Bachelor Summer Camp

Parenting, like everything else, comes in waves. That’s particularly true when you have a lot of kids. Lance and I joke that we have three sets of identical twins, each set born six months apart; and we’ve often noticed that one set of kids has learned something that we completely neglected to teach another set.

This came to mind last week when I asked Jack if he wanted to make a birthday cake for his dad, and I discovered he had never baked a cake before. It’s true that by the time things filter down to Jack – the youngest of the 6 – we’ve already taught it 5 times and figure that EVERYBODY knows it. However, that same week I was talking to Rocky (oldest boy and Senior Child Present), who’s beginning to gird himself for a place of his own, and he was mentioning all the Regular Grown-Up Things he doesn’t know how to do.

This morning an idea was born: Bachelor Summer Camp!

For the next few weeks I’m going to be giving my 3 boys (ages 22, 20 and 15) lessons in the mechanics of human survival: laundry, cooking, budgeting, ironing, menu planning, mending, etc. At the end of this domestic crash course I’m hoping the kids will have at least a nodding acquaintance with all the skills they’ll need when they’ve flown the coop (with the added benefit that they’ll be more helpful while they’re still here!). Today I’m working up a broad “lesson plan,” so please – leave a note telling me what you think an entry-level adult must be able to do.

Come to think of it, Sassy told me the other day that she’d never used the electric drill . . . I’d better add a Bachelorette Version for her!