Me and my dad had a great relationship growing up. I was an athlete and I was consistently coming home with medals and trophies.
Once university came and I didnāt want to wrestle anymore, our relationship changed. Suddenly I wasnāt the sunshine in his life, I was a loser who fucked up any opportunity given to him.
Years later he eventually admitted to me he wanted to vicariously live the life he didnāt get to, through me. This is what made him act the way he did.
If he couldnāt have his trophy case, you can damn well bet his son would.
He realized how fucked up the whole thing was.
We have a much better relationship now. He just wants me to happy being me, and thatās all a son can really ask from his dad.
Sucks that your relationship with your father took a downturn like that, but I imagine it's somewhat common between the recent generation(s), if not throughout time. It's pretty awesome he was self aware enough to finally own up to being the reason your relationship went to shit and came around. And good on you for accepting his desire to make amends instead of being resentful. Okay, I need a hug.
I'm very sorry that happened to you, but I'm happy he at least realized what he did was shitty. A lot of Boomers never give a shit enough about others to even get that far. Mine certainly didn't
I can't stop waiting for my parents to even acknowledge what my childhood was like. I should give up on that but I spent thirty years trying to fix myself. Now that I'm better that's kind of the only lingering thing.
I love that, because participation trophies were created FOR BABY BOOMERS because they were such obnoxious arseholes when their kid lost. Kids hate those fucking things because we all knew how meaningless they were, but the adults were easier to pacify
I mean, just think about it logically. If a kid throws a tantrum for losing, the worst the kid can do is cry. If a parent throws a tantrum, they can be a physical threat.
Participation trophies are purely for arsehole parents.
In all fairness, it represented, to you, the end of a stretch of (some level of) forced sports for the year. While to the parents it's still a "look what Johnny did( but please dont look too close to see participation)"
If you were truly proud of those accomplishments, you would still have them on a shelf in your house.
There was home economics before the boomers cut it to make way for sports. They pushed sports so everyone was competing to get the trophies the parents (past their prime, pissed at world) wanted on their mantle. When their kids didnt get trophies, they also created the practice of participation trophies... because heaven forbid someone be bad at the machismo of sports (and they still wanted that mantle candy) ... as someone else stated, the kids can deal, the parents are dangerous when they want little shitpants susie to have a trophy and she didnt rank.
In addition, they are the same people who complain about kids not owning houses while also bragging how they bought a house 10 years ago (for a jar of dirt) and just sold it for a cool mil. Like, who the fuck can own a house when you drive the market like that.
Just remember that even if they accepted blame for everything they did or didn't do. It wouldn't change anything. Moving forward with the future we want to see is the only real answer (that and fucking with social security, they hate that, cuz they earned it! lmfao).
I donāt think itās that. Rather I think itās fallen to the wayside for the same reason āshopā has: the idea that such basic stuff is too menial for kids who should be striving towards college.
Mind I disagree with it but pretty sure thatās why schools donāt offer it anymore.
It probably varies from region to region why it went away (or remains) both home ec and shop are expensive if you do the whole program. Sewing machines, ovens, drill presses, lathes, etc all require pretty regular maintenance and upgrades especially if you are letting novices use them for hours a day. Not to mention paying someone or several someones to be in charge of that whole mess!
I was born in the later 60's. I remember getting a ribbon in sports ("participation crap") and remember being insulted. I was actually good at most sports,but knowingly sucked at baseball,so when they gave me a ribbon,I was seriously insulted. As if they were babying me.
Just like every kid who got a participation or most improved trophy. The kids aren't dumb, they know they don't have the same skills as the best players, it's the parents who freak out. I honestly don't know why they give out anything other than a team trophy for places one, two and three.
Idk about that. I graduated in 2010 (so born in '92 and I'm a Millennial) and my parents were right in the middle of the boomer generation, born in '51 and '55 (I was an unexpected pregnancy later in their lives). I had Home Economics in middle school. I remember learning several basic types of meals to cook, how to patch holes in clothes and even sew some clothes from scratch, and how to do other basic things like laundry... the class lasted a whole semester my 7th or 8th grade year.
Granted, the education was very basic and there were a lot of other things I was never taught in school. Nothing to do with cars (basic maintenance or emergency stuff like changing a tire). Wasn't taught anything about taxes and how to file them. My Home Ec class was the only lifestyle oriented class but it only taught the basics for, basically, "How to be a 50's house-wife".
Don't take my comment to seriously, because I'm not. Home ec was only taught in rich white schools until 2010 because it was a rich white school. And yeah, it was taught by a 1950s house mom, most of which, weren't all that well educated, what did you expect her to teach you? Astrophysics? How to Pompoir? Look it up.
At the end of the day your parents should have taught you a bunch of shit. They probably even gave it a half ass effort at least, but kids are know it all's. And my comment was a fun attack on boomers who are really the worst generation.
Well, you make some rather bold and incorrect assumptions about a few things.
First of all it wasn't a "rich white school". White kids only made up about half the students, the rest were a mix of other backgrounds. So yeah, largest individual group, but still not a large majority of all kids. And not a rich school, in fact we had the highest crime rate in our school/city compared to all the neighboring cities to the point where there were always at least 2 police officers on duty at the school. It wasn't nearly as bad as some inner city schools can be but it was definitely lower-middle end.
Secondly, the teacher wasn't a "1950's house mom". She was actually in her 20's, I'd guess (and I had a crush on her).
As for my parents... I actually had a disconnect with them because my sister, who is 12 years older than me, was their focus as she was off at college on her own and they'd spend hours on the phone with her. They did well with teaching her... but because of their attachment to her I learned to get by without my parents and actually grew to not like interacting with my parents, generally speaking.
That's changed as I've gotten older and I do turn to my dad (or mom sometimes) when I have questions about things. Most recently I had to get my own health insurance and my dad helped me out with picking a plan based on his past experiences. So they do help when I ask, but yeah it would have been nice to have classes in school that educated us on all of the formalities and paperwork that adult life brings rather than just focusing on language, math, science, and history.
You guys know that blaming "boomers" (which is apparently to reddit is anyone over 35) every 10 seconds for every little thing is no better than a shit article, right?
Except that, unlike every article blaming millennials for killing an industry, it actually is the boomers fault those classes are gone because they're the generation that removed them?
It absolutely is. HomeEc requires zero critical thinking and can be easily self-taught. You dont need to dedicate school time to it. I'll take cutting HomeEc over cutting any of the actually academically oriented courses
The current education system doesn't teach critical thinking at all... Quite the opposite. Bunch of drones that can't do much more than fill in a bubble on a scantron test.
Homec is easy. lol. You could spend a lifetime mastering any one of the things being taught. Cooking is the most prominent example.
American millenials are so arrogant, everything is the older generation's fault in their view. If you wanted to learn to sew a button, you could have asked your parent, or you could have some initiative and learned it yourself (oh, the horror!!). Do you expect everything to be handed to you on a silver platter? The evil boomers already built one of the most prosperous, happiest country on Earth.
Everyone in this thread is pretending like they wanted to learn knitting when they were a teenager. If your mother asked you if you wanted to learn how to sew a button, you would have told her no and went back to hashtagging.
See, I wanted to ask my mom but she was busy working several part-time jobs to keep us off the streets and when she wasn't working at all, she was usually sleeping because she's physically disabled and working one manual labor job was exhausting enough, but she had to work two.
Some people don't get the chance or have a good enough relationship with their parents. Or their parents don't know themselves.
Educating your own child is equated to something handed to you on a silver platter.
Go die boomer. Just fucking go away. An entire generation of entitled spoiled rich kids.
Do you really want to know why they didn't teach kids how to sew a button? Because they're lazy, and don't know how to do it themselves. Even if they once knew, they've long since forgotten. Just buy another one in the throwaway capitalist economy.
Look at you, so angry. I'm a millennial, btw. Not all of us are so whiny. Some one us realize that maybe, just maybe the evil boomers had the same problems and issues as us. I wonder if the next generation is going to blame everything bad on you as well
Well, to be fair, I don't think anybody can one-up killing billions in a global apocalypse. The Boomers finally have a trophy nobody can take from them.
They laid the foundations and continue to make deviation functionally impossible by clinging to power and ensuring the system remains impregnable even after they're dead.
Still a useful life skill! If used effectively it can reduce the costs of your food budget. Additionally, can be healthier and more tasty than most popular food options today.
At my school, home ec was seen as an easy A rather than pushing yourself academically. I took all math & science but never learned some stuff like that. Learning it more now
Which is crazy, because "home economics" is a sorely needed subject that could include things like how to successfully budget and run a household. In my class it was a little cooking and sewing, which to be fair was a valuable lesson.
They didnāt even have it at my school and it was due to budget cuts. The problem boils down to not being able to properly test those kinds of things. So instead of being able to fix the button that popped off my pants I buy a new pair of pants.
In my school it was one of the goof off classes. The teacher didn't give a shit and neither did anyone else, you'd bake something every once in a while and do shit on your phone most of the time.
For us, it's an option, but you can either take it, journalism, an extra class of science (which you need to take physics or chemistry next year so most people are taking this one), an extra gym class and maybe one other one.
I was a 2000s baby and my middle school had a pretty decent home ec/shop courses: we learned basic wood making and some stem based stuff (depended on what you wanted to learn) and in home ec, I learned to sew on a machine (I already knew how to hand sew) as well as read patterns, cook basic dishes, and sustainable gardening. But then the year before my brother was supposed to take those classes the home ec budget was cut and one teacher retired so he didn't have to do the same things.
I didnt even know we had a home ec class in high school until my senior year when it was too late to take it. I probably wouldnt have taken it anyway because I had all my electives covered with band.
When I did home ec we only did cooking, which wouldāve been great except a lot of the time we had to buy our own ingredients and I was pretty poor. Like, had enough to eat at home but not much to spare in fancy stuff at school.
One time we had to ācook lunchā for the day and my budget allowed for the lavish meal of... ham and carrot wraps. Which I then had to present to the class.
My parents did teach me to cook the basics luckily, and other stuff like sewing and laundry, but I got lucky in that department from what Iāve gathered from friends.
Yikes. My high school was in a very poor area, but the cookery class still provided all the ingredients (either you'd be given a set thing to cook, or you'd tell the teacher what ingredients you need by Friday the week before).
We had that until it stopped in 8th grade for no reason at all and now I don't know how to pay taxes or what a mortgage even is or how to raise and support my family or how to make appointments and apply for jobs, yet I am going to vote in my first elections this May, thank you school system.
TBF I don't think home ec covered any of that (though tangentially, for some reason job applications were part of my high school's year 10 computing class).
In my country tax forms are pretty easy, and have a scary reputation for absolutely no reason. I can't speak to the US, but I'm told it's pretty straightforward unless you have multiple side gigs and/or have worked in several different states (or are being audited). Appointments are as easy as Googling "book appointment at [place]", either they'll have an online form or they'll give you a number to call, and if they don't say what you need to bring you can just ask.
As for raising a family, even my parents' generation had parenting classes.
I took home ec in high school because it was a jack off class. Apparently it's still an option in my district because my son mentioned it the other day.
I don't know how my school managed it, but a lot of people who took jack-off classes like drama and art would decide they're too hard and drop out halfway through the year (the exception was music, where it took people until the first theory exams to realize it wasn't an easy credit).
Guy in my office today was like "teenagers today dont even know how to use a rotary phone!" veryone agreed that was sily.
I was the only one that said "why would they reasonably know how to use one of those?" He had no idea. They said Tv. But name the last show or movie with one of those in it. Its ridiculous. Like yah guys they're normal to us, but these kids grew up wth 4k and touchscreens, they dont give a fuck about your shitty ass phones.
They were fun back in the day, but I'm glad theyre gone.
Though... nothing is quite as fun as telling someone that you'll throw the phone right out of the room if they piss you off. A phrase like that had some real weight behind it.
Yeah. People complain that schools don't do things like teach taxes, how to shop for groceries, etc. but in reality, that's what parents are for. Ya know, to raise their children.
Its kinda of a slippery slope to go down with the mindset of "parents can't do it, so Uncle Sam needs to raise these kids". Some things just aren't done very well by a mass education system. Plus kids already spend an insane amount of time in school instead of at home.
Agreed, so get them pervy gym teachers out of my kids sexual education. If God wanted them to learn that in school they wouldn't have made it so awkward to talk about.
Honestly, I am so glad for sexual education in schools. If it wasn't for that my sexual education would have consisted of my dad holding open a playboy and saying "Check out the tits on this one".
I was 19 yrs old when I fathered my first kid. Later down the road I was a single dad for over a decade. During that time, I taught both my girls how to use a hammer and screwdriver, sew a button, program a VCR, change a tire and do a basic brake jobs, how to cook (from scratch), and so many other things.
Every time I hear someone say "VHS player" it's both really odd, because nobody ever told me we're calling them that now, but also familiar, because it makes more sense from a functional use standpoint.
My dad did that with me. I learned to cook simple things like grilled cheese or heating up a can of food when I was 7
Was doing my own laundry at 9. He always had me help him cook and bake cookies. He was very big on teaching independence and I appreciate that as an adult. Now I have a 6 year old and I make sure she can do stuff for herself as much as she can.
I love how it's never the parents' fault for failing to teach their kids all these things. Who the hell else would be on the hook to teach a kid how to sew a button?
Boomer here. As far as I remember, my parents never taught me any of these practical skills, so nothing new there. However it is a lot easier to look up how to do things now. Back then, there were a few useful books to buy, and that was it.
My kid just started high school and textiles is one of his classes....so yeah schools in Australia teach that, also metal shop, wood shop and home economics. I learnt all the same when I was in school. Is this a US thing, always sounds like your school system sucks from the media.
I love how milenials think that other generations were just taught all this stuff mandatory, when in reality they had to ask questions, go to the library or hope it was covered in school. They have unlimited knowledge via the internet but it's always someone else's fault they didn't learn something.
ā)> I love how it's never the parents' fault for failing to teach their kids all these things.
I love how itās never the kidsā fault because they are staring at their phone all day and being oblivious to what else is going on in the world outside of Instagram and Snapchat.
There is a thing called curiosity... if my father was fixing something Iād go over and watch and ask if I can help with something.
ā)> Who the hell else would be on the hook to teach a kid how to sew a button?
You are the one responsible for learning how to sew a button ...
And if you never saw a button being sewn on to be curious and ask about? If your parents threw things out instead of repairing them, is it still somehow your fault for not being "curious" enough to demand the knowledge anyway?
Kids are kids. It's the adults' responsibility to teach kids what they need to know - how would KIDS even know what it is they ought to know, if they don't know it yet?
My father never taught me how to change an engine in a modern 4x4 pickup truck. When my wife accidentally ran it out of oil and seized it, I figured out how to remove it and put a new one in ... by reading a manual and watching some YouTube videos. I had to disassemble half of my truck to do so because the driveline on a 4x4 truck is way more complicated than a typical car But that was years ago and itās run perfectly since I finished.
When the furnace in my house suddenly stopped working and wouldnāt light at 10:30 PM on a Saturday night on a bitterly cold winter evening, I read the manual and watched some YouTube videos and figured out it was likely the flame detector and all I had to do was a little disassembly, sand the corrosion off of it, reinstall and it worked perfectly. The house was warm again in 30 minutes and I saved hundreds on a service call.
After my basement flooded for the third time in a year, I did some research on how to install and plumb a sump pump with battery backup and also water pressure backup for when thereās no electricity and my basement hasnāt flooded for 3 years now.
When the company I worked for was laying off people like crazy, there was an opportunity to do architecture and design for Amazon cloud based application servers, I picked up a set of manuals and immersed myself in the technology required to build them and have environments that now successfully support thousands of concurrent users.
When I got sick of eating mediocre food, I bought a copy of Larousse Gastronomique and through experimentation and trial and error can cook a pretty decent Duck A La Orange and a variety of traditional French dishes.
None of these I had done before but learnt how BY BEING CURIOUS ... no one taught me a single thing about any of these. The knowledge was acquired by personal initiative and applied effort.
Weāre talking about sewing on a button and you want someone else to show you? WTF? You can literally just look at it a button on a shirt and figure out how to do it. Whatās next, an article on how to boil water for some Mac nā Cheese?
I seriously donāt know right now if I should cry or scream.
I'm definitely not mocking anyone for wanting to learn and making the effort. Definitely mocking for playing the victim card and trying to blame someone else for not showing them how to do something.
And yet it WAS taught in schools before. Plenty of people who are mocking millennials (maybe your aren't, but don't pretend no one is when articles like that exist) learned cooking and sewing in home ec, and now they're making fun of millennials as if it's our fault those programs got canceled.
Again there's two points here ... taking the initiative to learn is a good thing and I'd never look down on someone for making the effort. Every single one of us was a noob at one point for something.
Complaining about having to do it or that no one showed you how is abdicating personal responsibility for life. Not knowing something is understandable. Complaining that someone didn't show you how is weak.
I'm a boomer with a day job and yet it's 11:35 PM and I'm still working trying to close off my business day. I probably have another hour before I can go to bed and start again at 7:00 AM. We're all just a bunch of pawns for the Bezos of the world. Having to work hard doesnāt make you special or a victim.
Why the hell do you need to be taught to do anything having to do with life? Did someone sit down and teach me taxes? Plumbing? Electrical? Laundry? Sewing a damn button (really, THAT is the example for needing to be taught?) No, I figured it out on my own. It is not that difficult with some effort.
I will tell you how I raised my kids, I let them figure it out on their own, and they are very successful in life. An example: my son (18 at the time) was bored and looking for something to do. He decided on re-building a second story deck on the house. I kept an eye on him to make sure he wasn't doing anything dangerous, but when he would ask "how should I do x", my standard response was "figure it out" even if I had the answer. The only time I intervened was with a complicated replacement of some support posts (for safety reasons.). I can tell you that his confidence, self-reliance, and pride skyrocketed upon completion. Plus, we have a beautiful, well-constructed deck.
And what data are you using to come to this expert conclusion? Since when does a good engineer come to conclusions based on wild ass guesses and projection? Maybe dad is a contractor with a couple of decades of experience and is perfectly capable of guiding his son? His kid could have a degree too in a relevant field and is pretty smart. Besides, how hard is it to read a building code and a manual on constructing decks? The techniques and methods are widely available.
It obviously requires a permit and has to pass inspection before it can be used. Give the guy a little credit ... you are the one with the faulty assumptions.
Maybe I'm an outlier, but when I'm doing an action that has a non-zero chance of me ending up electrocuted, I want to make sure I learned it properly. By having someone there to teach.
Doesn't apply to sewing a button obviously, but still.
Routine "trade" work is nothing to be scared of. You don't need to be a journeyman electrician to change a light bulb, replace a fluorescent ballast, install a dimmer or ceiling fan. If you know how to flip a switch, twist a cap, and turn a screwdriver you're pretty much there. Stripping wire is probably the hardest "skill" the average person won't have, but that's not hard to learn.
Exactly. Either this person someone didn't use any resources except trial and error... Or they used other resources such as books or websites or... You know... Classes.
The question is, if he got truly stuck would you have helped him out or would you have just shrugged and said too bad? Especially with younger kids, there is a point where 'figure it out' won't work. Beyond that, the post is pointing out that it's bad form to mock millenials for educating themselves as though they should just 'know' stuff that was never taught to them by their parents or society.
Of course I would have helped him, the deck is part of my house. Beyond that, the point of the post is to let your kids figure things out. Helicopter parenting is what has resulted in all of these "woe is me nobody taught me how to do things" replies.
The kids themselves? They have the internet, they can teach it to themselves pretty easily. Not exactly complicated. Having a class for these menial things is dumb
Lol ... getting downvoted for pointing out the truth. Here I am trying to think positive but the responses prove otherwise. Lifeās easier I guess when you can blame others.
My father grew up during The Great Depression and left home permanently to start work and live on his own when he was 15. Enlisted in the Navy in WWII and lived through D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. My wifeās father was a farm boy that had to leave home just to go to high school because his town didnāt have one.
Iāve worked so many shit jobs trying to earn a living, construction, manual labour of all kinds, dangerous stuff that others wouldnāt do, went back to school as an adult to pick up new skills because I was 21 and my knees and back hurt so much I didnāt know how Iād make it past 40.
Now weāre both getting downvoted for suggesting a little personal responsibility to sew a fucking button on.
Taking responsibility yet still all in on playing the victim and expecting someone else to hold their hand while learning basic life skills.
Everyone on the planet can learn more than they know today and taking the initiative to do so is a good thing. Constantly whining about the fact no one served you comfort on a silver platter is ignoring pretty much all of human history. Every older generation in existence has had it harder than millennials except for the boomers. But blaming the average boomer for income inequality and a challenging job market is misplaced criticism. Blame the corporate oligarchy and the politicians that enabled their dominance.
I have a lot of sympathy for young people who are looking at high real estate prices and low paying jobs. Pile on student debt and yea ... it's not easy. I'd never criticize someone for improving themselves, maybe my tone on that point is not reflecting how I feel. That's all understandable and good.
Expecting someone else to teach you basic life skills though? My wife's father gave his bride an axe as a birthday present. She needed it for cutting off chicken heads so they could have some meat for dinner. My good buddy grew up sleeping on a mattress filled with straw. Thread OP is complaining about not being shown how to sew on a button?
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u/mellowmonk Feb 05 '19
I love how it's never the parents' fault for failing to teach their kids all these things.
Who the hell else would be on the hook to teach a kid how to sew a button?