Life Skills

[zanshin]

The 14 year old and I had an interesting conversation last night about all the things people should be able to do that aren't necessarily taught in school. First aid, cooking, plan and follow a budget- that sort of thing. What are life skills you think kids should learn?

[thelerner]

Transportation and navigation kind of things.  How to read a map, know basic directions, north south etc.,  Use public transportation (or bike), figure out how to get from point a to point b confidently on there own. 

 

This area is great for teaching confidence, independence and a sense of adventure. 

 

I'd add, earning money.  Something like babysitting, lawn work, house sitting, dog walking etc.,  Having a job teaches many life lessons, so does having some money. 

Edited May 27, 2015 by thelerner

[CloudHands]

Learn to be yourself (meaning feeling who you are more than getting it from others' eyes),

Then through it to learn to respect it,

Then to discover what you want to be/to do.

 

But maybe that's not a teacher's work.

[Vanir Thunder Dojo Tan]

maybe a teacher's encouragement however...




Kids miss out on a lot of real-life common sense stuff that school doesnt prepare them for or equip them to handle.

Nothing comes to mind off hand, but i know that the already mentioned suggestions are top-tier. cooking, first aid, map coordination, whoring earning money in exchange for tasks... 

[Songtsan]

Sublimation techniques, meditation, gongfu, basically our kids should be trained ninjas IMO..

[dust]

Having a job teaches many life lessons, so does having some money. 

 

Not having enough money teaches at least as much about the value of it

 

 

Yes, certain first-aid, survival and navigational skills would be good. I did a thing called the Duke of Edinburgh scheme when I was in school, and we went out camping and trekking around with maps. It was fun, though we could have learnt a lot more.

 

Also I don't know what is offered these days but I might suggest a critical thinking class of some kind. Not just philosophy, learning about Plato and Hobbes and Kant, but actually learning to think for oneself. If a textbook were needed, Zhuangzi would be my text of choice

 

I'd suggest that many things that are taught in school should be left out. I do not need, and have never needed, to know the names and years of all the monarchs that ever fought for the throne, for example.

[blue eyed snake]

The 14 year old and I had an interesting conversation last night about all the things people should be able to do that aren't necessarily taught in school. First aid, cooking, plan and follow a budget- that sort of thing. What are life skills you think kids should learn?

 

Being able to use a power drill and a screwdriver, a hammer and an axe. to paint your walls and woodwork. Darn your clothing, stoke a fire. A bit of practical elictricity things, so that you can fix things at home. In holland you need to be able to fix a punctured tire for your bike ( something that lots of young peole aren't able to anymore...)

For girls i strongly advice some sort of physical selfdefence, karate or some such.

[Daeluin]

Stillness. Stillness within movement.

 

Young ones have such great energy that unfolds and expands, forcing growth and evolution that, in our society results in a near constant running and running that never ends. 

 

If young ones could have role models of energetic stillness, stable fields present where they could come to still their restless energies, perhaps the resulting peace would yield less violent pressures; more refined channels for growth.

 

And by extension, people should understand cycles of growth. People should inherently understand that for every growth there should be a matching retreat, a matching period of patient acceptance. That for every intensely active phase of expression, there should be a matching phase of stillness. When we learn to become aware of this seamless flow of still-potential into growth, into expression, into returning-acceptance, back into storing up potential and stillness.... we also become aware of how to connect to and facilitate this flow, and are able to identify when the flow is NOT balanced, so we can make adjustments. 

 

In taiji it is emphasized to avoid breaking the flow of energy. But in real life we sleep, then immediately become awake and active; we are on or off, with little awareness of gradually flowing between these changes. I am curious how a youthful generation with deep embodiment of cyclical flow might change the world.

[CloudHands]

Being able to use a power drill and a screwdriver, a hammer and an axe. to paint your walls and woodwork. Darn your clothing, stoke a fire. A bit of practical elictricity things, so that you can fix things at home. In holland you need to be able to fix a punctured tire for your bike ( something that lots of young peole aren't able to anymore...)

For girls i strongly advice some sort of physical selfdefence, karate or some such.

 

I agree with you. Now let me laugh because I can tell you that's not the path  we are taking in france : students in carpentry (14 years old) are not even allowed to use electric tool neither to climb on anything !

Dangerous work that said.

[Taomeow]

Teach them how to learn.  Make an idol of competence and show them how to worship it.  Make another one of inner richness -- of treasures not for sharing with just anyone but for illuminating the soul -- and show them how to worship this one.  Make a third one of a dream, a big one, because only great goals move the soul to action, small ones bore it and put it to sleep.  And the last one of skills, not "just in case" skills, not skills of fear and insecurity, but skills of building that dream, making it real.  

 

Place one idol in each corner of their room.  Worship one per day together.  Don't teach them anything you are not doing yourself.

 

Every week, spend four days on that -- can be minutes, can be hours, but got to be four days every week.  Take three days off, ask them to forget all about it for three days, empty their mind, fill it with whatever randomness life puts in their way.  Teach them not to take more than three days a week off their task, the task of acquiring perfection, nondecay, immortality.

 

Also sprach Taomeow.         

Edited May 28, 2015 by Taomeow

[dust]

I'm slightly afraid of taking this thread off-topic, but... well, you started it with that post
 
 

Teach them how to learn.

 
Yes. Probably the most important thing, in fact.
 
 

Make a third one of a dream, a big one, because only great goals move the soul to action, small ones bore it and put it to sleep.

 

Isn't one of the problems with modern life that we have all these silly dreams that we are taught we should try against all odds to realize, when really all we need to make us happy is to sit back and take things less seriously?

Edited May 28, 2015 by dustybeijing

[blue eyed snake]

I agree with you. Now let me laugh because I can tell you that's not the path  we are taking in france : students in carpentry (14 years old) are not even allowed to use electric tool neither to climb on anything !

Dangerous work that said.

 

oew...carpentry students of 14 years old who are not taught to handle electric tools..., even more reason to teach that to your kids yourself..

 

my father taught me to handle power drill and electric saw at ten, I remember him looking at me and saying: i think you're old enough now to learn to handle electric tools and still...when i'm working with a power drill I hear his voice: when you need to change drill always first  get the plug out of the wallsocket. 

[blue eyed snake]

I do not like the idea of teaching kids that they should strive for perfection. 

 

I would like to teach them to be satisfied with who they are, to love them for that and to teach them that they love themselves. To use their talents as best as they can, be satisfied with that and to enjoy themselves with good things.

 

The striving for perfection that was taught to me by my parents, especially my mum, has warped me and I'm still struggling to get loose from it..

 

A friend of mine, who still has kids has a nice ritual before dinner. All participants state 3 things that went well today. ( the first time i was baffled, but it's good idea) My friend started this in a period when her son was very depressed, on the verge of a clinical depression, 10 years old.

 

when you really don't know anything you can come up with: i came home soaking wet today, but my underwear was still dry, or some such.

 

But every day, it gives us a reason to state what is good, i like it and there are periods in my life that i do this too, although in a somewhat different form.

[CloudHands]

[sorry for the off topic]

 

my father taught me to handle power drill and electric saw at ten, I remember him looking at me and saying: i think you're old enough now to learn to handle electric tools and still...when i'm working with a power drill I hear his voice: when you need to change drill always first  get the plug out of the wallsocket. 

 

That is quite something... my grand father gave me a pocket knife at 8. I cut myself the same day.

My coworker has 2 fingers missing

[blue eyed snake]

[sorry for the off topic]

 

 

That is quite something... my grand father gave me a pocket knife at 8. I cut myself the same day.

My coworker has 2 fingers missing

 

I still got all my fingers, and was specifically told that that was the highest important thing in carpentry, to keep all your fingers. I think i was 12 before i was allowed to use these tools without supervision of him or my elder brother. And far younger when i was taught to use handsaw and drills, i think i was seven, maybe six

[Taomeow]

I'm slightly afraid of taking this thread off-topic, but... well, you started it with that post

 

 

 

Yes. Probably the most important thing, in fact.

 

 

 

Isn't one of the problems with modern life that we have all these silly dreams that we are taught we should try against all odds to realize, when really all we need to make us happy is to sit back and take things less seriously?

 

I haven't picked up any dreams from the mainstream dream dispenser ever since the last one went bust.  (That was my American dream, which was something else to someone who was not born American -- it didn't mean a house in the suburbs, a car, and snubbing the Joneses.  It was a dream of freedom.  I thought America was about that.  But what I got instead was a house in the suburbs, a car, and the Joneses who would snub you if you don't wash it as often as they wash theirs.  And will inspect your lawn for dandelions, and snub you if you have any.)   If your ideal of happiness is to sit back and take things less seriously, teach your kids that.  Whatever it is, if it is real, it's worth it.  If, however, you think it's about happiness and then you sit back and take things less seriously and are miserable, it might mean you didn't contemplate your ideal thoroughly enough.   I thought mine was freedom, but what I did toward getting that had a war on dandelions as the practical outcome, and this has little to do with freedom, on closer inspection.  So now I have a different dream.  But one reason I made many mistakes was that no one ever taught me anything about real dreams who had any experience living them.  I was ignant.  Ignant.  

[Taomeow]

I do not like the idea of teaching kids that they should strive for perfection. 

 

I would like to teach them to be satisfied with who they are, to love them for that and to teach them that they love themselves. To use their talents as best as they can, be satisfied with that and to enjoy themselves with good things.

 

The striving for perfection that was taught to me by my parents, especially my mum, has warped me and I'm still struggling to get loose from it..

 

A friend of mine, who still has kids has a nice ritual before dinner. All participants state 3 things that went well today. ( the first time i was baffled, but it's good idea) My friend started this in a period when her son was very depressed, on the verge of a clinical depression, 10 years old.

 

when you really don't know anything you can come up with: i came home soaking wet today, but my underwear was still dry, or some such.

 

But every day, it gives us a reason to state what is good, i like it and there are periods in my life that i do this too, although in a somewhat different form.

 

Depends on whose definition of perfection is used.  If it's the parent's definition, it's pretty much emotional abuse, to saddle the kids with striving for that.  But what I mean by perfection is an inner imperative to unfold into who you really are.  And a kid who lives an inner life of something less than what he or she really is and intends to spend the rest of his or her life getting more and more "whatever" inside, assembling a personality out of "whatever," will never be happy no matter how much it is allowed or encouraged by the external authority source.  We are all meant to be perfectly perfect at being who we are.  Why settle for "whatever" if you can be real?  I think it's a recipe for disaster in every case, to never find out how magnificent you are when you have put in some effort into being the whole you -- the perfect you -- or as close to that as your effort can take you.  Remember that "perfection" only sounds like a noun -- but in reality, it's a verb.  It's a process.  A brilliant chameleon.   

 

This is something that protects against all the BS of competing with others, of envy, insecurity, low self-esteem, and the rest of those depressing feelings and drives -- to know that you are unfolding into who you are, and "perfection" is your birthright -- not contingent on how anyone else reacts.  YOU know where you're at vis a vis who you were meant to be.  No one else does.  So, making perfection one's inner value also teaches honesty with self and others, and humility, and many, many good things.

 

I don't know if it can be taught outside taiji though. 

[zanshin]

oew...carpentry students of 14 years old who are not taught to handle electric tools..., even more reason to teach that to your kids yourself..

 

my father taught me to handle power drill and electric saw at ten, I remember him looking at me and saying: i think you're old enough now to learn to handle electric tools and still...when i'm working with a power drill I hear his voice: when you need to change drill always first get the plug out of the wallsocket.

My son, his neighborhood friend and to lesser extent little brothers built a treehouse 2 years ago. Actually a platform with stilts and one corner in a tree about 5 feet up. They scavenged the lumber from neighbors who ripped out their deck and built it with hand saw, cordless drill with screwdriver bit on it and some long wood screws. I really didn't help much, gave some building advice and made sure the tree didn't get hurt. The friend's teenager brother helped an afternoon or 2. Another neighbor about 14 came to my door and expressed great concern that they were using power tools. I really thought it was a brilliant project because they did it with minimal adult help. It even stayed up a few months. Seems like parents take over kid's projects and games pretty fast and then they expect it.

Edited May 29, 2015 by zanshin

[zanshin]

Also,as thread starter, I don't really mind if it gets side tracked. You all were great enjoyed reading responses.

[CloudHands]

This is something that protects against all the BS of competing with others, of envy, insecurity, low self-esteem, and the rest of those depressing feelings and drives -- to know that you are unfolding into who you are, and "perfection" is your birthright -- not contingent on how anyone else reacts.  YOU know where you're at vis a vis who you were meant to be.  No one else does.  So, making perfection one's inner value also teaches honesty with self and others, and humility, and many, many good things.

 

I don't know if it can be taught outside taiji though. 

 

 

I'd like to "like" or "thanks" that, but I can't. I agree with your values, you've got a lot of knowledge all of it written with eloquence but there is often some premises of your reflexion I doubt about, I can't verify this or that. And so I can't thank you. However I'd like to thank you for the general quality of your posts and the share of knowledge.

[blue eyed snake]

last winter my grownup son asked me what i would do different if i had to start over being a parent with what i know now...

 

that set me to thinking, it seems to me, now, that every parent is loading their kids with a lot of stuff that has more to do with the parent  than with the child. Often with very good intentions, but still...

 

and then you're grown up, you join the Daobums or some such...and find that a lot of  the 'who you are' is made up out of stuff that is inherently part of what you're parents and society put there. And somewhere deep down, buried under layers of rubbish there is your core.

 

so the less 'rubbish' we put on our children, the better off they will be. But not nothing...that would be abuse...it should be a balance, like the minimum needed to bring up a child in society qua norms and rules etc. 

But practical things like i mentioned are needed, what is needed depends on the specific society..

and learning to learn is also very good, to make them see that they gotta choose their own lives.

 

and what i said about perfection is part of it to, we should learn to be satisfied with the things we can attain, but striving for perfection, is a losing game. bad for feelings of  selfworth. Children should learn that everybody has the same 'right' to be on the globe, rich or poor, man or woman, healthy or sic/handicapped, old and young. Learning by seeing that her parents treat everybody with a friendly attitude

 

And also i find that more and more i wonder whether school as it is set up now, is a place where we should bring our children. but in this country sending your kids to school is compulsory.

 

 

 

 

[thelerner]

last winter my grownup son asked me what i would do different if i had to start over being a parent with what i know now...

hmnn, mine did too. 

I said 'Wear a condom.'  

 

 

 

kidding, I don't even have any grownup kids yet, though I'm getting close. 

 

actually my kids are boy, girl, boy.  my youngest once said he'd only want 2 kids. 

I said 'me too' and we laughed and laughed.

Edited May 29, 2015 by thelerner

[SonOfTheGods]

Self Defense, especially for females

[thelerner]

Self Defense, especially for females

I'd add, if they don't have a special interest in any particular art they'd want to explore indepth, then I'd highly recommend Model Mugging, Chimera or something that's specific to woman's self defense which is a different set of skills then whats learned at most dojos. 

 

Plus keep a small can of pepper spray on your keychain.  Unfortunately woman are bigger targets then men for robbery and rape. 

[Songtsan]

I think kids should be taught to strive for perfection, in the future, while simultaneously accepting themselves 100% in the moment. Its as easy as noting the best ways to behave, but keeping it real.