This morning, the 8 year old made herself breakfast – a fried egg and cheese breakfast sandwich. The husband has been teaching her how to do this for about a year now. It’s an ongoing process – first he started by teaching her how to toast the English muffins or bagels. Then how to spread the cream cheese or butter. Since last fall he has been working with her on how to perfectly fry an egg. (Hopefully the next step is how to throw out the eggshells. But I have to remind myself that it’s a long term adulting goal here.) We still turn on the stove for her, though in moments of enthusiasm she has done it herself – which causes me a mixture of pride and panic.
What struck me this morning, though, was how comfortable she has become with making this humble breakfast sandwich. There was a time, quite recently, when spreading the cream cheese would lead to a meltdown. But this morning, she moved quite confidently from one step to the other: butter in pan, English muffins in toaster oven, crack egg into a dish, then gently slip it into the pan, cook just so, layer a slice of cheese on top, cover to melt the cheese then slip it on to the buttered English muffin. I watched her do it, and I thought, “Huh, she’s learning some life skills!”
I’ve been trying to teach some life skills during this quarantine period – to the eight year old, at least. We are still covering basic survival instincts with the three year old and the baby. So far with the eight year old we’ve done: hand sewing (blanket stitch and whipstich), cleaning the bathroom, using [ctrl] + [x] and [ctrl] + [v]. I’ve also started on a long held goal to teach her how to write in cursive. Not really a life skill in this day and age, but there is something orderly and elegant about it that makes me sad it isn’t taught anymore. On the list also is touch typing. It boggles me that the kids spend so much time on computers in school, yet no one is teaching them how to touch type. Every time I watch my kid hunt and peck, I want to scream.
She also, of her own accord wants to learn to crochet, and has other cooking/baking things on her agenda. I do worry that the life skills on our list skew towards domestic arts and stereotypical feminine crafts. Though perhaps this skewing is more a societal construct than my own, and on the list should also be “Resist the Patriarchy (while not being a slob)”. I did throw, “Use a power tool” onto the list, just to balance things out.
A couple summers ago, I came across this list of Life Skills from the Edit Your Life Podcast, and it hits a lot of the things that I hope my child(ren) can learn. Replacing the toilet paper roll is a big one for me. I think we have that one down. Actually there are a couple things on this list that I haven’t mastered yet (“Identify freezer burn.” is one…. Though I tend to be pretty forgiving of stuff in the freezer, so perhaps that one isn’t necessary.)
Some thoughts/ tips I had about teaching my kids life skills:
Be patient – Often I get frustrated because I think, “I can do this in 5 seconds!”, but then I have to remember that I’ve had 40 years to figure things out. I do give myself a lot of “time outs” to scream into my pillow when things get irrevocably tangled or slow.
Lower your standards – The bathroom is now my daughter’s responsibility. It definitely doesn’t get as clean as when I do it, or when our cleaner does it. But I think that at least she is doing it. For me, a lot of the value is in the doing and getting done. First of all it means that I don’t have to do it, and second of all, it means that it becomes a doable task for her, which I think is empowering.
Make it routine – Once I teach the kid how to do something, there is a reasonable expectation from me that I will have her do it again. I think a lot of adulting is developing good habits (still working on that myself!) – so I want her to learn that things that will serve her again and again. So we clean every weekend. When school was in session, she would pack her own lunch and make her own breakfast. I think that is the “life” part of “life skills”.
The Husband is a title. A mantle. Which I wear with honor, dependability, and a smear of cream cheese. It should capitalized.