I am cracking up over all the anti cursive people which is like everyone on this thread… Lol… My kids schools gave up on it sadly and both kids fine motor skills suck. I used to lector /teach speech recognition to the medical world for electronic medical records and how I do my charts. I barely type or write anything but when I do like my hand hurts… Lol…
Your kids all need to know basic house repair!!! ??. Most of it is very basic, easy, and can be looked up on you tube. Why wait all day to fix a clog and the expense of it. Same with an outlet that goes bad etc. I fix a lot of stuff around our house by trial and error and doing some house rehabbing. It’s just not that hard… Even appliances… Case and point…
Our 25 year old Jenn Air double oven went bonkers. Had a fix it dude come to tell me that parts are no longer available. One call to Repair Clinic dot Com and they gave me a source that was 30 minutes from my work. Took the front panel off… 4 screws and the back of the timer panel (the front panel with clock thing with bake, broil buttons) had like 6 very simple computer plugs to just unplug. Took a total of 6 minutes. Instead of a cost of a new double oven it cost me $185. 00 to have it fixed. Been 3 years now. Also for things you can’t get any longer Repair Clinic and the like usually has them. Old knobs, etc etc.
Anyway, it’s useful to learn to do some basic things. Toilet making gurgling sounds or running water sounds. Buy this
I can’t think of a single thing. At this point, t’s not my decision to make, but I would want my kids to be skilled in as many areas as they can be or want to be.
I would say the “new” way of doing subtraction and long division. What a disaster. I tutored several girls in high school math and showed them the “old” way of doing those operations. They always said, “Why didn’t they teach us THIS way of doing it?”
I love AAA and this banker hasn’t balanced a checkbooks since online banking came out. DS didn’t even bother to get checks for his college checking account. We will see if they are necessary when he prepares to move off campus.
Nothing confirms the domination of cc by people from the Northeast more than the widespread aversion to being able to change a tire. In flyover country, there are probably millions of miles of roads where help is not going to just magically appear within minutes of your tire going flat . Plus, changing a tire is just slightly more difficult than opening a can of tuna, as most of us. out here in Hee-Haw land know. So, it’s not like learning how to do it would take up much time…certainly not as much time as learning to count to 20 in Albanian.
FL and TX, non-NE in the city and suburbs. Not changing the tire. I’ve even decided I’d rather buy a rim than take a chance of getting hit on the freeway by one of these video game-styled speeding drivers. I do need to confirm that I have a good spare for a Louisiana rode trip.
@moooop - Touche (I know there should be an accent on the e, but I haven’t found the international keyboard on this computer yet) I have never changed a tire. I have fixed my own appliances, done electrical wiring, even done some light plumbing, but auto repair is not an area where I would like to tread. My ex husband always pushed for me to learn how to change the oil in my car. I know it’s simple, but I have no interest in getting under a car. As far as tires go, I would be scared that I wouldn’t have the strength to get it done correctly. I guess it’s something I should learn, though.
Just reading this thread now but, with the discussion about tire changing, I was thinking that it really depends on how close you are to help. I live in a heavily populated area and AAA is never more than 30 minutes or so away. I don’t wish to ever change a tire and don’t know how; my kids don’t either. I’m sure I’d have a different outlook if we lived in a more remote area. We are not handy, DIYers and I’m regretful about that. Would have been nice if the kids knew some basic home maintenance things that we pay for.
I’ll admit dh and I have never balanced our checkbook, even before online banking which we endorsed as soon as it became available. If someone said they didn’t receive our check or lost it, I’d check our statements/the bank (pre-online) or go online and confirm and re-issue. With our bank, if a check isn’t cashed within 90 days, the check is considered void and the funds ‘return’ to our account. My mother, to this day, balances to the penny. She will spend hours getting to that penny.
@ucbalumnus yep, I realize the instructions for how to change a tire are in the car somewhere and/or in the manual. I was just making a statement that my driver’s ed teacher refused to teach us how. His statement was that girls are too stupid to learn and he didn’t want to take the time. The statement was not that the instructions are in the car and he trusted us to be able to read and figure it out.
Thankfully, I have never had the need to find the instructions and do it. I would still prefer to call for help, even when I lived in flyover country, if the need were to arise.
@GKUnion so…what’s the choice? We have AAA so would call them…but our cars do not have spare tires…and didn’t even come with the option of getting spare tires.
As far as changing a tire. My daughter does know how. She had a flat at her tutor’s house when she was in high school and needed to be somewhere. She fixed it on a residential street. (I didn’t even know she knew how). She could have called someone but chose not to. Freeway, oh yes she would have.
Now for my son. I’m glad he knows how. Friends were out in CO at 1am driving back to TX after spring break. It was below freezing. They had a flat. They called AAA. Couldn’t come out til the morning because they were too far out in the middle of nowhere. Called other places, nope. They got out and changed the tire. Ended up there was other damage and the car wouldn’t go. Called the police, nope. Wait it out. They sat there until 8am when help arrived. At least if it had only been the tire they could have been on their way. I did say that I told him not to drive in the middle of the night! I’m not sure he has learned his lesson.
@thumper1 In an emergency/dangerous situation defaulting to Fix-A-Flat and ruining a tire is preferable to other potential outcomes.
If the tires are on the older side and you’ll replace them in the near future anyway I say spray away.
Sure, in any situation, if you have the time to wait for AAA that’s a perfectly acceptable option as well.
What you don’t want to do with the spray is deal with a slow leak. I’d rather stop every 10 miles to check a tire and add air than ruin it with the spray. Getting a tire plugged at a shop is < $10.
I’m still baffled that some new cars don’t have spares. I drive a 2007 vehicle with a big old spare tire mounted to the back that obscures my rear view. I literally am reminded of my spare every time I hop in my truck.
Our first experience discovering That such a thing as a car without a spare tire exists happened very early Easter morning 2008 on an industrial road (took the wrong exit) on the wrong side of the Munich airport.
Not a soul in sight, couldn’t read the rental agreement papers to figure out which phone number to call, had pre-smart phone flip phones, so no googling anything.
Finally flagged down a police officer (complete with large German Shepherd in the back of his very tiny vehicle), who drove my husband to the airport rental desk, where they returned with a van for the four of us.
Did not miss our flight, only because we had left for the airport ridiculously early.
Fun times.
The image of my puzzled husband saying, “Could you take a look and tell me if you see a spare tire? Anywhere? Am I missing something?” will stick with me for ever.
lol, @momo2x2018, I guess there’s a distinction between teaching our kids and having them change their behavior…I definitely taught my kids to turn their clothes right side out for laundry purposes…over and over again! When any of them come home for a visit and do their laundry, I can see that lesson still didn’t stick!
I tried with my kids, but they didn’t really learn football until they had boyfriends who wanted to watch.
My niece was funny. She played all kinds of sports herself like soccer, basketball, lacrosse, tennis so she knew those. She became a cheerleader in high school and knew nothing about football. She couldn’t believe they only had to go 10 yards. TEN yards? All this fuss over TEN yards?
When I did my kids laundry (and they were old enough to understand), they got the clothes back the way they threw them in the laundry basket. Inside out, that was the way they were returned.
HaHa @collage1 ! I spoke to my S yesterday, at 2am in his part of the world. I asked him why he was still awake and he told me that he’d just finished picking the clothes of his floor and laundering them; they had been sitting there, piling up, since he arrived back after Spring Break, which was four weeks ago - and I know he doesn’t have enough socks and underwear for four weeks!!!