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?

Isn't that sung to the tune of She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain?

I wouldn't be in a rush to teach him that skill!

Haha fair point.

As a child I believed that friends are kids you play with at school and cousins are kids you play with at home, because that was my experience.

I work with little kids now, age 3 to 5 and it never ceases to amaze me that some do not know their own second name. A few kids due to start primary didn't know, I had to tell them multiple times and set up games to learn them so they'd remember. I can't understand how a child doesn't even overhear a parent at a medical appt or whatever say their name. I know it's just a blind spot but I think its a serious error, if a child got lost or anything they don't know who they are!

Ds had come across something on TV about racial segregation in the USA and we had a chat about it. He asked a lot of questions and ended up talking about slavery and the history of how segregation began there and how the inequalities still exist today etc. It was many months later when we were talking about USA again I realised that he had it mixed up, he believed that black people held the wealth and power and had enslaved white people.

Not to eat a chicken sandwich after its been left in a bag for 8 hours. 😬

Poor dd2, 19, currently suffering Day 5 of food poisoning which i think we've narrowed down to that.
🤢🥺

I remember when my ds discovered pork came from pigs. He was really upset. My friend had pigs and when we visited her, my son had seen the pig/fed them etc. When we visited again the pigs were now sausages. I was telling my mum we'd had the sausages from the pigs, my ds was absolutely horrified, his face was like WT?. He was about 6 I think. He doesn't really like sausages much now.

My brother, soon after he turned 18, was apparently confused when voting for the first time. He couldn’t see Tony Blair on the ballot paper and had no idea what he was supposed to be doing.

A friend purchased clocks for each of her daughter-in-law's class as a gift for Christmas. DIL teaches second grade says it has made a great resource for her students.

I was confused by how couples got together. By chance, all the adults in my life were already married, so I never saw the process before this. I thought marriage “just happened “ to you, like being born or growing up. I didn’t realise until really late there was a whole process of dating and engagement leading up to it. When I started secondary school, the whole boyfriend/girlfriend thing was a complete mystery to me, and I couldn’t understand why books and TV made such a big deal of “falling in love”.

That you need to raise your arm to get the bus to stop for you at the bus stop. DS 1 rang me on his first day at high school to report that all the buses were driving straight past him.

Join the RAC?? Only joking… my dad taught me but wheels are now put on using a machine to tighten the wheel nuts and I can’t undo them. So… call the RAC. 🤣

DD2 didn't realize that Wales was part of the UK, and the UK was part of Europe, she is 14... She also can't do analogue time apart from the hour and half past.

I didn't realize cars needed insurance and MOTs until 6 months after both of mine expired when I was 19...

Yes - and like all human inventions, some people ‘get it’, and others just don’t, or have to work way harder at it. Analogue is really pretty much obsolete nowadays realistically, so it’s more like teaching kids the history of timekeeping than an essential skill, to be fair.

DS2 was somewhat vague around all things ‘time and date’ for ages. I loved the post about the DS who didn’t twig that the days of the week were sequential. I would like to bet DS2 was the same when younger, but we didn’t realise.

My GD is like this, she doesn’t even make the association between half an hour and 30 minutes. She doesn’t seem to have the ability to see patterns in numbers either, though she can do her tables now.

I've tried time and time again with my son and he just doesn't get it. We've used the clocks with the details and times on. I've made him wear watches. I've asked every single time he goes into a room to tell me.
He gets it... And then three days later he's lost it and has to count in fives again to get the time.
He's a clever lad and in top sets for most subjects. Is very articulate and can hold conversation with adults.

He just doesn't 'get it' and at nearly 14 I'm not sure he ever will! I could tell time from 5 but it's like he's 'time blind'.
He also doesn't have a great concept of time and go long things last.

@Teasloth : He just doesn't 'get it' and at nearly 14 I'm not sure he ever will! I could tell time from 5 but it's like he's 'time blind'.
He also doesn't have a great concept of time and go long things last.

DS2 is the same. I would like to bet that there have always been people like this, even pre-digital days.

I expect so, it was just something we all knew growing up on an estate, we all wore watches so we weren't late home for tea!

I think 'real world scenarios' are very different now.
His secondary school run on a digital clock so they're all exactly the same, and I guess phones and screens are pretry much all digital now.

He can work it out, he just can't glance at the clock and automatically know what time time is!

It winds me up everyday but I'm making peace with it 😂

I've remembered another thing I was never taught: my parents didn't involve me much in their money, and somehow, I was utterly clueless about the very idea of social class (and I bet many politicians are similarly clueless, but that's another debate.) I went to a state primary school, and my middle-class parents had lots of friends who were rich and poor, and while I noticed they often talked differently, I had no idea how this linked to money and standing. I didn't realise that living in a high-rise flat was considered "poor", and a detached house was considered "rich". (I so wanted to live in a high-rise flat!) I didn't even realise that going on lots of foreign holidays meant someone was rich. The only thing I understood by "poor" was so poor that you couldn't feed your children, and had to abandon them like Hansel and Gretel.

I didn't really become aware of "class" until I was a teenager, and even then, I had to have some of the humour in Fawlty Towers explained to me "I just want to keep the riff-raff away, dear", and Keeping Up Appearances "We are part owners of a mansion, that's all anyone need know. It's so lower-middle-class to go into details."

I’ve worked in a polling station at election time - this confusion persists well into adulthood.

Learning to tell the time with an analogue clock is tricky if you don’t have them at home. I set homework once in year one of looking around the house for clocks. Most children listed the microwave, oven, video, sky box etc. When we looked at an analogue clock the reply was mainly that nanny had one like that.
If you don’t have a clock in the your house then it’s very had to learn when you don’t see it in use.

I remember one child I taught who struggled with maths in general but was brilliant at money. His mum and dad ran the local newsagent so it was handling money, helping cash up, taking payment etc.

Changing a wheel is not as easy to do yourself as people make out: it takes practice, and the right tools. I've done it quite a few times; I was a driving instructor, and sometimes had to do it when learners rammed the car into the kerb. I once helped another driver who was stopped at the side of the road. Usually, the spanner provided with the spare wheel kit is hopeless for undoing nuts which have been tightened by machine: I have a long-handled spanner, and even that's difficult. Getting the jack in the right place is difficult, operating it without scraping your hands on the road is hard, and you also have to know that you don't jack the car up until you have loosened the nuts a little first, otherwise the wheel keeps turning. And then, there's the difficulty of doing it at the side of a busy road. Indeed, you're not supposed to do it on the hard shoulder of a motorway "Do not attempt even simple repairs". I also came across a new problem recently: some of the nuts had these cosmetic covers which were quite soft, yet impossible to remove, and a spanner simply wouldn't grip them. I had to call out the RAC for that, and then get all these nuts replaced with proper ones at the garage.

I don’t know why but your post made me think of Bart Simpson, seeing a toilet next to the bed in a prison cell, declaring ‘talk about luxury’ 😀
I too always wanted a penthouse apartment with a view and a balcony, perhaps a roof garden. Sounds rather different to ‘high rise flat’ though.

The next general election sounds fun then!

I once taught a boy who was very poor at maths on paper but he could wipe the floor with me at darts, playing 301 he would casually say Yer need double 6, treble 9 and double top and he was always right and he taught me all I know about betting on the horses but neither of us could find out why he couldn't work on paper.