Ask HN: What knowledge or skills do you hope your kids to have?

[sharps_xp]

Just had my first kid, and I'm thinking about all the things I hope she'll learn.

Some things I hope she learns: - physical/emotional/spiritual/mental health all affect each other; live a balanced life - how to distinguish between things that compound over time and things that don't (not money, but relationships, hobbies, skills) - how to eat well - how to express oneself - how to listen

[unlog]

A secondary language is a must-have if possible when you are young. It doesn't only allow you to speak with people, it introduces you to other cultures, opens your mind on how things could be so differently. I'm from a Spanish speaker country and learned English alone. Music also. What I consider the most important thing is that learning shouldn't feel like an obligation.

[rdtwo]

I hope my kid learns how to be handy and take care of stuff like cars and houses.

I hope she learns good money management skills

How to handle emotions and mange relationships and use others to get what she wants in life be that fiscal emotional or otherwise.

I hope she learns how to handle abusive and toxic people and cut them off.

Also how to manage risk and take advantage of situations where risk reward are in her favor.

[austincheney]

* planning - The informal calculus of anticipating changes and moving targets is a common sense few people possess.

* self-reflection - The confidence to objectively see yourself as a non-special data point comparable to other data points prevents many failures attributable to bias.

* honesty - Honesty is a skill many people are shockingly terrible at and horrified to encounter. Yet it determines who seeks to do you harm more so than anything else.

* immortality - If the children inherent the rare physical traits that I have grown into there is never reason to feel physical intimidation from other people. Let that define their character more than anything else.

[banmeagaindan2]

I've tried finding a good book on planning but failed - do you have any recommendations?

[meiraleal]

I'm curious. How does this immortality thing work?

[dprophecyguy]

- Ability to determine whether a fact is fake or not.

- Computer Science (Think Like a Programmer)

- Empathy

- To go through a struggle and learn from it.

- Embrace Pain instead of running away from it.

- Handle Personal Finance (Tax, Saving, Investment)

- System Thinking (Understand Everyone is Playing a Game)

- Not get influenced by Advertising. (Dont be funnel)

- Dont be a skinner box.

- Ability to love one person for rest of their life.

[nforest]

You should embrace suffering, not pain. If you're in pain it means something is wrong and you should stop, or you will hurt yourself and take longer to recover.

[virtualmic]

This is a great list!

> - System Thinking (Understand Everyone is Playing a Game)

Any pointers on how to develop this in a kid?

[arthurjj]

I don't know if it's a skill per se. But if agency or initiative is learnable it's something I'm hoping for for my son. The things I'm proud of I decided to do without direct prompting from others

[HenryKissinger]

Mathematical skills, to find a job.

[trumbitta2]

Critical, independent, thinking

[sgillen]

All these life skills are great, I was also going to say mathematics though. It’s well known that languages are much easier to pick up for children, I think math is similar. Even if your daughter never uses it outside of school, fluency makes school much less stressful, and opens many doors.

[pkrotich]

How to learn - no one teaches how to learn effectively and yet we are expected to be lifelong learners.

[boltzmannbrain]

Fix my VCR / DVD / DVR / Netflix / whatever when I'm old.

[Fr3dd1]

In my opinion there is a lot to learn. And also a lot of usefull / important stuff. But if I had to decide for just one thing, I would say to stay positive and optimistic no matter what.

[the_resistence]

Critical thinking skills and extreme appreciation for thinking for themselves.

[dakiol]

Fluency in 4 languages before 12. I speak X, my wife speaks Y, we both speak to each other in English and we live in a country that speaks Z. Could be a challenge, I know.

[nforest]

May be anecdotal but my family is friends with two parents, the father French and the mother American. They and their children lived a few years in France and Montréal, and they spoke the two languages at home. I remember two of their children (around 8-9 years old at the time), not being really fluent in any language, but actually quite mediocre at both. They would start a sentence in french, struggle on grammar or vocabulary, and end up giving up and finishing it in English. I can't imagine what it would be like with two more languages.

[fakedang]

Not really. I learnt my four fluent languages before 12. One was the mother tongue at home, the second was English, the third was the language of the region I was living in, the fourth was the majority language of my home country. I picked up French at 12 though it's not as fluent as the others (i.e. I don't dream in it yet).

Helped that three of the languages (and later French) were taught in school, I guess.

[meiraleal]

To not disregard physical education in favour of mental formation. mens sana in corpore sano.

[k0t0n0]

Abelity to build Clojure and detmoic.

[k0t0n0]

*ability