Really obvious things you didnt teach your child (Lighthearted)

[Unorganisedchaos2]

Lighthearted, please don't come for me; I honestly do all the homework, reading etc just had a massive blind spot and looking to feel better.

DD6 had some homework this week to do her immediate family tree, lovely, she drew a big tree and we printed off some photos of everyone and it became clear that DD had absolutely no idea how all the random adults in her life were related 😅

She has a pretty typical set up 4 grandparents, 1 GGparent, 2 sets of 1 aunt and uncle and a couple of cousins, who we mix with at least weekly. I thought referring to my Mum as "Mum" for the past 6 years would have helped her make the connection but apparently not, bless her.

Anyway, it was an interesting learning activity and I think she's mostly grasped it now so no harm done ...right?

There are some adults who still seem quite confused by that one 😉

Trained electricians and plumbers are often the worst when it comes to their own home though, my electrician brother used to have bare wires in sockets and the wife of a plumber invited my for coffee to watch her cut the pipes under the sink, 'Now maybe he'll plumb the washer in' back in the days before easy plastic plumbing!

I once mentioned something that happened on my way home from school the previous evening and completely foxed a small child who didn’t think I had a home, he thought I lived at the school, presumably curled up in the home corner ( it was a long time ago) . I think he was the same child who believed that cartoon characters were real in the same way that people are real.

I don’t know if this is true or not, but I remember a story about how , when M and S opened up a branch in Paris, word went round not to buy the crumpets because they were inedible . Apparently the instruction to toast them had been widely ignored.

My DH was like that with cashpoints. His account is with HSBC so he'd wander around a strange town looking for an HSBC one, even though I told him he could use any of the banks' ATMs!

Yes I think I did too. I'll have to ask my son if he can remember being confused by it. Especially as he went to a childminder, I wonder if he thought she was his aunt or something.

My son can't open an envelope. I have shown him, but he always tears it open any old how!

He is 22!

I thought about this when my ds was about to go to university and showed him as I wasn't sure he'd ever had to open one which didn't have a ring pull!

I used to work with a French woman who said that she didn’t understand crumpets until she saw someone in the staff room toasting them.

In fairness I had no idea that couscous was a pasta until about 6 months ago. I’m 50.

I've also heard of French people eating breakfast cereals by the handful as a snack, because no one told them that they're usually served in a bowl with milk.

My DH does that because he is uncouth, not French.

All of my kids struggle with analogue time/clocks (ages 12, 14, 17), I think it's more to do with them checking phones for the time. They were taught in school but it just hasn't stuck.
I discovered when DS14 started high school that none of them could tie their shoes...they'd always just tucked them in or had slip on vans. That was a bit embarrassing, it didn't cross my mind to teach them.

I am surprised because most French supermarkets have a massive range of breakfast cereals

I realised quite early that saying things to my DDs like ‘clean your room’ made no sense whatsoever! I had to spend weeks walking them through - collect all the dishes, collect all the dirty clothes, collect any rubbish. Even simple things like ‘strip the bed’ involved ‘unbutton the duvet cover at the bottom’ etc 😂

My husbands twins from a previous relationship came to live with us at 5 . Two years later l was moaning about how much shower gel they were using when it became clear that they had no idea what shower scrunchies were for !

How to use a bar of soap. They had only ever used pump dispensers. It was comical.

That you can wash jacket potatoes before cooking them!

I have also heard that scammers try to get people to say 'yes' or 'no' and record it so they can use it for the voice recognition component of accounts they are trying to attack

Not really an obvious thing, but Roman numerals. Hence dd1 thought Henry VIII was called Henry Vill - we had a Ladybird book about him and I never thought to explain first.
He’s been Henry Vill in this house ever since.

DS didn't know that the weather forecast was a "best guess". He thought it was actual fact and that I really knew if it was going to rain at 1720 on Tuesday. I think he was about 6 and it was the start of him realising the mummy doesn't know everything.
He also got us stuck in an escape room aged about 14 because he couldn't dial a telephone. Just dial it, we kept saying to him helpfully.

My middle child thought Cornwall was in Spain because people went there on holiday and came back with a tan.

Natural gas has the smell added, it's usually odourless. In the UK prior to natural gas reserves being used, coal gas was used and that has a very distinctive pong. That pong was added to natural gas so people would notice a gas leak, ie for safety reasons.

My kids refused to believe grandma was my mum for a long time as she couldn’t possibly be anything but their grandma 😂

I failed to tell my daughters that steering wheels have a lock. I bought them (twins) a little Ford Ka when they passed their tests and within a couple of days got an anguished phone call that the steering wheel wouldn’t work and they thought they’d broken it 😆