Disclosure: I am not a parent. I’ve never been
a parent that I know of.
I never figured out how that worked.
I am a child of a parent so this is just my
point-of-view. This is not intended as a Do-It-Yourself instructional manual
but one person’s history.
Parenting,
from what I’ve read in history, was the teaching and training of a baby created
by a man and a woman. Back in the day the parents were responsible for teaching
basic skills like pooping training and how to eat without assistance. Good
parenting taught how to tie your shoes, comb your hair and how to make your
bed.
When
parenting was the only training, the girls would be shown how to sew and cook
and sweep the floors by the mother while the guys followed their dads out into
the fields to cut wood, bale hey and learn the complexity of tractors.
Parents also
were supposed to teach speaking or at least some form of verbal communication
with family slang and colloquialisms. At the same time they were taught their
parents biases and prejudices, whether intended or not.
Then public
schooling took over the chore of teaching the children how to read and rite and
rithmetic. Your child was taught obedience to a stranger who was smarter than
your parents. The responsibility for your child to write their name, read a
financial contract or balance a bankbook falls to the school. Today the school
system is over burdened with everything from mental evaluation to policing
violence.
For the kids
who show enough smarts to avoid the factory or fieldwork were sent to
university or higher learning to be exposed to philosophy, psychology,
sociology, animosity, amorously, and more with the freedom to cogitate their
own thoughts.
I was lucky
enough to only fail one year and with a series of summer school retraining,
made it through all the expected schooling and got a piece of paper but not
sure I was much smarter.
I did know
how to write my name enough to sign a marriage certificate, bank loans,
mortgage contract, divorce papers and everything else people put in front of me
to ‘sign on the line’ though my scribble of today is nowhere near as neat as I
was taught.
So what
about all that other stuff?
My parents
were not keen at helping with homework so I just put it to the side and watched
television instead, probably a reason for my good grades? My mother did buy a
subscription to the World Book Encyclopedias (the first Google) from a
traveling salesman but it was out-of-date by the time out of the box.
I did go to
all the classes and got good attendance ribbons but wasn’t paying attention. I
would have skipped school but everyone I knew was in school so I just followed
the crowd. That is how we were trained.
Writing lead
me into drawing which lead me into a career, but reading was another matter.
English was easy enough with ‘Dick and Jane’ but I didn’t read enough to
understand dangling participles, as you know if you have read any of this blog.
Arithmetic was easy pass the flash cards because there were formulas that later
helped when computers came cheap enough to buy. Unfortunately math did not help
with balancing a bankbook.
What about
the rest of the stuff that makes your life interesting?
I was never
interested in sports. Dodge ball meant getting hit with a ball and football
meant getting knocked down and basketball meant running back and forth on a
wooden floor so I migrated more to softer sports like tennis and golf.
Unfortunately not as many had the access to country clubs so without much
pushing from my parents, faded from my interest.
Manly training,
formally the assignment of the father, was passed to the Boy Scouts or Summer
Camp that taught sharpening knives or camping or shooting arrows or guns. Sailing,
fishing, water skiing, scuba diving, surfing were all taught outside of
parental observation or participation.
I learned to
dance at summer camp. Imagine a bunch of boys doing the cha-cha to a record
player, but the reward was a Saturday Night Barn dance with the girl’s camp.
Being a
water baby, I always seem buoyant in the water and learned how to survive in
the ocean by trial and error. After being told I had to know certain strokes to
swim in the deep end of the pool, I think my brother taught me or maybe it was
someone else in the family to kick my feet. After a friend of mine drowned when
we were swimming together, I took it seriously joining the swimming team at the
club and even a lifeguard.
My mother
always handled first aid training. She was the one to kiss my boo-boo with a
band-aid or fed me soup and crackers when sick. She was the one who took me to
the hospital to get parts removed or be sewn up. The training did not extend to
the knowledge of the doctor cost.
Moral
direction was assigned to the weekly meetings at the church to provide faith
and ethics without answering my questions. The rest of belief structure was
taught by friends and foes that I encountered through life.
Understanding
right from wrong and the consequences of punishment, I don’t recall. If I was
ever whooped, I don’t remember. I never had my mouth washed out but do remember
an event where I mouthed off at a passing car and got pushed around and my
basketball trashed by a bunch of bigger boys. Lesson learned.
Learning to
drive was from the public school system program and a few test-drives through
the neighborhood with my mother before filling out the form and getting my
card. Both cars were always being used so I didn’t have that much access to
them, but when I was given a chance to drive to the store and get a quart of
milk, I took advantage of it.
The rest of
it was ‘learn as you go’ as everyone does for there is no instruction manual to
living. Everyone does it differently.
Will this be
on the test?
