Last week, a friend asked if I knew of any jobs for her recent graduate. Between his rigorous academic load, sports, and club activities that landed him in a prestigious university, he’d never held a job.
“My fail,” she confessed.
My kids have had jobs, but I have parenting fails of my own. I’m concerned that, in the grand scheme of middle-class privileges, we forgot to teach our children some basic life skills: scrubbing bathrooms, repaying debts, and self-attunement.
I crammed as much as I could into the first 18 years of their lives, but juggling my small business while parenting didn’t leave time for everything. I found myself tossing last-minute advice like grapes while driving each to their respective dorms: Carry your drinks with you at all times — even to the bathroom. Know where Student Health is located. Sit in the front rows; meet your professors. Skip the jugs of BORG.
We didn’t teach them everything they need to survive, let alone thrive, but I’m hoping it’s not too late to offer some guidance.
Cleaning their toilet
The bathroom might be the most inhospitable location in either of my sons’ living quarters. The filth lurking below the interior rim is as confronting as the overspray of urine where the lid hinges.
To protect them from chemical toxins, I reflect that I never handed my kids a cleaning wand. They’d wiped down sinks, vacuumed, and washed clothes, but the toilet was off limits. Instead, I’d taken the plastic brush into my own hand or, worse, hired a housekeeper. It should have transitioned at some age, but between my own squeamishness about cleanliness and their protests at reaching inside the bowl, I failed.
I’m consoled that it appears statistically unlikely that anyone would catch a disease from their lack of sanitization, but in the interest of raising functional adults within accepted cultural parameters, I’m impressing upon them the virtues of hygiene and housekeeping as attractive to a future partner, while clamoring to provide motivation.
My kids had no fiscal responsibility
To teach financial awareness, my husband and I set up checking accounts and outlined budgets with our kids in their last year of high school. What we failed to do was teach them the importance of paying bills or repaying debt — imperative when adulting to secure credit, rent your own accommodations, and eventually live a fiscally independent life.
We felt like we were on the right path when our kid bought his first (used) Toyota Tacoma, and we helped by providing a partial private loan to make it possible. The idea was for him to pay us back in monthly installments, no matter how small, but that quickly fell by the wayside when he felt $20 too nominal a transaction to matter.
Courtesy of the author
He eventually paid off the entire debt in a lump sum, and we blew off his breach of our contract, but when a second kid dismissed our financial agreement, I knew we’d made a mistake. It’s a lesson worth reworking in the interest of said kids’ futures — perhaps we should’ve enforced stricter consequences for non-payment or suggested a bank loan that has natural repercussions for non-compliance? Idk, but that’s my hot tip.
I told them to ‘read the room,’ but also, they should read themselves
This broad term refers to an individual’s ability to assess themself in their environment, mentally and physically. I’d always advised my kids to “read the room,” but now I implore them to read themselves — better.
By the end of high school, I’d encouraged my kids to schedule their own doctor appointments but still played caregiver when advising them to stay home from school (with a fever) or insisting on their attendance (to avoid truancy). Collectively considered, I might have disabled their agency given that one of our kids landed in the emergency room after ignoring cold symptoms that manifested as chest pains in the middle of the night, his freshman year of college. Diagnosed with an acute case of pericarditis, his heart was stressed. He spent three harrowing nights in the hospital and continued with six months of follow-up as an outpatient; it was scary. I couldn’t conceive how quickly an active young person’s health had plummeted so drastically. “This must be super rare?” I asked the attending physician.
“Not really, it’s a textbook response to strep throat,” the doctor replied. Then, turning toward my kid, he asked, “Didn’t your throat feel sore?”
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“Not really.”
Dropping our youngest child to start her college career on the opposite coast this fall, we kissed and hugged. “Have fun — these years are the best!” Then I added, “but it’s normal to feel lonely at times. It’s OK to be uncomfortable.” I reminded her exactly what I probably needed to hear: “Discomfort breeds growth.” And maybe that’s how I’d reframe my embarrassing “fails” — as an opportunity for growth, because isn’t that why we all went to college in the first place?
