A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert Heinlein
One of the blogs/sites that I follow is the Volokh Conspiracy (a libertarian/legal blog that is run by a UCLA law professor). This morning, there was a post that got me thinking, especially with the eventuality of having to raise my children. That post (and one of the related comments) reminded me of the above quote.
I'd like to think that my parents did a decent job of teaching me when I was a kid, sometimes without me realizing it. For example, I learned a lot about home repairs by "helping" my dad. Usually my help consisted of sitting there holding a flashlight, or handing him a screwdriver, but even today I can look back and see how much I learned from it.
In large part because of them, I've been able to do 17 of the 21 items on Heinlein's list, and I'm sure I could do the other 4 things. I'm only missing butcher a hog, set a bone, fight efficiently, and die gallantly, and I'd like to put some of those off for as long as I can (especially the last one). (Yes, I have planned an invasion. I've planned multiple successful invasions. So what if they were all in games?)
The more I look at that list, the more I wonder what sort of things I will want to teach my son. I'm definitely going to teach him basic home repairs, like my father taught me. I also look forward to teaching him to take care of his car, and how to cook several tasty meals. I look forward to teaching him to read music and play the piano, how to read and understand the scriptures and other great works of literature and philosophy.
Most of all, I look forward to teaching him how to think and reason his way through the challenges that present themselves in life. As I read that post from the Volokh Conspiracy, I was appalled by the examples of the teenagers who didn't know how to use a can opener or ice cube tray. I consider both of those to be failures at parenting.
They're failures not because the teenagers didn't know how to use them, but because they weren't willing to try to figure out how to use them. Neither of them is such a complex thing that an average person couldn't figure out how to use them with a few moments thought. Their parents should not only have taught them how to use them years ago, but they should have taught them how to reason through how things work years ago.
That won't be me. My kids are going to learn how to figure out how things work. I may regret this later. I know there are times my parents regretted having kids who could figure out not only how things worked, but how to get around obstacles to making them work.
Many years ago, my parents felt that their children were watching too much TV, and so they decided to do something about it. My father went to Radio Shack and bought a few supplies, and they put a keyed switch onto the power cord for the TV. Without the key, you couldn't turn the TV on. It was a primitive, analog version of the parental controls many TVs have today.
That lasted for maybe a week. Four determined kids and one paper clip later, we had learned how to pick the lock on the switch and watch TV without asking our parents for the key.
I'm sure such antics gave my parents heartburn, but I want my kids to be able to do the same thing. I want them to see an obstacle to their goals and figure out how to overcome it. I just hope that I can stay one step ahead of them when they think that I am that obstacle.
