School Failure or Parenting Failure...A Riddle

I’d like to think I’m raising my kids (kid?) to be an independent, functioning adult.

I know this isn’t necessarily true for the twelve year old who still wants to be spoon fed. Ugh. That’s an irritating topic for another day…TOM.

But I’m not much of a cook and so neither of my girls has really learned to cook from me.

I don’t like touching raw meat, so…that’s a problem. I don’t cook with it very often because, well, it’s gross.

We all like our meat as our protein source but it tends to come pre-packaged and pre-cooked because, yeah, raw meat.

Tom does cook chicken occasionally but he does it when we’re gone so the girls think that all you have to do to make dinner is leave the house and when you get home, it’s magically ready.

This is not teaching them anything useful.

I was recently handed an envelope by someone (not one of my children) who wanted that envelope mailed. This person had put the address to which he wanted the mail delivered in the place on the envelope that is typically reserved for the return address.

I looked at him, at the envelope and then back at him and asked where he wanted the envelope mailed. He pointed to the address and said, “Yeah, it needs to be mailed.”

I pointed to the return address and said, “Mail it there?”

He looked at me like I’m an idiot and said, “Yeah.”

Okay, then.

I asked my girls after the incident with the ADULT who didn't know how to address an envelope and both of them knew where the address went. They also knew where the return address went. Alyssa said with distain, "Mom, we learned that in the third grade when we had pen pals."

Okay, then. It is not a school failure here in Edon, Ohio.

I wonder where else I might be failing as a parent, though.