is fun, and it requires little skill so everyone involved in the cooking process. Even the kids get involved to help.
Best part: Nobody spends all day slaving away in the kitchen not enjoying the holiday.
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Vegans have Thanksgiving.
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It's what Canada and the USA call their harvest festival. What does your country call it?
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Maybe "Herbstfest"? But more of a local thing. "Jahrmarkt" is even more local. Both are some kind of village-wide market events, the first more fall-themed (and grapes because "Weinland" switzerland) with changing locations each year.
Looks like american thanksgiving is how christmas is for us?
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We dont have one
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Who doesn't do that? What a weird assumption.
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Lots of people. I don't think it's a weird assumption at all.
Edited for typo
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The majority of humanity as this is a global gender norm
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Well I guess her post caters to her audience.
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In my family, all the men would watch football and get drunk while all the women were in the kitchen cooking the feast.
Even as a young boy I thought that was pretty gross.
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My spouse once told me that she hadn't been allowed to play Risk because it was a boy's game. Apparently as a child she had been sent "back to the kitchen" to help with "women's chores" while the menfolk played strategy board games.
I didn't shed a tear when her dad passed. And neither did she.
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Would anyone in your family have read this post and changed their ways?
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My grandpa and my father in law were never taught how to cook.
My grandpa could make porridge and sandwiches. My father in law can grill, but that’s it. My dad doesn’t even grill.
There are definitely households where cooking is seen as feminine and boys aren’t encouraged.
Thankfully my family is full of excellent cooks and all of my brothers and I love to cook. Some of my favourite memories of holidays were cooking with my mom before Christmas Eve so we didn’t have to cook until Boxing Day. I think the cooking part was better than the eating part, we had a full on hors d’oeuvre assembly line.
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Sometimes I forget that I am from a different culture. I'm European. You are likely Americans. Online discourse is dominantly American. So when people say shit sometimes, it makes no sense from my point of view, because we were not raised under whatever conditions you have suffered under.
I'm not bashing Americans. I kind of like Americans to a degree. But you're weird man. Sorry, sometimes it's hard to keep up with your day to day grievances. My bad. Maybe what the post says needs to be said.
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My dad never learned to cook, clean, or take care of his own hair/clothes. He had 7 sisters who were all taught that taking care of the boys and the house was their main duty in life. None of those sisters ever touched a hammer or a wrench.
His dad never learned to cook, clean, or take care of himself in any way. He had 4 sisters who were all taught that taking care of the boys and the house was their main duty in life. None of those sisters ever touched a hammer or a wrench.
I have two boys - they were taught to cook and clean and take care of themselves. And once they had that basic stuff down they were taught the hammer and wrench.
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My extended family was like this during my childhood
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My bad, I presumed that their culture works the same as mine. I guess it's a bigger problem with you guys than with us.
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Here is what I would like to say of my experience. Not to snap at this, or provoke a battle-of-the-genders. Just to say what I've experienced.
I'm a recovered germophobe but I still do the cleaning because it's not even work to me, it's just a casual part of my routine. I cook all from fresh and every meal, because I lost like 58kg after getting over my ED. My mother was insanely (abusively) strict when we were just small kids, so we were trained to clean the dishes, put things away, blah blah.
But anyways after sobering up and lots of therapy, the bad parts (the obsessive parts) of all that went away, but doing that stuff had just become an 'easy' part of my life.
But here's the little thing I don't even want to say. Women hate that shit lol. Isn't that awful to say? I'm always taken aback when I'm scolded for doing the things women say guys should do more of ahha
I think at my age it's a lot of the entrenched gender roles biting all sides. Yes, please open up the gates to the domains women historically have controlled. Guys need to shape up in a general sense in these areas, but let us in plz!
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I am a stay-at-home dad. The amount of people bewildered by that is bewildering 😅
But my wife gets more shit anyway, because now she's apparently a really bad mother, who provides for her family 😅😅. bUt ThAt'S a MaN's JoB.
Tradition seems hard to kill.
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Lol, I'm a dude and, I remember when I was a kid, there was sometimes holiday stuff where the adults would make... the um... (okay I had to google it) it's called 湯圓 and I just mess with it while they were making it, I'd make weird shapes out of it lol. I don't think I actually helped, I'm just a troublemaker xD
I only know how to cook basic stuff, I suck at it. I know how to pan-fry eggs, but that's about it. I think I sort of know how to make a very basic 煎餅, from scratch, the mixing flour and egg and stuff, kinda forgot by now... but I have memories of doing it.
I kinda feel embarassed now that I talk about it. I have no life skills. (pls don't judge xD)
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I support teaching all kids what it takes to exist, regardless of gender.
I just popped in to say that back in the long ago, in my family, only so much help cleaning up was tolerated from men-folk before they were exiled to football on TV so the women could sit at the kitchen table and talk. Trying to assist in cooking was nearly impossible by anyone who wasn't my grandmother or the aunts that had been cleared for assistance.
I was taught to cook and clean by these same people, but it was clear that at big family meals like Thanksgiving that most of us were in the way if we tried to assist.
I guess what I'm saying is, for sure teach everyone all of it, but big meals might not be the best time. (depending on size of family and a variety of other factors).
At least clear your plate to the sink! :)
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My boys are now in their 30s. They always helped with the big family dinners. Even made a couple of them on their own for the rest of us. I do not understand how anyone in my age group, Gen X, could not have raised their sons to be completely independent but somehow, I'm in a minority.
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My best memories are of helping my mother and grandmother cook Thanksgiving and Christmas meals!
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Those sound like lovely memories!
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White culture is living in a concentrated period of open fascism, and having conversations with your friends about teaching men to do the dishes
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Nobody likes a lazy MF.
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The most common cooking task is cutting stuff which makes me feel pretty manly
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Yep. One of the reasons women do all the housework, is because men where literally not taught how to. It may sound weird that someone can fix a car, paint a fence, but struggles with house chores.
It's due to literally never learning to.
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No one taught me how to fix a car or paint a fence, yet I can do both. So can countless others with no such training across literally the entire spectrum of human capability.
People who claim they don't do housework because they 'were never taught how' are just feigning incompetence. I bet the vacuum becomes much less mystifying if I tie a $1000 prize to its successful operation, for example.
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Sure but some people don't claim incompetence they are (no jugment here) incompetent. If you tell someone do the laundry but he had no idea it means:
- sort the cloth
- select the cycle nor how to select a cycle
- add the detergent + any extraproduct
- run the cycle
- do that for each type on cloth you have sorted.
He might put white with colors, delicate with cotton. Add detergent but nothing to prevent color leaking. And select a cycle that too hot, damaging some cloth. He did it. He did his best. But his best is worst that when you are careless because he doesn't know what he is doing. If you would have realized he was not taught to do the laundry, you would have give more explanation or a few smaller tasks.
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Your kids help?
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My daughter has been a helper since she was 2. We encouraged it despite the very obvious frustration and now we have a somewhat competent helper years later.
For anyone unaware how frustrating it can be. Watch the Omelette episode of Bluey...
She was expected to do chores as soon as we believed her capable. That included bringing her dirty laundry to the laundry room. Putting dirty clothes away. Cleaning plates before putting in the dishwasher.
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You have to teach kids EVERYTHING its exhausting. When I first asked my daughter to put a plate in the kitchen the put it on the floor, just over the threshold of the door. She was about 18mo, and it was not malicious, just following my exact instructions.
Either way I fully support your parenting practice and I do the same <3
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Oh man, my wife HATES the omelette episode, it's too real for her. I tend to do better with the kids when we cook together, but it's also down to the projects I pick. Making pasta from scratch is messy, fun, and you can be imprecise. Baking (her specialty) is not so forgiving.
Chores, I think, are easier to teach but harder to enforce.
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my daughter wants to be a chef when she grows up, so i tend to involve her more in cooking and food prep. i do also teach my son how to make food and how to care for himself, obviously, but he doesn't have an interest in anything more advanced than that. my girl though, she's going to have at least one michelin star or i'll eat my hat.
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Will she prepare the hat?
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Good eats taught me more about cooking than any family member ever did
It's the only cooking show I have ever watched that actually taught the why so I could experiment on my own.
If you're looking for tips.
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My sister cant cook for shit and I cook for the family like 3 times a week lol
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My uncle usually cooks at our family thanksgiving, and it's always really goddamn good
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We have division of labor, particularly for big parties like Thanksgiving. I don't want help with cooking but don't want to have to clean up. That's our general division of labor because I legitimately enjoy cooking, and people legitimately love eating what I cook; and husband says he would much rather clean up. His dad is a better cook than his mom, I don't think it's a sexist thing. So sure I have to do more cooking (started yesterday) but he does more too. The kids just do overflow mostly and while all of them are competent in some way in a kitchen, the distribution of good cooks is not a gender split among them.
The technology split is more gendered, all of the boys (including the one who started out a girl) are gamers and can build a computer, 3/4 of the girls are gamers and technically competent but only one is willing to fuck around with the hardware. One, my oldest, is not at all comfortable with technology, does not want to know how anything works. But she worked construction/home renovation and is good with saw and drill.
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If you cook, you don't clean. If you clean, you don't cook. Tell them to take their pick.
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Cleaning while you cook 🤯
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This is the best way
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I like to clean up the kitchen/dishes during downtime. Like when the dough needs to rise for an hour is a perfect opportunity to clean up. Plus it gives you space for the next step in the baking process.
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I do this and my wife doesnt. When it takes me an hour to clean after she cooks and 20 minutes after i cook, she seems confused.
Not only am i cleaning everything, she used 3 mixing bowls that you could have just rinsed and used 1, and you left all the spices and ingredients on the counter so i have to put all that away too. Filled the sink with unrinsed dishes and poured filthy water on them to let it sit, so all that hand clean stuff needs extra attention. Spilled and burnt shit all over the stove, etc.
Ive cleaned in restaurants where the cooks werent as messy lol
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Living alone, I find this to be a fast way to a messy sink.
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There's one mandatory exception to this: the cook should always be the default responsible person to clean pans & pots. Everyone who disagrees has never been on a camp with a bunch of kids who are just learning how to prepare food.
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Make your kids do all the work - more like enable them to help with all tasks. Getting to help can be fun. Gender barriers to tasks are stupid.
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Maybe I didn't help cook as much but was my job to clean after pretty much every dinner. Always thanked my Mum for the dinner nightly (regardless of my taste preferences). Pretty much set the table for dinners all regular night and cleaned up.
Larger dinners with company she let me stop cleaning after awhile but these days I'd gladly clean till the end, she made the best dinners.
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Can someone recommend books on this topic? Ty
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So grateful to my mom for doing this with me
My son's a little young to help in the kitchen, but my wife can relax and play with him while my mom and I cook =)
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Thanksgiving is for the kids to stay out of the kitchen. I teach cooking on other day. Cleanup is a different story. If you got hand you clean or youll catch hands.
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Carving up the turkey is a manly job, just keep those knives sharp
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Sharpness doesn’t matter: more power! Break out the electric carving knife
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Clarkson!
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Laser cutter
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My son cooks
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Sadly my stepdaughter had zero interest in cooking, but her kids (boy and girl) both have an intense interest. I'd like to think that my influence, partly borne from my own mother have zero interest in teaching me how, has helped foster it.
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My guess this is a so called “traditional” family, and this woman is trying to bring her family up to date with the 1960s.
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Because boys don't turn into chefs, huh.
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really proud of famously sought after and eligible playboys such as reddit and lemmy users coming together to really identify as societies peak. You guys clean at Christmas and challenge gender roles. Fucking peak. So weird that so many of you are struggling in the dating scene while those slob adult men seem to constantly be getting married. What gives?
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No way. Those idiots suck at everything
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If it were up to me we would be having take and bake pizza, if other people want something else other people can cook it.
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Let me...
Let me...
Let me...
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You don't help cook you don't eat.
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Also consider beating your children with a pair of jumper cables, not out of anger, or the need to discipline them, but for the sheer joy of hitting a living human being with jumper canles.
Edit: my parents beat me with jumper cables all the time and it embiggened my cromulence. It's good for you. Like milk. Or calt. Or shumming.
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?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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Owh hellll no, I'm not helping with cleaning up 😜
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As an introvert who struggles with social stuff at festivities, fuck that.
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This has nowt to do with social stuff
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As an introvert myself it's easy to hide in a kitchen and express myself through my creations instead of actually talking to people.
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So put on / in your headphones and start on those dishes.
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I remember a T-day in the mid 80s. My older sister had an absolute meltdown because I wouldn't help clean up.
Awww, too bad, so sad... Eat shit, Vicki.
213 comments
And don't forget to teach all the kids how to fix an electrical socket, change a tire, build a computer.
That's why before any children visit my house, I take all of the sockets out of the walls and leave the bare wires dangling from the receptacle. You want to charge your phone? Take this outlet and screwdriver. Oh, got a bit fried? Lesson one: check the breaker before doing electrical work, idiot.
The survivors go directly to trade school.
And place the hungry chihuahua in front of the circuit breaker. That way they learn to tame a dog and find the right switch. #twofer
That sounds like a lot of work. Just do like my parents did and buy a house that has all the electrical outlets red flagged and never fix them!
Genuinely good advice.
I was on a trip with my partner (I am female, partner is male), and when we got off the train to go home, we had a flat tire.
He is not handy at all, and got super flustered and frustrated and was going to call AAA, and I was like umm.. you have a spare in here, right? Time to learn how to change a tire! Pop that trunk!
And so I made him do it, and walked him through how, and now he knows for next time, yay! I’ve also fixed his dishwasher, patched drywall, several other plumbing things, etc. only thing I wont touch for someone else is electric. I wont even do my own unless its a plug-in thing.
He, in turn, helped me with building my computer and doing various software stuff I could probably do on my own but didn’t know how.
So even if those skills aren’t super useful for you directly, you can and will use them with other people and you can pass on the knowledge. I mean I learned to change a tire as a very young adult, from an off-duty cop who stopped to help on the side of the highway. I knew the basics, but he showed me the full process. And since then I’ve taught two others, but haven’t needed it for myself.
I love this approach. Learn so, if nothing else, you can teach others.
One of my first boyfriends showed me how to build a computer, he walked me through how to pick parts and check features, but I decided what to buy. When I had everything he showed me how to put it together and get it working.
Ten years later a different boyfriend's laptop conked out. I got him his own set of tools and said "Time to learn how a computer works."
My rule (and one from a buddy at work) is that in order to be allowed to drive alone my kids are going to be expected to explain to me how to change a tire, check basic fluids, and replace a headlamp/brakelamp.
I don't care if they are physically capable of doing it (they are pretty petite girls and some people torque the hell out of lugbolts/nuts) but in case they ever require help from someone, they should be able to recognize if it is correctly done, or if the person is acting shady.
A similar thing happened with me and my sister. We were riding with our then boyfriends somewhere and got a flat. Niether of the guys knew how to change it. Both my sister and I did. It was late, and a cop stopped to check on us, a lady cop, she laughed when we told her what was going on, taught both of them right then and there how to change the tire.
I also helped a younger girl change her tire for her in a parking lot, she was really greatful she didn't have to call her dad.
How the electoral system works, how to use a gun, how to overthrow the government, measure out a shelf so it's horizontal.
I once saw someone who didn't know how to use a ruler to measure stuff. He held it in the middle of a sofa to find out how high it is.
This. So much this. And I want to break it down a bit and give my own experiences.
Years ago, I was teaching my then-girlfriend how to change her oil. We were broke 20-somethings, so paying for a place to do it was a costly option. She was kinda "meh" on the idea but went with it. The moment she really got into it, though, was when a random guy walked by and was so happy seeing a woman learning how to take care of cars and how he wished his girl would learn that. She got a sense of pride from it, and afterwards, when she realised she did it herself and saved a bunch of money... she was very proud of herself. Rightfully so.
A (former) friend of mine had bought her first house just a couple of years ago. (Kinda wish she hadn't because the house is in rough shape, but then again, the rental market is maybe in a worse shape... only time will tell). Anywho, I visit her, and she shows me the house. Not a single smoke detector anywhere in the house. No fire extinguishers anywhere. And in the living room, there was this fancy light fixture that was controlled by a dimmer switch... that was extremely hot. I think it was 6-8 bulbs (don't recall) and each was 120w incandescent lightbulb... all through a dimmer. Unsure when the previous owner did that, but that's a decent way to eventually cause a fire. The dimmer switch was literally hot to the touch. She knew it was hot, but didn't really think anything of it. I took us to Home Depot/Menards/Fleet Farm (I don't recall which exactly) and bought her a bunch of smoke detectors, extinguishers, and a new dimmer switch, which I installed, and we removed half the bulbs. Believe I also gave her a GFCI tester and told her to test every receptacle in the house.
Back in high school, I took a small engines course because I wanted to better know how engines really worked outside of a book. My station partner was a girl I knew (who lived a few houses down from me). One day I realised I was hogging everything (teardown and rebuild) and apologised and pushed everything to her. She pushed it back, said her brothers would do anything she ever needed, and she just wanted an easy course. (While this is not important to the story, it was a very unattractive move on her part, which did alter how I saw her, which, a few years later, when she asked me out, I rejected her.) Another course I took, which was an intro to welding, there was a girl who thought I'd do her work for her. I took to acetylene welding right away, which seemed to be the hardest for everyone else (hence why she picked me). Instead, I told her I'd help teach her, which she took me up on. The unbridled joy and pride when she got an A on her welding test... (a memory that leaves with me).
Final story, I was in college, and my roommate was a loser. He had no fucking idea how to cook. He tried to make Mac and Cheese once and didn't know how to boil water. He had no idea how the washer/dryer worked. His mom asked if I'd teach him. And I did try, but he had no plans to learn; he'd rather drive the 2-3 hours back home to make his mom do his laundry. Or if he couldn't make it that week, he'd just buy new clothes.
All kids should be taught all sorts of basic skills. And frankly, a bunch of adults could stand to learn things too. Example, do you know what an anode rod is? If not, I'm guessing you've been skipping out on maintenance. Do you know if your heater is gas/electric? And which one has a pilot light? Do you have a spare tire? Where is it? Have you ever used the jack on your car before? What are jumper cables and do you have some? How do they work and how do you use them correctly? Every adult should be able to answer all these questions and more.
I really wish someone taught me to build a computer
It's like LEGO but with sharper edges.
I wanted to write: No better time to get started than now!
But looking at the RAM prices which are about to jump over to GPUs, maybe wait till after the AI bubble bursts.
So first you melt some sand...
Make mistakes in front of kids while doing this and show them it doesn't have to be a big deal if they "fail", as long as they're failing safely (slipping and skinning your knuckles while trying to remove a bolt on a car for example).
My father once wanted to demonstrate the danger of alcohol in combination with fire. So he got a seemingly empty bottle of some high percentage stuff and held a lighter to the opening.
I don't think getting massively burned on the thumb and having an enormous yellow burn blister for weeks was part of the plan. But it did help in getting the message across.
Also mending, how to do laundry, plus how and when to compromise.
My daughter always helps me with oil changes. We love it.
Plunging a toilet, cleaning a toilet.
Just last week I finally set and held a boundary for my ex. I did NOT unclog her toilet. She figure it out . Now she has her own toilet snake and knows how to use it
Writing the theme tune, singing the theme tune.
Instructions unclear my dick is now stuck in the toilet
It is all about the pull, not the push.
God I wish I knew how to do any of that. Thankfully there's!dadforaminute@lemmy.world to teach me that now