
Ask HN: What knowledge or skills do you hope your kids to have? - sharps_xp
Just had my first kid, and I&#x27;m thinking about all the things I hope she&#x27;ll learn.<p>Some things I hope she learns:
- physical&#x2F;emotional&#x2F;spiritual&#x2F;mental health all affect each other; live a balanced life
- how to distinguish between things that compound over time and things that don&#x27;t (not money, but relationships, hobbies, skills)
- how to eat well
- how to express oneself
- how to listen
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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.

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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.

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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?

~~~
austincheney
Look at the resources at PMI: [https://www.pmi.org/](https://www.pmi.org/)

The greatest challenge to planning is to train yourself to think in terms of
moving targets and contingincies. It doesn't matter where a thing is right now
or where it will be. What's important is where it can be and working backwards
to the present.

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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.

~~~
dprophecyguy
My perspective was Suffering causes pain, and there is a reason behind it,
either you are weak to handle and take ownership so you want to run away from
it.

Or either you are anxious and don't want something to let go of, embracing the
pain is kind of accepting the situation and deciding to do something about it.

Progress = ( Pain / Suffering ) +_Reflection

Learnt from Ray Dalio, not my original thoughts.

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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

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HenryKissinger
Mathematical skills, to find a job.

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trumbitta2
Critical, independent, thinking

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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.

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

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

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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.

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the_resistence
Critical thinking skills and extreme appreciation for thinking for themselves.

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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.

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

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k0t0n0
Abelity to build Clojure and detmoic.

~~~
k0t0n0
*ability

