Teach Your Kids...Everything

I saw this post on reddit today and my first thought was 'this has to be a shitpost'.  I mean, what grown adult is lacking the life skills of a twelve year old?  Apparently this is a trend (exhibit A, exhibit B, exhibit C)?  And while I may be old and judgmental, there is no way in hell an adult shouldn't know the basics of survival.  Cooking is a survival skill, working for money is a survival skill, driving, depending on where you live, is a survival skill.  Parents do their kids a huge disservice when they don't insist (and teach) their kids basic life skills.

Years ago--and I do mean YEARS--it was a given that anything parents knew how to do, their kids would learn the same skills as soon as they were physically able.  You want to eat fish?  You go catch one.  You want vegetables with your meal?  You grow them.  You have a hole in your clothes?  You mend it.  Young girls were babysitting even smaller children by early elementary school.  Young boys would be hunting/ranching/fishing by early elementary school.  All kids were expected to entertain themselves, likewise they were also expected to solve their own social problems with their peers.

Of course times change, but creating human beings that lack the knowledge of how to cook for themselves, clean for themselves, earn money, fix things that go wrong in their lives, is just mind-blowing.  Parents should strive to impart as much knowledge and as many skills to their kids as humanly possible; you never know when such skills will come in handy whether in ordinary life or during an extraordinary crisis.  And for parents who themselves weren't taught much, YouTube can teach you just about everything.