How to prepare your son (or daughter) for the real world

[onyonryngs]

I saw this on Shine - about what you need to teach your son regarding how to keep house.  It would apply to girls too, but in a few instances I've witnessed the daughter knowing how to do things like laundry and cooking, but the son was lucky if he could throw together a sandwich.  But in college I do remember having to teach a couple girls how to do laundry so it's not like it's limited to boys.

Has anyone here devised a plan like this for their kids?  Or wished your parents did one for you?  Any funny stories of ignorance isn't such bliss?

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/4-rules-teaching-son-keep-house-194500252.html

[Winterlight]

My brother and I both took 4-H cooking classes. I don't know if he learned to sew, but I did. We both learned how to clean and do laundry.

I applaud her for doing this now, before he became a potential burden to others.

[onyonryngs]

I think cooking classes are a great idea.  Everyone needs to eat & you can only heat up so many frozen pizzas before that becomes boring.

[Wulfie]

I am very grateful to my father for making me take shop class and my brother had to take HomeEc.  I can now do basic repairs around the house and WulfieBrother got a job just out of highschool at a local resort working in the kitchen. He loves to cook and is very good at it.

[CakeBeret]

My DH was never taught anything. Money management, laundry, cleaning, cooking, nothing. It did not serve him well in the real world.

Our plan for DS is to incorporate life lessons into everyday. He can help clean (as he already does) and learn to do laundry. I'll teach him to cook, bake, and sew. We'll start out with a small allowance and help teach him to manage it. DH will teach him car maintenance including oil change, tire rotation, changing brakes and calipers, basic repairs, etc. One or both of us will teach him basic home maintenance as it comes up.

When he gets to high school age and thinking about college, we'll sit down with him and help him with financial planning. Such as, if he does X, he'll need to take financial steps Y. If he wants to live in the dorm he'll need to plan for A, while if he wants to live in an apartment he'll need to plan for B. We plan to teach him good budgeting, the ins and outs of various types of debt, and how to live within your means.

[Lynn2000]

As an only child, I have no one to compare notes with (and no kids of my own, so no impetus to ask my mom), so sometimes I don't know if my parents had no plan at all and just muddled through, or if their plan was so cleverly disguised I didn't recognize it as such. I don't specifically remember learning how to clean, do laundry, cook, etc. but I just helped along with my parents from a young age and picked up the basics. I was kind of stubborn, I guess, and wouldn't have taken well to being told to take a class I wasn't interested in, so I'm glad it didn't come to that. But, everyone's situation is different, and I think it's great to (somehow) ensure that kids have a "practical" education as well as a more academic one.

[2littlemonkeys]

Wulfie, my Dh is very handy and I really want him to teach the girls how to make basic repairs and generally maintain things. 

We had to teach a suite-mate in college how to clean because she had never done it before.  Normally I'd call shenanigans and think she was just trying to get out of it but I know the area in which she grew up and the odds of her having live-in help were pretty good. 

Financial planning is a very important skill.  I wish my parents had spent more time on that. 

[onyonryngs]

Some financial planning help would've been greatly appreciated.  Also some basic electrical so I can put up a light fixture on my own.  I figured that out eventually, but I hate reading directions!

[EMuir]

The best thing my parents could have done for me would have been limiting my money per month in University, but letting me know how much there would be per month, so I could learn to budget.  Instead they gave me money when I asked (and I was afraid to ask too often) so I learned that all you have to do to get more money is ask. I've recovered from that financial mess now, but it took a while and didn't have to happen.

[pixel dust]

Both my mother and I went to the same progressive all-girls private religiously-affiliated high school. It was founded in the mid-50's as a college-prep institute to get women out of the home and into the workforce. They may have started out with home ec classes but by the time my mom got there in 1969 they had done away with them and were solely dedicated to getting women into college, so neither of us ever had any kind of "official" home ec instruction, though I really wish I did.

Mom's a good cook and I learned basics from her then expanded on them on my own by following various cooking blogs (I love to cook and bake) and she taught me the basics of laundry before I went off to college (my grandmother "babysat" me and my younger brothers from the time I was 7 until I was about 23 so she always did the laundry, no reason for us to learn until we went off to live by ourselves), but neither of us know how to sew.

I definitely plan on teaching my future children the basics of cooking and laundry and maybe try and see if there any local community classes for "life skills" if their high schools don't have home ec classes.

It's funny, my middle brother and I both went to college-prep private schools and my youngest brother (who has Down Syndrome) went to a public high school and was placed in "Life Skills" classes with the other special ed kids where he learned how to balance a checkbook, clock in and out for work, cook, do laundry, manage a household, the importance of personal responsibility, etc., where as my middle brother and I never had any kind of classes or instruction in those types of things, just typical school subjects like History, Science, Math, etc. Sometimes I think my mentally disabled brother has a better understanding of how to be a functioning adult in today's society than I do.

[Sharnita]

Some of my peers had never been to a funeral or visitation.  When a friend passed away they had no idea what to expect.

[magicdomino]

From Carloyn Hax's column today:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/carolyn-hax-couple-wants-to-replicate-school-of-hard-knocks-for-their-kids/2012/12/13/94e3ea34-38fb-11e2-b01f-5f55b193f58f_story.html

While the advice is for a well-to-do couple worried about raising over-priviledged children, the advice works for any economic background. 

[Wulfie]

This was back before computers. I am not sure how common it is but one of my highschool math teachers had a great set of lessons every year in the spring.  We all had to learn to do taxes. She made up fake W-2 forms and reciepts and we all had to do a 1040A form for practice and then one for grading. She also did a tax audit on all of us.  It really taught us how to organize our paperwork for taxes as well as how to do the forms.

[Moray]

My parents had me "help" them do chores from a early age. It was such a part of the daily routine that it never really felt like a lot of work to do the dusting or run the vacuum. I can guarantee that if they'd been "sprung" on me later in life I'd have rebelled, and probably spent several years living in relative filth.

I wish I'd had more "financial planning" advice. Those first couple of years on my own I overdrew my account almost constantly and had a really hard time saving.

[Sharnita]

This was back before computers. I am not sure how common it is but one of my highschool math teachers had a great set of lessons every year in the spring.  We all had to learn to do taxes. She made up fake W-2 forms and reciepts and we all had to do a 1040A form for practice and then one for grading. She also did a tax audit on all of us.  It really taught us how to organize our paperwork for taxes as well as how to do the forms.

Economics is a required class in Michigan and we did practice tax forms there.