How Families Can Pave The Way To Success
by Ian McAllister
If a hurricane swept your home away, would your family know how to survive? Would you be self-sufficient? Self-sufficiency comes from sharing many active family pursuits.
A research doctor asked me to prepare equipment for him requiring needlework because "I always had servants to do that for me, so I don't know how to thread a needle."
We were filling in a form when I was asked if I was pregnant (I'm a man) and I replied that as I watched people in the city there were more pregnant men than women. They must have no activities.
Kid Pursuits
Man is better than the other animals because of his brain. If we don't use our brains we lose our superiority. Healthy kids love a constant round of activities because it stimulates that human brain. Each new pursuit will build new skills and ways of thinking.
If you spend all your time in front of the TV the kids will have to find projects of their own. Many kids now spend hours playing computer games each day. What manual skills are they building? How to push some buttons!
Systematic Kid Pursuits
Plan long-term projects including preparing for a vacation, so that the family can experience budgeting, arts and crafts, gardening, cooking, keeping and butchering animals or just fishing and cleaning the fish. Don't let your family pursuits be so few and uneducational that your children could end up dieing within sight of food and water because they don't know how to unzip a banana, or clarify a mud puddle.
How can your family become more versatile? Practice learning new things. The more you learn the faster you can learn, and the more options you will have in an emergency.
Our research was brought to a standstill by a frozen water-pipe. The rules said that the gardener had to dig up the pipe then the plumber had to fix the pipe. But the gardener was on holiday. So the boss and I dug a trench to uncover the pipe, replaced the broken section, and covered everything up again, even shovelling snow back on top for extra insulation. Neither of the trade unions ever knew that we had avoided a two-week delay by doing their work ourselves.
Even your maths will improve. If the recipe serves eight, and there are three of you, how do you work out how much to use where the recipe says two tablespoons? If you are papering a wall and need half-sheets in several places how do you work out the total number of rolls that you will need? How do you work out the number of seeds to plant in the garden, bearing in mind how many people will eat the produce and how much they will eat, and the germination rate of the seeds?
Products of the kids construction will have to be proudly displayed. They may not have craftsman finish and flair, but each project represents another ability that might be needed one day. It doesn't matter if pottery is distorted if it carries water to avoid dieing of thirst.
And yes(!) boys need to learn to cook and sew. If they go to college and they can't cook their health will probably deteriorate. If they allowed a friend to bleed to death out in the bush because they couldn't thread a needle to sew them up imagine how they would feel.
A young lady might just have to stand and look helpless to get the boys clustering round to fix her car, do the gardening, clean the gutters, kill the hens, fix the door lock etc. but if she doesn't know how to do it herself, will she have as many helpers when she is 50 years old?
Conclusion
Vegetating before a TV is OK until civilization changes, perhaps tomorrow. If global warming floods coastal cities what would your family do?
About The Author
Over and over again the author is thankful for parents that showed us how to be self-reliant and versatile. Get great ideas for family endeavours here:
http://familypursuits.com/ and family health here
http://healthforu.info/health/healthfood/
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