Comments on: Three Things I Never Taught My Sons

By: oliver

oliver — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:01:04 +0000

This is a great site to read and it made me realise what i use to get up to, come after school time i would ride my bike and climb trees with my best mate which use to live across the road, and on the weekend i would be out all day with my mate and we would ride our bikes around and play with sticks and explore the aussie bush, i quickly learnt how to avoid snakes and other things. and a pocket knife helped us have fun and make shelters and spears and just made me appreciate trees more.

heres a question for all the presidents, prime ministers etc, if our kids dont get out into the environment and learn to play in it naturally, how will they learn to appreciate its value and importance to every living thing on earth ?

let your kids play outside and make spears and swim in the rivers, they will turn out healthy and strong with a respect for nature!

im 22 and will bring up my future kids to have an array of skills in which my father and grandparents enjoyed and had to use !

By: oliver

oliver — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:01:00 +0000

heres a question for all the presidents, prime ministers etc, if our kids dont get out into the environment and learn to play in it naturally, how will they learn to appreciate its value and importance to every living thing on earth ?

let your kids play outside and make spears and swim in the rivers, they will turn out healthy and strong with a respect for nature!

im 22 and will bring up my future kids to have an array of skills in which my father and grandparents enjoyed and had to use !

By: Rustic Furniture

Rustic Furniture — Sun, 23 Nov 2008 07:13:15 +0000

You just realized these things when you get older and yeah sometimes you regret it. Hoping you have learned it when you were younger.

By: Steve

Steve — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:39:50 +0000

Sometimes I too feel that I haven't been the best at passing along some of those things that my father taught me to my son…however, we both have been fortunate to have others help…Cub Scouts (whittling), Howard (chopping down trees…imagine that!), Bob (hunting) just to name a few.

It seems that there are so many more pressures on everyones time, work, school/homework, sports and other activities (not to mention the transportation time there!) that there is prescious little left to teach let along learn some of things that used to be our leisure…maybe I need to send him to Tinkering School :http://www.tinkeringschool.com/blog/2005/about/

By: Frank

Frank — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:50:02 +0000

Good deal…I'll have to do a post on what I've taught them…cool what your dad did. We're all the composite of our life experiences…and it's funny how many were taught to us when we think about it. Guitar and baseball…fun.

By: Pinky Bear

Pinky Bear — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:36:32 +0000

Wow. My dad taught me how to play baseball. I was a great batter before puberty. I am not sure what happened. He also taught me to play the guitar some.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 19:56:01 +0000

Ms. Information, I'm hit by these waves from time to time. Perhaps it's a sign of the age. It is funny to wonder if that's what each generation goes through. We did a lot more outdoors things when I was a kid, and I suppose my dad, who was born in 1924, probably had an outdoorsy existence that far exceeded mine.

We're trying to do the right thing…somedays I think we're doing right. Thanks for the vote of confidence.

By: Ms. Information

Ms. Information — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:40:26 +0000

Thanks for the great post and the wave of nostalgia. I feel fortunate for having had the freedom to ride my bike anywhere, for swinging on vines and ice-skating in the woods, for childhood camping trips with my Scout troop, for fishing with my grandfather when I was a kid and target shooting with him when I was a teen. It is indeed a different world- or does every generation say this when they reach our age?
And by the way, I have no doubt you're one of the great dads, despite the absence of whittling lessons.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:48:42 +0000

Pax…I love how your dad taught you to play pinball…something about father/son bonding when there's a little secret involved.

That cracked me up about the fishing. We caught fish, but years later they revealed that the entire lake was polluted with PCBs, and you could get cancer from eating the fish. Go figure.

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 14:47:12 +0000

Albert, it is amazing how much coddling goes on. We worry for our kids, but we're not doing them any favors “protecting” them from every possible negative thing.