Can You Sew A Button Or Knead Flour?

When I was a child, I saw my mother sweeping and dusting around the house every day. (We lived in the desert in Rajasthan where hot winds could shift small hillocks overnight). I saw my dad polish shoes every alternate day. We wrote letters and posted them. Sewing buttons and mending holes were taught in school too.

We filled our fountain pens with ink and made our own beds (that included changing the bed-sheets and pillow covers).

We ate most fruits without peeling and cutting, but somehow just picked up knife-using skills.

Most importantly, my mother taught me to knead flour and roll chapattis (I can’t thank her enough for it).

We all washed our own clothes and ironed them through college. My mother still looks at a washing machine with disgust.

This was the story two-three decades ago. Today, my children don’t see me dusting and sweeping regularly. My husband doesn’t use shoes that need polish. There is no ink bottle in the house. I cut and chop fruits and vegetables, but my daughter has never been near a knife. The washing machine is our lifeline and we love to use our vapour steamers over already ironed clothes.

Essential life skills like changing bed-sheets or a flat tyre, chopping and cleaning, sewing a button or kneading flour (for Indians) have a guest appearance in our lives. As a result, our children are losing out on learning these basic skills which are important and easy to learn.

Have we wondered why our children show dexterity while using phones, laptops, cameras, scanners and printers but can’t handle a knife or a needle?

As parents, we need to understand the importance of inculcating basic survival skills. Our children must be self–reliant in cooking a healthy meal, making a hygienic bed, maintaining a clean apartment. We must enable them to be self-sufficient so that they can sail smoothly if they get stranded with a flat tyre or crumpled clothes.

Why are we failing in passing on some basic life skills to our next generation?

We are guilty of giving a wrong message to our children through our actions. We do not respect the work done by hands enough. We treat cleaning, cooking, washing, ironing, sewing, plumbing as petty jobs which others should do for us. We hire people to do these things for us by using their hands or machines. If we have to do the cleaning, chopping, washing, gardening, we do it with disinterest. We love to eat good meals but hate to prepare them from scratch. If we do, we make it sound like a tiring ordeal that is not to be enjoyed. We love ironed clothes but find it tough to iron them on our own. Since we get people to do it for us easily, we have started considering these jobs as menial. Also, our generation at least knows how to set the temperature on an iron because we have used it at some point in our lives, but our children would not know the difference between a hot iron and a cold iron. Whether we do it regularly or not, we must respectfully do these tasks to show it to our children that they are skills to sustain a lifetime.

We fail to teach our children basic skills like using a knife or washing clothes because we don’t trust them to do these things well. Many parents are scared that their children will hurt themselves with knives. Actually, five mindful minutes with our kids and knives can sort this out. Show them the ways to use it on fruits and veggies, and supervise them silently for the first few times. Knives hurt far lesser than many websites they see, many words they use. We don’t let them wash clothes or polish shoes because we don’t have the patience to teach them and see them improve. We suck at managing our time and conclude that “I will do it faster than kids. They will mess it up”. It is a snag on our part if we fail to expose them to these important skills.

Most parents today love to be bulletproof parents--parents who try to protect their children from everything. They will do the homework of their children if they miss school for a vacation. They will micro-manage their college applications and even feed them with their hands. Does it sound familiar? Such parents are guilty of raising dependent and risk-averse children.

How do we encourage our children to change a flat tyre, to check a fuse box or to prune the plants?

Show & Tell:
Let us dirty our own hands. Let us use our own hands to do these tasks once in a while. Don’t hesitate to pick up that shoe polish and the brush. Clean your bathroom on your own and let your children know that the commode doesn’t stay spotlessly clean miraculously.

Enjoy the Handiwork:
If we enjoy watering and pruning our plants, if we sing while ironing our clothes, our children will consider picking up these skills. Our burdened attitude towards cooking, washing, cleaning is a dampener. It is more taxing on the brain than the body because we consider it boring, recurring and unproductive. Our grand moms enjoyed cooking and feeding us. Our moms loved domestic chores. Though we have come far in terms of lifestyles, financial growth and work domains, we can’t forget that we still need healthy food on the table to eat, a comfortable bed to sleep, clean and ironed clothes to wear and many such things.

Prepare for Future:
Indian parents need to prepare their children by teaching them these basic chores if they decide to study or work abroad. We get a lot of manual assistance in our country in the form of domestic helps, drivers, ironmen, cooks which is not easily available everywhere. With globalisation, there are more chances of their studying or working outside our country than before. They could be easily encouraged to take up these basic skills in order to have a comfortable stay abroad. Let us use our hands more often. Go and cook a meal from scratch while your son cleans the bathroom. Your spouse will iron the clothes while your daughter finishes the laundry. Get back to us with your experiences. Meanwhile, I will walk the dog.

image not our own