<p>
Oh, yes. Then there’s the added struggle of finding competent help…;)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, there really are. People fall on hard times. They cannot afford to hire people to do things for them.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In the real world, though that might often be true, it really isn’t always.</p>
<p>
It was a double negative. I know that there are people who cannot afford to hire help.</p>
<p>Well, if you don’t hire COMPETENT help, you can indeed find yourself worse off. Doing due diligence and getting an idea of how to vet people and get recommendations to be able to hire competent help is also a very important life skill that is very useful and transfers to many things when you don’t have the time or expertise to take it on yourself.</p>
<p>That’s the second time your double negatives have gotten me.</p>
<p>
Then why do we bother to teach kids anything at all? Can’t just about anything be learned on the spot? Why not just let them learn everything when they are grown and out on their own and they need it?</p>
<p>To me it isn’t necessarily the specific skills, but more that they learn that neither Mom nor magic fairies mop the floor or wash their clothes. If they have mopped a floor before, they know it is a thing that needs to be done and they have experience doing it. They would be more likely to do it than just to ignore it.</p>
<p>
I’m sorry! 
I type how I talk.</p>
<p>To me it isn’t necessarily the specific skills, but more that they learn that neither Mom nor magic fairies mop the floor or wash their clothes. If they have mopped a floor before, they know it is a thing that needs to be done and they have experience doing it. They would be more likely to do it than just to ignore it.</p>
<p>It blows my mind that kids ever bring their clothes home to be washed.
What a pita that must be.
If they can get them home, why cant they get them to a laundromat?</p>
<p>
It really is a pain in the buttocks. Lugging clothes back and forth got really old after the second time.</p>
<p>Both of mine wash their clothes at school. The only time laundry might make it home is just a few items over a long break - just because they were in the hamper at the time.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One of the reasons we send our kids college (at least I do,) is to learn advanced problem solving, research and communication skills. I personally think having a college degree qualifies one to be able to figure out how to wash clothes, cook food and maintain a car.</p>
<p>Bay, thank you for the sanity of Post 252… </p>
<p>My mother was shocked that I do my own gardening, mending, and cooking. She told me (at age 20, when I graduated from college) that I should be able to make enough money to pay someone to do “all that stuff.” She considered learning to make enough money to hire people the real life skill.</p>
<p>The key is to have a general idea of what needs maintainence and be able to a) do it yourself and/or b) hire competent help. Based on the individual’s structure of their household and day life, they may or may not be able to perform these “basic” life skills. I don’t think we should look down on those who choose to perform the skills themselves nor should we look down on those who hire help for even the “simplist” tasks. </p>
<p>I personally would hire people to mow my lawn no matter if I had .25 acres or 3 acres. If I had the time to devote my free time to a garden, I would garden. It’s all about priorities, interests, and what you deem worth it.</p>
<p>Personally, I’m happy to pay our great mechanics to keep our cars working well. H can perform routine things but we prefer to spend our time doing other things. We all only have so much time doing things we prefer. </p>
<p>H likes doing the yard–I’m fine with his preferences.</p>
<p>I learned to do ASIC mechanical work on my car when I couldn’t afford to pay someone to do it. It s a useful skill to have and it builds a lot of confidence.</p>
<p>Nowadays, even my mechanics say that a lot of the less routine work needs to be done by computer diagnostics and you have to order the parts from the dealers. My BIL still likes to tinker with his vehicles and has a mechanic that will get him whatever parts he needs when he can’t easily get them otherwise. H says his grease monkey days are over, but he did it for awhile back in the day. He’s happy to help keep our mechanics in business as they’re very honest and competent. We have one that works on US & Japanese vehicles and the other works on Volvos and a few other foreign cars. A good mechanic is an invaluable asset to aging vehicles.</p>
<p>“I thought this was the skill set they needed as some kind of magical answer to managing life.”
-Couple skills seems to be of importance to me. Social skills, time managements skills. Yes, kids can watch and do along side home chores,…that is if you are doing them. If you are busy with your life and choose to do only what you like to do, then how they will learn from you? Oh, yes, I forgot it taked genius to learn how to boil pasta and stick your dirty laundry into washer and drier. I was under impression though that if you got into college, then you certainly can read instructions on the buttons of the washer,…well, with the current low academic level of HS, one might wonder if it is true any more.</p>
<p>So many insults, so little time, MiamiDAP. If laundry was so easy, I wouldn’t have watched future physicists, engineers and rocket scientists (I lived in a science dorm) ruin load after load of wash because they had no damn clue how to do laundry. And while most anyone can boil water, unless a person is planning to eat pasta for the rest of his life, it takes more than 10 minutes to learn how to cook a variety of ingredients, what combinations of said ingredients work together, and how to do it affordably and efficiently. While reading a cookbook or a website can help, cooking in real life WITH someone is the best way to learn. And yes, let’s slam all schools now for being “of low academic level”. Guess you homeschooled your kids into college, then?</p>
<p>While people are welcome, when they have the means, to pick up the phone and call in help for any and all housekeeping needs, I’ve seen it happen that someone is living a good life with plenty of the funds to do so end up struggling financially through no fault of their own. It’s really critical to be able to do for oneself in such situations. And no one is immune. It happens all the time.</p>
<p>sseamom - Maybe you just have higher laundry quality standards than others. I went to a STEM school, and I can’t recall hearing about anybody ever ruining laundry there. (OK, we’d often get distracted with studies and be late for dryer switchover or pickup. But nothing was ruined). </p>
<p>The bottom line with all these household / cooking tasks is that they are learnable before, during, or after college. But kids with good role models at home will be at an advantage and pick it up faster. </p>
<p>To me the most critical life skill is learning to drive safely. In CO, parents must supervise at least 50 hours driving (10 hours night) on the drivers permit. Some parents skimp on the practice and fudge the report form. We did not.</p>