My child is leaving for college in the fall and I keep having these “how can you not know this” moments. Anyone else carry to share theirs.
Here is today’s winner.
Everyone knows that if you can’t find your license and you choose to drive anyways you should be extra careful in your driving.
And maybe if you miss your turn you shouldn’t do an illegal u-turn
Right near the high school
Just prior to the start of the school day
And then explain to the cop that you needed to turn around because you were planning to park in the bank parking lot all day because you hadn’t paid for a parking pass.
Yours is so much better. I only got grief (well, with a laugh) because we failed to teach her the rules of football – her XC meets were Friday afternoons/evenings when HS football was played, and so she was the subject of some laughter when her college friends found out that she, pretty much, had no idea about the basics of the game.
I remember I was quarterback of our intramurals football team. I was a decent passer. Sadly, I was never told what the line of scrimmage was or that I was supposed to stay behind it to pass until the last game of the season. True story! No surprise, we came in last for the season but had a good time.
I don’t know the basics of football beyond four downs, touchdown, field goal, extra point. It all looks like a bunch of big guys shoving each other to me. I’ve never watched a pro football game in my life. I did attend college football but only to socialize. I think my S has picked up the rules, but I don’t know if my D knows the basics of football.
DD, with super-sensitive skin (as in work-up for anaphylactic symptoms post-new skin product and no answer beyond an epi-pen from teaching hospital work-up) waited until junior of college to tell me how she thought it was weird that I had never taught her how to apply make up. Hmm- Did you ever ask me? No. Did you want to wear make up? No. As I recall, you had great skin and no interest in make up, as well as an aversion to risking a reaction. That’s true, but why didn’t you teach me? Sometimes they wish they knew something retroactively… sometimes I wish I had taught them something pro-actively.
At the post office near the local university, there is a big envelope that shows where to put the stamp, where to put the receiver’s address, and where to put the return address. Proactive!
Over the years, there have a been a few eye-openers when we’ve discovered that our kids didn’t know some basic things when they left for college. My older son didn’t know that (most) banks aren’t open on Sundays, and few are open on Saturdays.
I failed in exposing my kids to a wide variety of music. Neither of them ever got into it, they don’t listen to Pandora or Spotify or any of those, they don’t have bands they like, they have no interest in going to concerts, they don’t own CDs or buy off iTunes. They know general top 40 pop and that’s it. Music is far more meaningful to me than it is to them.
@Pizzagirl, we crammed classical music down our kids’ throats, not because we’re snobs, but because we love it. We took them to numerous concerts starting from age 7 or so. One is a classical musician. The other one loves Broadway tunes. Neither one knows much about Pandora or Spotify, and they both prefer silence to any music at all. I’m thinking it’s not us, but how they’re wired.
I’m embarassed to say, but when my daughter was a senior in high school I asked her to look up the address of our destination and set the GPS. We arrived in the middle of a residential neighborhood instead of at the business we were going to. Turns out she thought she could just use the zip code and that it would get us “close enough.”
(In her defense, the zip code area that we lived in was teeny, tiny; that approach would have worked in our neighborhood.)
This one is clearly related to the addressing-envelope ones. Other than the occasional thank you note, kids just don’t have the occasion to send letters and don’t naturally pick up stuff like how big a zip code zone could be.
Sometimes you try to teach them useful things like writing a list for the day, list for the week, important deadlines, etc. One DD still is resisting doing this - for example at age 22, she says she is going to cancel a doc appt and yet I get a confirmation call 48 hours before (fortunately she was able to call 24 hours ahead of the appt and avoid a cancellation fee). Maybe, eventually, she will realize it is less taxing to write lists.
@travelnut – LOL-- I would need to have my daughter teach me how to apply makeup! I don’t wear makeup except maybe lipstick from time to time… and I think DD has been doing her own makeup since age 5. She was always involved in dance, so the makeup sessions when she was small were for dance recitals or competitions,but she had a fully stocked makeup box of her own and I never minded if she played dress-up at home. (Of course, no allergies like your daughter).
D1, now out of college, was recently headed for a big event, mentioned her BF needed a button replaced and asked me for a needle and thread. “BF can sew on a button?!” I was thinking, wow, good for him. “No, Mom, I’m going to do it.” Beats me where she learned that. In hs and college, I couldn’t get them sit for any lessons in something so domestically refined.
Yes, thankfully, S CAN see on his own buttons, tho he tries to get others to do it for him. ;). He’s also better at ironing than anyone else in the house and has put the iron and ironing board in his closet since grade school.
That said, he melted his college grad sash by trying to iron the polyester sash with the bottom of s hot frying pan and had to toss out both Ian and sash! High drama for college grad!
