I'm not talking about ABCs & 123s, I'm talking about some of the other things that maybe you "just knew" but don't realize you learned them from your father or grandfather (or yes, even your mother, though less likely depending on your age)...

Things like, how to drive a nail, or use a screw driver. Yea, THOSE basics. What I read in this article was quite surprising:

www2.macleans.ca/2011/08/25/why-your-tee...r-cant-use-a-hammer/

Given my own crafting tendencies, be it with lumber or cardboard, I am quite certain my son will think nothing of asking(or being asked) to build his own clubhouse fort or action figure playset rather than buy one.

I can turn a wrench, but my personal automotive knowledge doesn't go much past changing the oil and/or spark plugs. This is where one of the Uncle's comes in. I know TheBoy will love going to Uncle B's house, because he'll help build a go cart (and has the land to use it). You see, Uncle B worked on our Grandpa's farm often as a teen. Repairing a vehicle where it fails, with whatever you have on hand is nothing to him. Uncle MacGyver if you will. (This translated well for him as a LT. in a transportation unit in "the sandbox" a few times as well as head of a motorpool at home base.) He has even diagnosed my lawnmower troubles over the phone, with frightening accuracy.

So I really am not worried about my kid learning 'the basics,' but I honestly didn't realize that those skills were not on every parent's agenda. (Though I didn't actually realize they WERE on mine either.)

Just some things to think about while raising your kids. As if you weren't already wiggin' out as a parent, or maybe that's just me. (I blame my friend Eve, for bringing my attention to the article.)

How are your kids learning 'the basics?'

3 or even 4 is probably too early to really know whether a kid's getting proper hand tool training. But I can tell you that 4H is a great place for kids to learn these sorts of things. As a kid wants to learn a skill, there's a project they can do for the fair that will give them a chance to shine and show that they learned something. From model rocketry and woodworking to preserving food and sewing. Even raising rabbits or training dogs. And 4H is available everywhere, not just in the country.

The thing is that we live in a place where if you have the means, you don't need to know everything about tools. It can save you a lot of money to insulate your own house or replace your own ignition coils, but there are people who make a living doing that because it's something they enjoy doing.

The guy who runs the lawn service we use is the shop teacher at the high school you can see from our back yard (right now). He obviously loves working on these machines and the cost is so low, it's unlikely that my kids are going to learn lawnmower safety from me. Instead, they'll learn how to make beer and maintain native rain gardens or how to make pizzas or how to program a light controller.

Using a hammer or nail gun is going to come with the territory, though. I didn't get to shoot my first nail until I was 16 and I shot it across the shop floor into the sole of someone's boot.

Time to get back to hanging up my tools... seriously. That's what I spent this morning doing.

I remember a fairly embarrassing incident in high school that is related to this. I was in a play (that's not actually the embarrassing part), and the next day we had to take down the set. The stage was in the multi-purpose room that we also used for eating lunch. As we began to take the set apart, everyone else started filing in to eat. At one point, I was handed an electric screwdriver and told to take out the screws from a couple boards. My father was incredibly handy around the house, but for reasons that I won't get into here, those skills were never passed down to me. As a result, I had a horrible time just getting those screws out. The fact that you had to push down to make sure the bit didn't jump out made absolutely no sense to me since I was supposed to be removing the screws. By the time I was done, there was a group of guys laughing at me, and the music teacher of all people had to lend a hand.

My wife, on the other hand, is an only child, so her father passed everything on to her since he didn't have a son. I've gotten much more handy over the years, but to this day, my wife is still much better at most of the things. This story illustrates that these skills don't just happen naturally. They have to be taught.

My kids are learning from both my wife and I. I have basic plumbing skills, automotive skills much as Nik described, and can manage most power tools safely and competently.

My wife has a remarkable carpenter's eye. Me? Mitred corners for moldings are akin to those wrought iron bar puzzles that I can never work through. She can intuitively see how the pieces of any project should go together. She does all the measuring and marking. I do the cutting. She could. She just doesn't care for the noise.

As a result our kids are learning the basics from watching us both. Our son also gets a fair dose of it all from his grandfather who's a career mechanic/maintenance man. The highlight of the 7yo's education this year? Getting to drive Poppi's lawn tractor to haul mulch in the wagon. All closely supervised of course.

The thing in that article that boggled my mind was the concept that teachers are seeing teenagers that can't tie laces or button a shirt! Wow.