How good parents really are nowadays?

[Julia9054]

My son left home completely unable to cook. Despite growing up in a foodie household and being used to eating really good homemade food (more down to his dad than down to me)
It is really difficult when you are busy to drag someone reluctant into the kitchen and teach them when they don't want to learn.
Within a month or two of starting uni, he realised he didn't like eating rubbish and taught himself by watching cooking videos on YouTube. He now cooks for us when he comes home.

 

[swee'pea99]

I admit I was horrified when I asked my daughter to give me a hand recently and watched her struggling, willingly but ineptly, with a potato and a peeler. I thought 'I have raised an 18 year old who cannot peel a potato. Shame on me.' I think there is an issue with young people being less capable and self-reliant, through having been indulged too much - having said which, I also think that broadly speaking today's more open and egalitarian relationships are healthier than the rather more authoritarian parenting of my childhood. You can learn how to peel a potato, but you can't unlearn the effects of parent/child alienation.

 

[Julia9054]

A friend of mine's 21 year old stayed over at a friend's house. The friend made him a fried egg sandwich for breakfast. He had never had a fried egg before as his parents are far too healthy!
Later that week, he tried to make one for himself. He filled the grill pan with oil, cracked the egg into it and put it under the grill. Filled the place completely with smoke and nearly burned the house down!
I nearly fell off my bike laughing!

 

[Globalti]

Oh gawd, I remember the first time I ever cooked supper for myself and my house-mates. I decided to do a Spanish omlette because it looked easy. I chopped up and boiled some spuds then drained them and put them in a frying pan with lots of wisked-up eggs then cooked it. The top refused to set so I put it under the grill, burning it. I had the same feeling of helpless impotence that I used to get in maths exams and the result was a lot of bad feeling and a one-hour wait for a snack that should have taken a few minutes.

 

[jhawk]

In my Dad's experience (myself not being a parent yet - and not for some time). Generally, parents raise their children in the best way they know how.

As my Dad says, "We do the best we know."

 

[Moon bunny]

...Why was it that I wore steel capped shoes to secondary school again?

Wild games of split the kipper?

 

[vernon]

Wild games of split the kipper?

Played with javelins like my friend who briefly walked in circles when it all went wrong.

 

[Markymark]

It's interesting as parents how far our influence extends. They have peers, teachers, media in their lives. Influence changes as they grow up. You can try and instil certain values but no matter what anyone says, it is limited.

 

[Tin Pot]

Wild games of split the kipper?

I'm not googling that. I'm at work.

 

[Moon bunny]

As played at Colcannon academy for future hoodlums, it involved two players standing face to face and throwing a knife at the opponent's feet, first one in the ambulance won.
http://strange-games.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html

 

[Racing roadkill]

I once conducted an interesting experiment, as part of a social studies project, when I was studying my A-levels. Basically, I found a text, which was from somebody bemoaning the youth of the writer's day. "They've got no manners", "they don't know how to treat / speak to their elders", "I wouldn't have got away with that, when I was a lad", yada, yada, yada. I asked people when they thought it had been written. Most people assumed it was within five years (this was 1994). They were astonished to learn, that the text was written by Socrates , or to be more accurate they were Socratic dialogues, (the Greek philosopher, not the Brazilian footballer) some time around 399BC.

 

[vickster]

Ugh children

 

[ianrauk]

I once conducted an interesting experiment, as part of a social studies project, when I was studying my A-levels. Basically, I found a text, which was from somebody bemoaning the youth of the writer's day. "They've got no manners", "they don't know how to treat / speak to their elders", "I wouldn't have got away with that, when I was a lad", yada, yada, yada. I asked people when they thought it had been written. Most people assumed it was within five years (this was 1994). They were astonished to learn, that the text was written by Socrates (the Greek philosopher, not the Brazilian footballer) some time around 399BC.

A TNM to Vernon, post # 8

 

[vernon]

As played at Colcannon academy for future hoodlums, it involved two players standing face to face and throwing a knife at the opponent's feet, first one in the ambulance won.
http://strange-games.blogspot.co.uk/2007/10/split-kipper-strange-games-with-knives.html

We played it as kids. The biggest knife we played with was a bowie knife but usually it was a penknife.

 

[ianrauk]

As you grow up into later adulthood, you do find yourself saying and doing things your parents did that you swore blind that you would never agree with or do.