I was an extremely self-propelled child, and I wanted to make my parents happy. I have no idea how things would have gone without those two things, in that order of importance to my behavior at the time.
My mom did a great job of teaching me the basic elements of cooking. I do wish she'd let me go off-recipe more when I was cooking for the family: I was bored by it and disliked doing it, whereas I loved cooking pretty much the minute I was allowed to do it on my own ideas. Having someone else cook means that you don't always get to have things exactly as you like them; this is a good thing for everyone to remember, I think, including teenagers.
My school required a similar Consumer Skills class. I tested out of it. The test was much, much harder than the class. The test asked about mutual funds, the class dealt with balancing a checkbook -- that level of discrepancy. But I have no idea how I picked up that stuff, since I know my parents never sat me down with it in my teen years. I think a lot of the stuff they taught me was by osmosis over the years. If they were fixing something, I'd get, "Punk, c'mere, I'm fixing the snowblower," or whatever.
I've talked on my own lj about how much it meant to me that my dad gave me A Brief History of Time when I was 12, but among other things, it really freed me to pursue my own interests on the adult level. It was a quiet vote of confidence that I was ready to go as nuts in the adult nonfiction section as I had in the children's, and I never looked back.
My parents did not interfere with me dating someone really fairly horrible for my first boyfriend and someone vastly unsuitable for my second, and I'm glad. Them stopping me would have been much worse for our relationship in the long-term, and they had given me the resources -- both intellectual and emotional -- not to make long-term damaging decisions within those short-term unpleasant relationships.
no subject
My mom did a great job of teaching me the basic elements of cooking. I do wish she'd let me go off-recipe more when I was cooking for the family: I was bored by it and disliked doing it, whereas I loved cooking pretty much the minute I was allowed to do it on my own ideas. Having someone else cook means that you don't always get to have things exactly as you like them; this is a good thing for everyone to remember, I think, including teenagers.
My school required a similar Consumer Skills class. I tested out of it. The test was much, much harder than the class. The test asked about mutual funds, the class dealt with balancing a checkbook -- that level of discrepancy. But I have no idea how I picked up that stuff, since I know my parents never sat me down with it in my teen years. I think a lot of the stuff they taught me was by osmosis over the years. If they were fixing something, I'd get, "Punk, c'mere, I'm fixing the snowblower," or whatever.
I've talked on my own lj about how much it meant to me that my dad gave me A Brief History of Time when I was 12, but among other things, it really freed me to pursue my own interests on the adult level. It was a quiet vote of confidence that I was ready to go as nuts in the adult nonfiction section as I had in the children's, and I never looked back.
My parents did not interfere with me dating someone really fairly horrible for my first boyfriend and someone vastly unsuitable for my second, and I'm glad. Them stopping me would have been much worse for our relationship in the long-term, and they had given me the resources -- both intellectual and emotional -- not to make long-term damaging decisions within those short-term unpleasant relationships.