I think that I am going to disagree with the prevailing attitude here regarding "teach them early, teach them right". I say, wait until both child and teacher are ready.

I see little to no benefit in teaching a child something before the child is ready. That path leads to frustration. If the teacher is ready before the child is, can the teacher wait a few months or try teaching something simpler to help prepare the child?

I also see little benefit to teaching a child before the *teacher* or parent is ready. A reluctant teacher is seldom a good one. A reluctant parent will give the child mixed signals. If the child is ready before the teacher, maybe giving the child something else to do or finding a different teacher is in order.

How "early" should early be? What is the "right" way to teach a kid? So much depends on the maturity level of the child, her interest in the subject, the teacher's knowledge of the subject, and the teacher's ability to supervise.

BTW, what is a "mini quad"?

So did the husband teach the son right? Did the son learn all about guns before he lost interest? Or was the purpose of the teaching to make the son loose interest?

-Kuovonne

Once again, I find ETS members to be full of it!

Ideas and information, that is. Thank you all for your tips and suggestions. Please keep em coming. Mahalo.

Susan,

We try to let our kids try things (not all things!) for themselves and to learn from experience. We do try hard not to be stupid about it and to let them have their experiences in a supervised and controlled environment. Sometimes kids, and adults too, don't know if they will like or dislike something until they try it.

For example, we took both of our girls to the beach when they were about a month old. The older one liked everything about it, the little one only liked playing in the sand. When they were two months old, we took them to the pool to dunk them underwater. The older one loved it and couldn't get enough and the younger one hated it. When the older one was three, I let her have a taste of soda and she hated it. Her sister will get a taste next year. Scary part is I think she will like it. Obviously, some things will be taboo, but we still talk about it.

Kuovonne,

I had forgotten about the bag decorating part. My wife and daughters have done that before and really enjoyed it, as well as some of the other moms and keikis. So we might just have to incorporate that in. I did remember the bandanas. I was thinking of plain orange ones like the ones my daughters have and having them brightly deocrate them too. ID card on the back of a family picture, check. And the aloksak is like a zip lock bag on steriods.

Mini-quads are to ATVs what minibikes are to dirtbikes. They are overpowered, underweight, top heavy, and just flat out scary. They are fine if properly supervised, but the can't do what a full sized ATV can in terms of climbing or handling, and if the parent or expedition head isn't watching, helmet or not, there is going to be sorrow.

They'd be fine if the lowered the power and upped the weight at or below the axels, but until they do, I shudder every time I see one. I'd much rather see a kid on a minibike- those won't roll over you, just tip over, if you dump them on a hill, and they don't have the power.

As for teaching someone to shoot, if you are doing it to convice them not to shoot, you're doing it wrong, and for wrong reasons. As for teaching early, I would say you can't be too early with the safety lesson (stop, don't touch, get an adult), but you can weight to teach them to shoot. Me, I can't imagine choosing to ride a bike than be on the range, that's just abnormal to me, but to each thier own.

The people in this forum might be more observant of their kids than the norm. But from what I've seen, most parents seem to be WAAAAY behind their kids, if they pay any attention to them at all. They don't see what they don't want to see. And what they don't want to see is their kids' interest in items that can be dangerous. There are lots of parents who haven't even noticed that their kids can't READ by the time they're 12 -- how observant is THAT? <img src="/images/graemlins/mad.gif" alt="" />

The majority of parents just say "Don't", and blithely go on their way, assuming that the kid is actually going to obey. These are the same kids who stick beans up their nose after being told not to do it, get steak knives out of the drawer after being told not to do it, and investigate their friends' parents' guns because they're not locked up after being told not to do it.

I really do believe that most parents' common sense (if they ever had any) goes right down the toilet at conception.

The guy who took his son shooting (son was about 8) did so because he himself was interested in shooting, he had multiple guns in the house, and if his son got his hands on a gun ANYWHERE, ANYTIME, he wanted him to know how to handle it.

It's the "anywhere, anytime" part that tends to be the (literal) killer. Dumb parents think 1) their kids will do as they're told (yeah, sure!), and 2) they will always be around when the kid puts himself into danger. Both are incredible arrogant, unrealistic and stupid thinking. Come on! These are the same kids who slam the door all summer, leave the door open all winter, play with the hose beside the open window of the new car, and remember parental commands for as much as one-fifth of a second.

A hundred years ago, kids grew up with knives, guns, shearing and crushing equipment and livestock, and knew how to handle all of them. Now, people want to protect their kids from everything, as if they ignore the dangers, they will go away. Instead of preparing them to deal with problems in the future, they restrain them from as much as they can, and when the kid breaks loose or turns 18, they have no conception of how to deal with anything. All their learning has been from what they've seen on TV and in movies, and we all know how realistic THAT is. (Everyone knows that a movie bullet that misses its target downtown evaporates, right?)

These are the kids who don't even know how to tell if a gun is loaded! They will pull a trigger just to pull a trigger, and it doesn't even pass through their mind that their friend is standing in front of them. They don't know that a clip can be removed from an automatic and still have a bullet ready to go. They don't know that many people who own revolvers leave the hammer resting on an empty cylinder. If the gun doesn't fire, they look down the barrel and pull the trigger again to see what's wrong.

I live in the stupid capital of America, and I see it all the time.

Sue

Bravo! <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Or if you can pry Gretchen's secrets for vest making from her... <img src="/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

While I think the surveyor's tape sounds like a good idea, remember the children in question are quite young. Tying surveyor's tape is a complicated task for little fingers and may not be possible. An alternate method of securing the tape would be needed most likely...a kid accessible one.

I disagree.
One of the first tasks a child learns is how to tie a knot, i.e. I can tie my shoes. A child that is to young to tie there own shoes will likely not be old enough to remember much of anything if or when they get lost. At that age they should never be alone in the outdoors or have an opportunity to stray from camp
It is aslo likely some young ones will wander off and likely they will not have a survival kit or know what to do with one either even if they had one.

Okay, I'll agree with you there. It's best to teach a child at least minimum safety lessons early when encountering dangerous items. I was more thinking along the lines that there's little harm in waiting to teaching them how to *use* the items until everyone is ready.

Whether a parent (or someone else) should artifically introduce a kid to a potentially dangerous item in order to teach them a safety lesson is another matter (one that I don't want to get into).

-Kuovonne