This one is as bad as the previous one, but in a different way!

[conuly]

Hi, Carolyn: I am concerned. My son and daughter-in-law are not teaching or modeling life skills to their children. They live in a two-bedroom condo in a large city. They have only one car, which my son drives to work at a hospital with irregular hours. My daughter-in-law works part time from home. My granddaughters are in kindergarten and preschool and walk to school.

They have a laundry service, grocery delivery and cleaners once a week. I think they hire out so many tasks, my grandchildren will flounder as adults. On weekends, my grandchildren go to museums, activities, parks and sporting events, and meet up with friends and family. It looks fun, but it’s also like every weekend is a special occasion. They visited us, and my granddaughters marveled at pumping gas because they’ve never seen it. Later, my son nonchalantly said, “I charge the car at work, and we don’t really drive with them much.”

Neither my son nor daughter-in-law seems concerned that their children are just learning about a very basic life skill that most kids are aware of so much earlier.

I don’t like the idea of spending rare time with my grandchildren doing chores. But I can’t think of another way for them to learn these essential tasks. Your advice?
— Grandparent

Grandparent: My advice is to teach them the essential life skill of butting out. And of not using manufactured concern as cover for judging the way people live just because it differs from how you do. These kids are learning the skills of the life they’re in — completely normal and appropriate. They’re urbanites. If they need to learn skills for other lifestyles as adults, then they can ask questions or hit YouTube to figure out how to run laundry equipment, not appreciate art and burn fossil fuels.

I’m trying not to roll my verbal eyes here, but the reflex is strong. Plus, this is my first-ever grandparental angst that grandkids are getting excessive culture and insufficient car time.

When their weekends aren’t all museums and parks, then, yes, presumably they will be uncomfortable, and they’ll have to manage that? And learn to tolerate whatever chores they can’t afford to outsource themselves. But I can also envision your grands as adults who make time to get out and live because they developed that habit as kids.

I once had a surge of unexpressed (till this answer!) loathing for a classmate who arrived at college and declared utter helplessness before a washing machine because “the maid” handled such drudgeries. I am sharing it now to report that both of us grew up and got over it. The classmate read the lid and washed the clothes. Magic. I figured out that my smug resentment was no more charming than the feigned entitled helplessness I reacted to. Live and let live, unless you’re witnessing the run-up to irreversible harm.

Readers’ thoughts:

· They are learning life skills. Museums teach about lives different from our own, and new and different ideas. Social events teach social skills. Etc. Focusing on what they aren’t learning seems to completely ignore what they are learning.

· A senior citizen I knew took his children, then grandchildren and later the great-grands, out in the woods to teach them what he considered essential survival skills. He taught them how to catch and find food, make fire, shelter, find your direction, first aid. I just love the idea of the children out in the woods making memories with their grandpa, who loved them so much that he wanted to equip them in this way.

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Comments

[conuly]

My goodness, those kids walk to school instead of riding a car, uphill both ways!

[ioplokon]

Isn't kindergarten/preschool a bit young to do laundry or pump gas anyway? I would think it's more the age where chores are like, "put your things away properly and clean up spills", with some supervised cooking/baking/other tasks?

[ethelmay]

Also, they are at the very most six and five, probably five and four. I wasn't consciously teaching my kids about housekeeping and pumping gas at that age. Maybe a bit of "help pick up the living room" or "let's make some cookies."

[conuly]

Yeah, I had the kids doing half their own laundry as soon as they were tall enough to reach the knobs, and all of it as soon as they were old enough to haul the wet clothes out of the wash (my god, do I hate doing laundry) and they still were, like, 8 or 9.

[landofnowhere]

LW will have a much better time with their grandchildren if they appreciate the kids' sense of wonder at learning about new stuff rather than judging them for not knowing things already. And the kids are preschool/kindergarten age, geez.

[redbird]

I just noticed that the granddaughters are in pre-school and kindergarten: LW thinks four is too old to be introduced to the idea of pumping gas.

Also, she says she doesn't want to spend her time with the girls doing chores. But she expects her son and/or daughter-in-law to spend their valuable time doing those same chores. I snarkily wonder how old her son was when she taught him how to do laundry, pump gas, or clean the house. At least her concern that her son and daughter-in-law don't seem worried applies to both parents.

[conuly]

LW also doesn't think that learning how to walk places is at all beneficial or a life skill.

[katiedid717]

My parents did similar with us - we would start helping to fold laundry (mainly towels/washclothes or matching pairs of socks) when we were around 4-5, start sorting clothes by color around the same time, and then start using the machines themselves around 8-10

[katiedid717]

Not to mention that there's more of a push towards hybrid and electric cars anyway, which could make pumping gas obsolete by the time the girls are driving.

[conuly]

Or they might also live where they can walk/bike/bus everywhere.

[minoanmiss]

Ooh, good catch. It definitely is a life skill, one I wish I'd learned earlier than I did (I pretty much had to teach myself how to navigate when I got to college, after being mostly cloistered most of my childhood).

[sushiflop]

Honestly I do think that some parents helicopter their kids out of learning some life skills that'd be really beneficial to them later on, and it can be much, much more painful to learn them later (speaking from experience)... but these kids are so LITTLE. They are so little. If they weren't marveling at pumping gas they would be marveling at IDK making crepes, or the first fireworks displays they'll remember. Everything is so new to them.

[oursin]

Will pumping gas even be a thing when grandchildren come of age? will there still be private vehicles?

[lethe1]

Hahaha, pumping gas is a basic life skill? And I do notice Grandparent writes that their son says he charges the car at work, so apparently he has an electric car?

"this is my first-ever grandparental angst that grandkids are getting excessive culture and insufficient car time." I love you, Carolyn.

[mrissa]

Also, you know what? I had seen my parents (and grandparents and great-aunt and random friends' parents) pump gas a million times, but I still explicitly learned how to pump gas when I was 15. When I had a learner's permit and it became relevant to my life. You can be in the car while Grammy pumps gas when you're 4 years old and not pick up one damn "life skill" out of it.

When I was in college I had a friend who threw repeated conniptions--basically every time driving came up--that I could not drive a manual transmission car, because "that's a basic life skill!" Friends, it is not. I am 46 years old and have never once been in a situation where I was even mildly inconvenienced by not knowing how to drive stick. Basic life skills change. Ordering groceries is shopping for groceries. Why would that not count? My fridge is full of groceries I ordered.

[shreena]

Ha, we have similar conversations with both sets of grandparents.

I think in part it's finding it difficult when your child has chosen a totally different lifestyle for their own children. I think it's hard not to feel it as a rejection of you and your values. It's mostly I think just different times but some of it is a different view of what's important in childhood.

Both my parents and PIL tell us off for "paying too much attention" to our children and not letting them get bored.

I actually do sometimes worry about the cleaning thing - we have a cleaner so they really don't know much about what cleaning entails

But for the most part I think we can add in regular chores as they get a little older

[castiron]

I don't know how to milk a cow. I've seen it done once or twice, but if presented with a cow there's an even chance I would get a hoof in the ribs.

I don't know how to ride a horse.

I don't know how to plow a field.

I don't know how to cook meals in a fireplace.

I don't know how to kill, pluck, and butcher a chicken.

I don't know what local plants can be harvested for medicinal purposes (some of which may actually work).

I do know how to spin wool into yarn, but I learned that at the age of forty, not at the age of four.

These are all things that would've been basic survival skills to my ancestors, and aren't things I need to know now.

And the things that are basic adult skills these days, I didn't know how to do when I was in kindergarten. I learned to do them as a teen, or as a young adult when I actually needed them. There's skill involved in doing these tasks well and in figuring out the timing for when they should be done, but the vast majority of people can learn to do them well enough to get by.

[conuly]

In my experience, drivers are terrible at the idea of walking. They'll consistently say some place is "too far to walk" because "it's a mile" and then when you say "a mile isn't very far" they'll immediately backtrack and say it's three miles.

[conuly]

I remember way back in the day, somebody I knew online was talking about how she normally made pancakes, a big procedure that involved, among other things, handmilling her own grain. I think she had her own goat as well. Nothing interesting about that, just Mom doing her daily chores!

Her kids marveled when they visited an aunt and the woman just used ready-made pancake batter.

In conclusion: Kids will marvel at lots of stuff.

[conuly]

Interesting tangential fact: chimneys were invented surprisingly late.

[castiron]

Basic adult skills from the past that I don't need: how to clean smoke particles or coal dust off every surface in my house.

In my genealogical researches, I've read multiple death notices for women whose clothes caught on fire while she was cooking, or children who fell into the hearth. I really really really like modern stovetops and ovens.

[dissectionist]

I lived somewhere where we didn’t need a car because of robust public transit. I learned to drive late in adulthood when I got a job that required a lot of travel beyond my city, and I learned how to pump gas then. It took roughly three minutes to learn how to do. I was in no way held back by the fact that I hadn’t been taught how to do it in early childhood.

[pauraque]

My advice is to teach them the essential life skill of butting out.

*cackles*

[sushiflop]

Oh my god lmao. Handmilling her own grain. More power to her but I could never.

I, a full adult, am marveling at this letter. I keep thinking about how the family drives at very least a hybrid, so of course they don't get gas very often. What are the parents supposed to do, pull into a gas station and do a pantomime to expose their kids to the harsh realities of the world (pumping gas) (/facetious)?

[movingfinger]

Grandma thinks her daughter-in-law is lazy and should be doing all the chores (she works part-time at home!) and driving the kids around.

[conuly]

They definitely also had chickens. It was a lot of effort for pancakes, that's for sure.

What are the parents supposed to do, pull into a gas station and do a pantomime to expose their kids to the harsh realities of the world

This reminds me, we never did fulfill my younger niece's dearest wish of getting to drive through a car wash.

[sushiflop]

Honestly I feel for your niece on this one, I have such fond childhood memories of going through the drive through car wash! It was like going under the sea 😂

[conuly]

But only to school, not to museums and libraries and to visit friends.

[conuly]

Well, she's an adult now, she can always order up a Lyft and say "Listen, drive me wherever, but you'd better go through a carwash if you want a tip!"

[conuly]

Still lots of people die that way in developing nations, and who even knows how many years of life are lost due to decades of closed space smoke inhalation?

[sushiflop]

Along with the drudgery of adulthood the joys and privileges!!!!!

[firecat]

I didn’t learn certain life skills as a kid. E.g. I learned to cook when I went to college. Fortunately my parents did teach me to read, so I was able to learn cooking from books! My parents didn’t do crafts so I learned embroidery, knitting, and crochet on my own! Also, I was a teen when I learned to pump gas because prior to that gas station attendants did it for you!

[katiedid717]

I feel like the perceived distance of a mile changes a lot based on where you are. A mile was far in my hometown because we lacked sidewalks and had twisty roads with trees coming right up to the edge, so it was a huge stretch of navigating between poison ivy and blind curves. It was much shorter when I lived in a downtown neighborhood with sidewalks all the way to the beach/park a mile and a half away. I would not have gone for walks with the kids I babysat growing up, but I would regularly make a 3-5 mile loop with the kid I nannied in my late 20s/early 30s

[katiedid717]

My dad used to take up through the carwash and pretend we were in a submarine being attacked by octopi XD there's a carwash near my current home that doesn't make you get out of the car, it brings back memories for sure!

[katiedid717]

My ex drove stick and I wanted to learn how to drive his car because he had a tendency of falling at the skate park and I wanted to make sure I could get us to the hospital if he hurt himself while we were out together in his car. He didn't want to teach me until I understood every intricate detail of how the motor/engine worked -__- whatever, the ambulance bill would be in his name, not mine, and we lived across the street from the hospital anyway.

[katiedid717]

Solidarity, I was in my early 20s when I started teaching myself how to cook using fresh ingredients - almost everything I ate growing up came out of a bag, box, or can. It's something a couple of my sisters and I have talked about, and it's been really interesting to see how my siblings have been addressing it with their kids. I currently have six niblings ranging 10 months to almost-7 years, and currently the youngest is the only one who hasn't had any food prep experience. My almost-5yo niece seems to love it the most; she regularly helps my sister with meal prep and recently made rice krispy treats with minimal adult assistance (she even stirred the butter and marshmallows together on the stove). I think all five of us were a little embarrassed to make it into adulthood without knowing how to make anything besides, like, pasta with jarred sauce

[firecat]

Yup, I didn’t have kids but if I had, I would have given them more hands on experience than I got.

[full_metal_ox]

Both my parents and PIL tell us off for "paying too much attention" to our children and not letting them get bored.

And then when the kids do step outside and find something to do, it’ll be some new thing that wasn’t around back in the parents’/grandparents’ day, and therefore SCAAAARY.

Consider Pokémon Go: that got kids out of the house, into the outdoors, at a safe physical distance, into conversation with strangers of all sorts of ages, races, and genders who shared an interest: “NOOOO!!! NOT LIKE THAT!”

Or: “Kids’ music today is nothing but NOISE! They need to learn some good classical music instead!”

Lizzo: *performs “Carnival in Venice” on a priceless historical flute while fat and Black.*

“NOOOO!!! NOT LIKE THAT!”

[full_metal_ox]

Not to mention the cases in which kitchen-related burns were a commonly accepted enough cause of death to provide a plausible cover for murder.

[landofnowhere]

Yes! I was lucky to have (two out of three) grandparents and (two) parents who were the type who like to teach their kids to do new stuff, and I think this could be a good moment for LW to introspect about whether they would enjoy playing that sort of role in their kids' life, but if they don't, the kids will be fine!

[ethelmay]

I still have never been through a car wash.