I will be at Louisville and PATZ , if you want to have a spirited discussion, please by all means. It will just cost you a Jack n Coke!

So all she needed was the power of nepotism?

Gotcha, the 'hoy poloy are willing to step down off the pedestal enough to tell us everything will be fine living with mom and dad until 30 as long as your spoon is silver enough.

You ever wonder how they felt about that twelve-year post 18 odyssey?

I think you have to accept that we've already perfected child-rearing here on this thread and pinside has moved on to other things.

We are solving one important societal issue at a time here!

The new cats are pretty cool and they seem to like pinball.

You asked a question about making sure kids don’t stay at home in their 20s. My friends who have kids that just graduated college have the kids staying at home. These aren’t lazy kids. These aren’t dumb kids. These are hard working kids who have high value degrees. What is keeping them at home is crippling debt from higher education and a need to save money to hopefully one day make a down payment on a house. In my experience it’s all connected.

He is not going to sell anything that’s for sure. Pulling nails is easier than getting him to talk. I was the same way. I’m a cheap ass for sure. No way I’m spending over 6 dollars on food before supper. My son probably will live in my basement forever. He failed his driving test again.

Are there pinball machines in the basement? Any room for another roommate?

Hard times make strong men. Strong men make good times. Good times makes weak men. Weak men make hard times. I'd say we're in stage 4.

They can do what they want. If they want to "follow their dreams" and choose a job that may or may not pay a living salary, no skin off my back. The jobs/degrees I mentioned are safe bets for a stable living and good job security.

If they don't do what I did, thay doesn't mean they won't be successful. I simply have a better idea of what they can do to be successful versus studying superfluous degrees and hoping that a terrible degree will yield 6 figures right out of the gate.

Practical or written?

It's gotten harder for the median wage earner to own a median house according to the Federal Reserve:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.png?g=1iieA

In 1980 you could purchase a house for roughly 250 weeks of median pay, now it's 360 weeks, not including interest, rent, food, etc.

By my early 20s I was hanging out with friends 24/7 and basically just coming home to sleep or get clean clothes, cut the grass. At 24 I moved in w a girlfriend and my band and split the $400 rent on a rental house with them while earning a pittance doing whatever i was doing at the time.

I don't know anyone that ever moved out at 18 and bought a house or even lived alone in an apartment - you had roommates to help financially. Has that changed?

Also throughout these writings has it occurred that a great deal of the things that were an advantage to you going through this are just not possible for many people.

I don't know the exact numbers but there is a large percentage of the population that simply will not be allowed any type of military service, so just imagine, not only did you not have the GI bill greasing the wheels, you also have a fking medical condition that limits work. Not saying its impossible to succeed but there's just more challenges to "average" people.

If you wrote down just half of the things that you've accomplished in your life at your young age, I would be more worried about you going into your 40's. Hypertension, blood pressure, etc will need to be monitored because stress is a real factor that you will start to feel now.

I’m a little late but here’s my two cents.

Children are programmable in the same way a computer is programmed and they will always employ the skills and habits they were programmed with from their early childhood. This is important to understand because after a certain age they will not be programmable and will be extremely difficult to reprogram. You cannot rely on the public school system to teach them or rather equip them with the tools and the acumen that they need to navigate their lives. That being said here are some
things that should be taught in school that School doesn’t teach:

Or to put it another way, here are 24 reasons American Schools Fail Their Students:

School doesn't teach:

1. How to think critically and reason and how to apply new found knowledge/ practical applications
2. Emotional awareness/ intelligence
3. How to communicate well
• The most dangerous thing you can be is articulate
4. How to manage time
5. How to sell
6. How to negotiate
7. How to face failure
8. How to handle money
9. How To Invest Money
10. Principles of success
• 70% of success is getting out of your own way
11 . How to make an impact
12. How to start a business
13. How Corporations work
14. How to read and understand a financial statement
15. How income tax works
16. The importance of being consistent. *This is Huge*
17. The importance of concentration. Failure is the inability to set the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else.
18. How to find your passion
19. The importance’s of travel
20. * When it comes to family, having experiences is much more important than stuff.
21. Happiness is a consequence of achieving a goal.
22. Success is the continuous progression towards a worthy ideal.
23. The most dangerous threat to success is conformity.
24. Time plus consistency beats everything

How you do anything is how you do everything. (Think Credit Score)
Get addicted to doing better

I took econ and accounting in HS and see it's still on the curriculum. That covers a lot of what you mentioned.
I also don't think it's a teacher's job to fulfill all of these items. Parents have responsibilities too.

Completely agree. If you haven’t been in high school or had a kid in recently, you’d be astounded at the current curriculum most districts offer (at least in PA). My kids are at a severely under funded school district and the amazing curriculum they offer is off the charts. There’s multiple tracks for kids to learn about and get experience with careers in medicine, engineering, computer science, trades, etc. The stuff kids in better funded districts get is even better.

If anyone feels like checking this out. Here’s a summary of our curriculum for the business and law track.

https://basdwpweb.beth.k12.pa.us/programofstudies/career-pathways/business-law-and-finance-pathway/

I think this is one thing lacking in today's kids. In particular, high school and college jobs. So many parents tell their kids "I want you to focus on school, that's your job." However those parents are forgetting that school does not teach work ethic and it does not teach adjusting to a work life balance. Part time jobs while going to school build a lot of life skills.

I don’t know if they do this in CA, but our district has started giving kids a work ethic grade. My kids’ grades are split between a content mastery grade and an effort grade. It’s a new trend that allows employers and colleges identify consistent grit in graduates.

100% accurate. It’s only an American Dream because the 1% is already living it

I think your math is off for this point. Your in state is presumably tuition only for 4 years, maybe allowing for books at some of the least expensive state schools. 300k aligns with top universities as a total cost of attendance (tuition, expenses [books, etc], room and board - all of that is 20k (+/-10%) per year across the board - state or private) for 4 years. You've assigned a 0 cost to housing and feeding children attending an in state school, and they apparently commute without cost too.

People must ask themselves why so many things are so much more expensive than it seems like they ought to be based on the inputs that go into them instead of just asking for the government to pay for them.

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/06/06/against-tulip-subsidies/

Why is housing so expensive? It's not like building materials are expensive, nor is the labor involved particularly esoteric. Artificially limited supply due to legislation. There are similar answers for education and healthcare, just a little more complicated.

Materials are up about 3x what they were. They never fully came back down from their 2021 peak when lumber was $1500/1000 bdf. Every aspect of housing materials and labor is up. Taxes, insurance, interest and diesel are all high. At this point, materials alone cost about $100/sqft. All of those $15/hr minimum wages are forcing much higher wages in construction too. A few years ago, a dump truck and operator was $50/hr. Now it's $100 to $150.

I have a lot of friends in the construction business that are struggling with all of these costs and competing with the dirt-cheap illegal labor on top of it.

huh? Building materials are WAY more expensive now. And the cost of new builds pushes up the existing inventory, especially in areas with limited space. I don't understand why the increased interest rates havent depressed the value of homes by now, but it sure hasn't. My zip code has houses priced at (not sold, mind you) at THREE times what they were in 2019. Everyone is locked in (or you move to the suburbs)

Huge points here, the major companies using illegal labor is a big factor, around here when they build a Walmart or Costco, they force contractors to use illegal labor, then the city gives them free infrastructure, roads and tax breaks, it's completely backwards.
Plus very interesting that nobody here mentions the fact that there is a massive war happening right now and shipping is heavily affected by that. The major grain and raw material producers aren't able to get material to market, causing price increases, this is a bigger issue than domestic politics.
If we made the Amazon's and Walmarts pay their fair share it would be a different world.
B

How would raising taxes on Amazon and Walmart lower the market price of housing?

You greedy Pokemon flipper!

There are very different dynamics out there with many of the 'won't leave the nest' crowds...

- You have some that won't leave the nest because they simply don't know how to.. They don't know how to function independently.

- You have some that won't leave the nest because it's just easier... they know they COULD be doing more, but if nothing is forcing them, why?

- And you of course have those at home because they are still building towards something else, or are pooling resources because separated it just doesn't make sense. This is NOT the same as living at home as a floater.

My kids are all young adults (20-26). Rather than worry about the outside world, politics or whatever, focus on what you can do to build better individuals who can survive and function in whatever world they get dumped into. None of us control what's happening at the Macro level... but we do control what we do at home.

Ultimately what you are trying to do is the best you can for your child to be successful in the situations they have to face. That can be making good choices, that can mean being able to be the one to make it through, that can mean being able to COPE with realities they need to face.

The folks that grew up with less always want their kids to have it better than they had... but too many take that too far to mean sheltering their child from having to face adversity at all.

You'd be amazed at how well your children will stand out among their peers when you give them simple life skills... starting early. Early teens is a great age because they can do things safely and with actual contribution.. and often face actual consequence.

- Teach them to do basic cooking and have them be responsible for getting the family meal together on certain nights of the week. Eventually you move that up where they start helping plan the meals, and learn to shop for them too.

- Teach them how to do laundry and clean their rooms and bathroom. Set the expectation they are to maintain those. Put consequences in place when they don't... consequences directly tied to the activity. Facing no hot water or TP, or clothes disappearing will quickly get them to recognize the work/benefit cycle.

- Get them into activities that force them to socialize with others. Maybe its sports, maybe it's a hobby, maybe it's forcing them to do Band in school. The point is they need to learn to deal with people they do and don't like even when they don't want to. Helps fight the trend to not going outside at all too.

- Get them into activities that teach them how to interact with adults and others. One of the most powerful teaching elements two of my kids had was Pony Club. It's basically like 4H or boy scouts, but for horse life. Why was this significant? Because a significant portion of the philosophy is to teach the kids to be independent and responsible. For their competitions they have to maintain all their equipment and get graded on it and how they operate around the barns. When they get docked for mistakes, the KIDS, not the parents, are the ones that need to go through a challenge process with the judges and present their case, based on the rulebooks. From written challenges, to presenting to a panel of judges. They teach the kids the significance of knowledge, consequence, and how to pursue what they think is right and make compelling, not purely emotional, cases for their cause.

- Adversity can be a learning experience. Don't shelter your child from everything that might be hard. Do not let them live in gluttony.

- Expose them to the value of money and labor. Show them how by doing something yourself, you could save X amount of money, which can then applied to something else. Show them what a mistake costs you and put it in terms they can relate to... how much are you going to miss out on. No one will respect time and money if they've never experienced the burden. Its more than just 'making them save their own money'. Break the notion that money is just free and put things in relatable terms.

- Teach them manners and common courtesies. Make sure they know how to speak to a stranger in a respectful way.

- Teach them to face unknowns or fears. Even simple tasks people don't want to do.. like make a phone call or ask something the question. Make them do it. Make them pickup the phone and call that place to ask the question. Make them go up the store clerk to ask where something is. Make them complete a transaction. Make them pump the gas to the car. Make them change a flat tire.

You're basically trying to make sure they can get experience owning tasks while you can still coach them... and not be the 23yr old who only knows how to order taco bell and can't afford anything because they can't do anything without buying stuff they can't afford.

Hopefully if you are successful your child will be able to function in society, they can take care of themselves, and they can thrive because they will have the internal motivation to be willing to face some un-nice to get what they really want, and the way they take care of themselves will hopefully help them stand out among the crowd.

1984
It was always the women, and above all the young ones, who were the most bigoted adherents of the Party, the swallowers of slogans, the amateur spies and nosers-out of unorthodoxy.

just found this thread and catching up but I wanted to share one secret for anyone with little ones in the house.

--> I kept my Calvin and Hobbes books in their room, JUST out of reach.

I didn't mention them. Didn't force them. Just left them up there, dangling precariously on a shelf. That, plus the "501 facts about pokemon" book I bought our neuro-divergent eldest turned them into lifelong readers.