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?

See I can’t help but think it was a real loss when they stopped wheeling in the big telly at schools and putting on those public service videos. You know, hapless kids climbing electricity pylons to retrieve kites, or playing hide and seek in the sewage works, or sticking a metal knife in the toaster 🤣 I learnt so much from those videos (and watching early episodes of Casualty helped too)

My DD didn't realise her half brother had the same dad, for about a year she thought we just had this random boy coming round

When I used to work in schools ... 11 year olds who didn't realise that pork came from pigs.

Probably just as well that they were too old for Peppa Pig by that point - can you imagine the hysterics?

Not really a child but aspects of finance must have been missing as my DC’s grew up!

Only discovered during my DS’s first term at uni, when he described his overdraft as ‘you know, the money the bank gave me’!

He had no idea that he had to pay it back….😳🤯

I think there are some things that kids these days don’t get taught with as much emphasis has older generations experienced at school, perhaps because of emerging technologies. I was in primary school in the 80’s. Eg telling time. My nearly 11 year old isn’t very confident telling time from a clock and barely any time has been spent on it at school. I realised I haven’t spent time teaching it to her either! Money is another one, although my dd is ok with that.
Her teacher told me that the curriculum no longer requires them to know their tables up to 12 before secondary school which I was surprised at.
She hasn’t mastered tying a school tie yet and I blame that on elasticated ties and logo uniforms! She’ll need to before secondary.

to be fair, I got through to age 11 not understanding time; years before covid, though admittedly in the 80s they weren’t as hot on assessments. I had to have one of those watches with a split face for the first two years of secondary school - I learnt pretty quickly there as had to turn up on time!

it is a strange concept for some kids - I’ve had a few colleagues over the years who had the same issue and didn’t learn till they had more independence

I did a year abroad at another university in Asia, had to show a 20 year old American in student halls how to cook an egg, and the names of the different ways to cook an of egg.

He was extremely sweet and earnest about it, but I had to control my face when he asked ‘what to call it when it’s flat, but white round the edge and yellow in the middle.

When I was about ten I put a mug in the microwave to warm something up. The mug had a metal rim at the top and bottom.

Cue my horror when sparks start shooting and I blow up the microwave and I get berated by my mother for putting metal inside, and endless mocking from older siblings about how stupid I am.

BUT NO ONE HAD EVER TOLD ME!!!!

My parents omitted to tell me eating lamb IS actually eating real baby lambs!! I thought it was just a nickname 😱😱

I didn’t teach my children to sew, they had to teach themselves. I am absolutely useless.

Not being confident with time is REALLY common in year 6. I’m a supply teacher and the other day taught a lesson where the first step of a problem was to calculate how many hours someone had worked, given the start and finish time each day. Most were just about ok with eg 9.00 to 15.00 but anything involving half or quarter hours threw them, and then adding eg 30 mins and 30 mins or 45 and 15 and knowing that was another hour, not 32 hours and 60 minutes, was a real struggle. In a class of 30 only about 4 managed to get the correct answer. (This wasn’t the objective of the lesson, just a preliminary step in a problem, so I hadn’t taught it!)

Back on topic…my daughter thought ‘cousins’ were just the children of my friends. Makes sense I guess - both cousins and these friends were ones who maybe lived further away and we spent a whole day at their house while I chatted
to the parent, maybe we stay over. As oppose to her school friends who she met herself and I don’t really socialise with their parents.

How to wipe his bottom 😐. I used to say "assume the position " to which he'd stick his tail end in the air and be duly wiped. He said to me once, aged about 14, but how are you sitting down when you wipe your bum? (God knows how that conversation started). I still don't know to this day how he was actually wiping.

Yes, there are misunderstandings I remember from my childhood which have reminded me to always check the context when children ask you a question. The classic in my childhood being - watching my sister play patience. I asked her what she was doing with the cards - she said 'playing patience'. So far so good. Some time later I asked my dad (with no context) 'what is patience?' and he told me it was when you have to sit quietly and wait for something to happen.

So I laid the cards out the way I'd seen my sister do it, and sat and waited for something to happen.

My kids can’t open doors. We moved 4 years ago when DS was 3 and had a baby. We removed all the doors when we renovated and couldn’t afford to replace them (didn’t realise how expensive doors were and they were thick with gloss)

My friend shut her livingroom door and my 3 year old was distraught because he thought he’d never be able to get out 😂

This thread has made me feel lucky that my Mum and grandparents taught me so much! Very few of these things i learned at school, my Mum taught me about seasons, time, cookery etc etc.

I don't have children but when I was very young I remember the guffaws when I asked why the man was singing about living in a Gateaux.

'Ghetto' wasn't a word I was familiar with, but Gateaux somehow was. 😂

Mine is similar to the OP. In lockdown we were telling our kids some funny stories from our schooldays. Daughter who was 5-6 asked if I went to same school as her. I said no, I went to school in Hometown as I lived with Granny and Grandpa then. She looked really shocked and said "What? You lived with them?" I said well yes they are my mum and dad. She was even more shocked about that. It had never occurred to me that it needed explaining.

Another one ... when eldest was having sex education lessons in year 6 he told me what he'd learned but added that reproduction only occurs if the couple goes to sleep after the deed. I had to quiz him further and he was very confident and referred to all the tv references about "so and so sleeping together and now she's pregnant". I realised that is true - such an awful coy phrase and biologically inaccurate. I very firmly told him he needed to trust me and that sleep or not has nothing to do with reproduction and never to rely on that theory!

A shameful one from me. I was at the Seas Pavilion at Disney last summer gazing into the aquarium and a shark swam right up to the glass in front of me and then swished away. I thought wow, what a weird looking shark. Its head is shaped like a hammer. And then it dawned on me ... I honestly had no idea until the age of 50 that hammer head sharks are thus called because they actually look like hammers.

Oh this reminds me of a friend who took her toddler son camping for the first time and he was distraught he couldn't go downstairs when he woke up in the morning!

The microwave one... Until recently DH at the grand age of 44 didn't know you couldn't put metal in the microwave 😳

When I was 14 I really wanted an apple computer, and was showing them to my mom on the website. She said they were too expensive, but I told her I would get the one without vat

I work in a supermarket and had to explain to an actual functioning adult the other day that prunes were dried plums...

My DD was 8 when I found out that she though potatoes were spelt Botatoes! She'd been saying it with a B all that time and I never noticed!

For a lot of kids learning to tell the time in school doesn’t really sink in, as they are not doing it much/at all in everyday life.
this watch from swatch was very useful for dc to properly grasp the concept

How to fold/ pair socks apparently 🤷‍♀️ my 13yr old son didn’t know how to do it lol and said “you haven’t taught me” I honestly did not know this was a lesson that needed teaching

My DH is 63.
He just stuffs them in the drawer unmatched because he can't fold them either.🙄

also on the time thing, Dave Allen does it brilliantly

Where we live in our town the buses go on a circuit so we get off a bus at the same stop that we get on it to go into town.

Just last year my now 17yo went to the nearby city for an interview for college. We explained which bus to get from the bus station, where to get off and which number bus to get home.

We didn’t think to explain that they had to cross the road to catch the bus from the other side and they ended up getting the bus into the city centre from the college instead of the one coming home.

DH worked for the bus company at the time so DC had a pass where you just had to show it and didn’t have to tell the driver your destination. Thankfully we have location sharing so we texted DC to say they were on the wrong bus and they had to get off at the next stop and cross the road. 🙈