# Things you assumed your kids knew **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [December 21, 2014, 4:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803 "2014-12-21T04:52:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![kopek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kopek/32/337_2.png) [@kopek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kopek)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/21 "2014-12-22T02:08:00Z")
Don’t have kids but ------ I am shocked that so many have no idea how to read a non-digital clock. In my friends classes, as a shop teacher, he had to totally give up on clockwise and counterclockwise. ---
**Author:** ![jz78817](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jz78817/32/1028_2.png) [@jz78817](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jz78817)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/22 "2014-12-22T02:50:31Z")
> [@Justin\_Bailey](#): > > Most cars nowadays only need an oil change every 5,000 miles. Checking the oil regularly is a waste of time unless you’re driving a vintage automobile. > > And not oil lights and gas lights are created equal. The gas light on my old Pontiac only turned on when the tank was literally empty. If you saw that light, you had about five minutes before the car completely shut off. that’s no longer the case. with most modern cars, the fuel gauge shows you a “learned” position which takes in account the float level in the tank, but also relies on past usage to determine the distance to empty (DTE.) most modern cars will put on the low fuel light when the calculation says you have 50 miles to empty. as for the thread topic, just deal with it. kids don’t know how to do what we learned because they don’t have to. I’m an engineer, I know what a slide rule is and I’ve had some cursory training on how to use one. In my professional career I’ve never once used a slide rule, because we have better tools to use. Engineers in the 1960s used slide rules because that was the best tool they had at hand. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/23 "2014-12-22T03:15:07Z")
> [@Lacunae\_Matata](#): > > He informed me that the light didn’t use a bulb, nor did the dome light in the interior. Where did he think the light came from? ---
**Author:** ![Lacunae\_Matata](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@Lacunae\_Matata](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lacunae_Matata)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/24 "2014-12-22T03:33:41Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > Where did he think the light came from? I have no earthly notion. I asked whether he thought there were trained lightning bugs whose butt glowing was magically synchronized with the opening of his doors or trunk lid. He completely missed the sarcasm… ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/25 "2014-12-22T03:55:10Z")
Things which _I_ found out when my parents yelled at me over it: - that my mother had a teaching degree (age 4 or so), - that a person using a white walking stick is blind (age 9 or so), - how to tell different schools of art apart (between the ages of 9 and 12). The last one is something my father had learned from his mother at a very young age; apparently he expected my mother to have explained it to me. > [@Arrogance\_Ex\_Machina](#): > > Don’t most new TVs still have small buttons somewhere to change the channel (under a flip panel or on top of the TV behind the screen if not in plain sight) or have those been completely removed? They were completely removed for a few years but now they’re back. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/26 "2014-12-22T05:23:49Z")
I assumed my kid knew that french fries were made out of potatoes. A couple years back, when he was about 10, we were at Five Guys waiting for our burgers, and he asked me “what’s with all the sacks of potatoes?” I was like “um…to make the french fries out of. What else would they be for?” He was like "OMG FRENCH FRIES ARE MADE OUT OF POTATOES?? :eek: " Turns out that all that time he’d thought they were made out of some kind of dough. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/27 "2014-12-22T06:23:34Z")
> [@kopek](#): > > In my friends classes, as a shop teacher, he had to totally give up on clockwise and counterclockwise. Oh dear. That’s not good, those have become important directions for many situations. It had never occurred to me that they might be forgotten! Do we have reliable alternatives? ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/28 "2014-12-22T06:29:25Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > How old are your kids? 9 and 11. And, yes, they’ve been taught. They just strongly prefer Velcro. So much so that they forget how to tie shoelaces! ---
**Author:** ![owlfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/ac8455/32.png) [@owlfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/owlfan)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/29 "2014-12-22T06:38:18Z")
> [@GreasyJack](#): > > Although in her defense most newer cars also have an oil level light which, unlike the oil pressure light, you are safe to ignore for a while. Of course they only had to start putting those in because damnkidsthesedays don’t know they need to check the oil regularly. The car in question is a 99 Escort. It also has manual windows and door locks! ---
**Author:** ![chizzuk](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e36b37/32.png) [@chizzuk](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chizzuk)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 7:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/30 "2014-12-22T07:04:06Z")
> [@Green\_Bean](#): > > I assumed my kid knew that french fries were made out of potatoes. > A couple years back, when he was about 10, we were at Five Guys waiting for our burgers, and he asked me “what’s with all the sacks of potatoes?” I was like “um…to make the french fries out of. What else would they be for?” He was like "OMG FRENCH FRIES ARE MADE OUT OF POTATOES?? :eek: " > > Turns out that all that time he’d thought they were made out of some kind of dough. I thought mayonnaise was made out of milk until I was 20. I thought it was like a different version of butter that they did something to. Did not realize it came from eggs until I looked at the front of a Hellman’s jar one day in college and noticed that the kosher certification was parve (non-meat, non-dairy), which prompted me to study the ingredients. Boy was I surprised. I had a roommate in college who did not know how to use a mop. She was trying to clean the kitchen one day and came to me with the mop, looking totally bewildered. “What do I do with this?” She had a concept that people used mops to clean tile floors and thus she should use one, but didn’t know how to operate it. She also didn’t know how to plunge a toilet. It was very odd. ---
**Author:** ![Ms\_Boods](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/5e9695/32.png) [@Ms\_Boods](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms_Boods)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 8:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/31 "2014-12-22T08:39:12Z")
I’ve no children of my own, but work on an almost-daily basis with 18-21 year old young adults; very few of them actually know how punctuation works. Commas get sprinkled randomly throughout their papers as if they think there’s a quota that must be met somehow, and semi-colons are unknown and unknowable. Stuff is so randomly capitalised that I feel sometimes that I’ve been handed an extended e e cummings poem when I read their essays. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 9:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/32 "2014-12-22T09:26:02Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Oh dear. That’s not good, those have become important directions for many situations. It had never occurred to me that they might be forgotten! Do we have reliable alternatives? Righty-tighty, lefty-loosie? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/33 "2014-12-22T13:20:43Z")
> [@Ms\_Boods](#): > > very few of them actually know how punctuation works. This seems to match what I see online. Aside from atrocious spelling, which I cringingly forgive as I think it’s always been true but used to be hidden by most people not writing anything seen by the public, the mystifyingly poor use of punctuation is what really disappoints. It even occasionally makes me forget what’s correct, not that I’m particularly consistent anyway. ---
**Author:** ![Pixel\_Dent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bc8723/32.png) [@Pixel\_Dent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pixel_Dent)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/34 "2014-12-22T15:27:34Z")
> [@ddsun](#): > > 9 and 11. And, yes, they’ve been taught. They just strongly prefer Velcro. So much so that they forget how to tie shoelaces! My 16 year old was taught to tie shoes; however, her laces end up looking like a 3" chain of knots flopping around. My 5 year old, on the other hand, absorbed the technique for the [Ian Knot](http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/ianknot.htm) just watching me and does it perfectly. Kids are weird. ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/35 "2014-12-22T16:37:04Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Oh dear. That’s not good, those have become important directions for many situations. It had never occurred to me that they might be forgotten! Do we have reliable alternatives? Eh, I guess we can always go back to deasil and widdershins if it comes to that. ---
**Author:** ![BubbaDog](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bubbadog/32/333_2.png) [@BubbaDog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BubbaDog)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/36 "2014-12-22T16:52:16Z")
My daughter had to show a college friend how to put sheets on her bed. Apparently the maid had never showed her how it was done. ---
**Author:** ![robert\_columbia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e79b87/32.png) [@robert\_columbia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robert_columbia)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/37 "2014-12-22T17:07:34Z")
> [@Nava](#): > > Things which _I_ found out when my parents yelled at me over it: > > - that my mother had a teaching degree (age 4 or so),… My mother has a teaching degree and doesn’t know jack-shit about a lot of things. She has no concept of integral and differential calculus and clearly isn’t a model of a modern Major-General. But then, she doesn’t need to be. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/38 "2014-12-22T17:46:46Z")
> [@jz78817](#): > > . . . I’m an engineer, I know what a slide rule is and I’ve had some cursory training on how to use one. In my professional career I’ve never once used a slide rule, because we have better tools to use. Engineers in the 1960s used slide rules because that was the best tool they had at hand. I inherited my dad’s slide rule. He needed one for a certification class that he was taking in order to qualify for a promotion, back when my sisters and I were very young. Although money was pretty tight, he was a great believer in investing in quality equipment and in planning ahead. So he bought the second most expensive one available and he explained the purchase to us. The most expensive one was rosewood, but this was bamboo, which would be self lubricating. It had more scales than he was going to use in his class, but it would last a long time and we would be able to take it to college with us, and we might need the other scales. I actually used a slide rule a few times in my freshman year at college. Hand-held calculators were already out, but the professors hadn’t adjusted to them yet. You couldn’t use them during a test, while you could use a slide rule. It might not have gotten much use as a calculating device, but it was useful in another way. It was sort of a talisman representing his expectations. All three of us graduated college. ## Recently I’ve been tempted to get it a display box with a label saying, “In Case of EMP, Break Glass.” ## **Chappachula** , did you tell the boy that’s why geezers sometime say they’re rolling the window down? I was once shocked to learn that none of my high school aged sons’ friends knew the song “They’re Coming to Take Me Away.” I had to drag out the novelty records/tapes and fight a blow against ignorance. They especially liked the Scotsman song. Kids used to teach each other these songs. ---
**Author:** ![stillownedbysetters](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/41988e/32.png) [@stillownedbysetters](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/stillownedbysetters)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/39 "2014-12-22T17:56:06Z")
I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned that kids no longer know how to make change without a cash register calculating it for them. I supervised teenage volunteers operating a canteen at the little league park one summer. We had no cash register, just a cash box. They made so many mistakes trying to count out change that we had to have an after-hours practice session for them. Mind boggling. ---
**Author:** ![cochrane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cochrane/32/10441_2.png) [@cochrane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cochrane)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2014, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803/40 "2014-12-22T18:03:29Z")
> [@stillownedbysetters](#): > > I’m surprised no one has yet mentioned that kids no longer know how to make change without a cash register calculating it for them. > > I supervised teenage volunteers operating a canteen at the little league park one summer. We had no cash register, just a cash box. They made so many mistakes trying to count out change that we had to have an after-hours practice session for them. > > Mind boggling. This had been true for a long time. When I worked in fast food 20 years ago, kids couldn’t make change then, either. So if today’s kids can’t make change, it’s because their parents didn’t know how to. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-you-assumed-your-kids-knew/707803.md?page=3)