Do you want your family to be helpless in this world? Then you need to do everything for them, so that they have no interests and no survival ability.
Someone made an apple pie bed for a boy. He slept on the floor that night because he had never learned to make his bed, and he didn't think of lying on top of the covers.
Many youngsters didn't know how to unzip a banana!
I changed a wheel for a young lady. She had a jack. She had a wheel brace. She had a correctly inflated spare tire. She just didn't know how to use the equipment.
Kids Activities
Parents may not feel confident to guide family pursuits, because they have never done it themselves. Don't worry. You can learn just before your kids, and give them the idea that you can handle any family pursuits. My dad taught me French, Latin and German, learning them a lesson or two ahead of me.
Systematic Kids Activities
Don't let the family realize that the fun and games are for their own good, so that the family can experience budgeting, arts and crafts, gardening, cooking, keeping and butchering animals or just fishing and cleaning the fish. Don't let your family pursuits be so few and uneducational that your children could end up dieing within sight of food and water because they don't know how to unzip a banana, or clarify a mud puddle.
You may be the world's best treacle-bender, but what if employers no longer want skilled treacle-benders? If you don't know how to do anything else what are you going to do?
Our research was brought to a standstill by a frozen water-pipe. The rules said that the gardener had to dig up the pipe then the plumber had to fix the pipe. But the gardener was on holiday. So the boss and I dug a trench to uncover the pipe, replaced the broken section, and covered everything up again, even shovelling snow back on top for extra insulation. Neither of the trade unions ever knew that we had avoided a two-week delay by doing their work ourselves.
If your family has lots of projects you are preparing them to be versatile. Needlework will help a newbie surgeon. Cookery will help a chemistry student. If they learn to replace tap washers they won't be at the mercy of plumbers. You never know when painting, gardening, simple mechanics or mending a puncture will be important to them. In fact anything they learn can have an unexpected value in the future.
Products of the kids construction will have to be proudly displayed. Visitors won't despise the display, or if they do, they are not the kind of people you want to know.
And yes(!) boys need to learn to cook and sew. If they go to college and they can't cook their health will probably deteriorate. If they allowed a friend to bleed to death out in the bush because they couldn't thread a needle to sew them up imagine how they would feel.
A young lady might just have to stand and look helpless to get the boys clustering round to fix her car, do the gardening, clean the gutters, kill the hens, fix the door lock etc. but if she doesn't know how to do it herself, will she have as many helpers when she is 50 years old?
Conclusion
Vegetating before a TV is OK until civilization changes, perhaps tomorrow. If global warming floods coastal cities what would your family do?
About The Author:
Over and over again the author is thankful for parents that showed us how to be self-reliant and versatile. Get great ideas for family endeavours here
http://familypursuits.com/ and family health here
http://healthforu.info/health/healthfood/
