{"id":33559,"date":"2016-04-17T08:01:57","date_gmt":"2016-04-17T15:01:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/mom-crafts-book-out-of-texty-pearls-of-wisdom-for-new-grads\/"},"modified":"2016-04-17T08:01:57","modified_gmt":"2016-04-17T15:01:57","slug":"mom-crafts-book-out-of-texty-pearls-of-wisdom-for-new-grads","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/life\/mom-crafts-book-out-of-texty-pearls-of-wisdom-for-new-grads\/","title":{"rendered":"Mom crafts book out of texty pearls of wisdom for new grads"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014<\/strong> Becky Blades wrote her oldest daughter a letter after she left home for college offering all the advice and words of wisdom she wished she had dispensed beforehand.<\/p>\n

Her daughter had some advice of her own: Turn the letter into a book. Blades, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, did just that and the result is a nifty, gifty little book titled, \u201cDo Your Laundry or You\u2019ll Die Alone,\u201d out in April from Sourcebooks.<\/p>\n

Blades knows her audience, keeping her pearls mostly text length \u2014 and funny.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re in this short attention span stage of life,\u201d she said in a recent interview. \u201cOur best communications happen in text. It\u2019s kind of that irritating motherly voice that we know and love, but at that stage in life they really don\u2019t like to hear it.\u201d<\/p>\n

So how did it come to pass that kids leave home these days without the most basic survival skills: laundry, mending or the sense to know that good posture is slimming?<\/p>\n

Yes, Millennial and Gen Z Virginia, SPEAK CLEARLY. Enunciate. Articulate. Spit out your gum.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we blame ourselves, or I did. I think it has to do with time and how much they have to do. The other piece is the things that they have to do to fill their time. When we were free range humans, we went looking for things to do and family was kind of that place, and things were just kind of absorbed. Your mom said, \u2018Here, do the laundry, here\u2019s how.\u2019 My oldest was very ambitious and very driven and I gave her a laundry pass. She could hardly get her studies done. We help too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, her youngest is a college sophomore and her older, driven one just graduated from Harvard. And mom just got around to writing the book.<\/p>\n

Blades numbers her bits of advice and inspiration, with 271 in all. She includes seven ruled blank pages at the end for moms and dads to write in their own pearls before handing the book over to their kids.<\/p>\n

It was her oldest daughter\u2019s first day of senior year in high school when Blades realized exactly how much she had let slide.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a whole litany of things. I thought have I ever had the birth control conversation, have I ever talked to her about this or this? What does the time get filled with? It either gets filled with all the social media and things like YouTube. We don\u2019t sit around and tell grandma stories and pass down generational tidbits. We sit down and look at YouTube or say look at this or this on the computer,\u201d Blades said.<\/p>\n

Rather than data-driven bullet points or chapters of soliloquy like so many parenting books are crammed with, Blades offers humor and snark to connect. Consider her No. 8:<\/p>\n

\u201cFriends don\u2019t let friends: drive drunk, text while driving, get discount body art.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wanted to cut to the chase and eliminate much of the noise in talking to teens. How much do they actually hear, anyway?<\/p>\n

No. 202 is a good example: \u201cReinvent yourself as often as you want. Just keep the essence that makes you you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And this less funny but truly important tip in No. 233: \u201cCheck your paycheck. Make sure you know how much you are being paid and what is being taken out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blades leaves no topic uncovered: Buy a sewing kit and learn to use it. Cotton always shrinks so buy big. Wool shrinks when you get it wet, and shrinks some more when you dry it. And, for heaven\u2019s sake, do your laundry regularly. Try every week. Do it before you run out of clean underwear.<\/p>\n

She takes on sex, bullying, common courtesy, etiquette and basic interpersonal skills such as: \u201cLook people in the eye. You\u2019ll discover this is hard to do while looking at your phone\u201d and, \u201cListen. No, but really listen.\u201d<\/p>\n

So are her girls, slightly older now, doing just that? Most of the time, Blades said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was talking a lot about the book before it was done, so they\u2019re really sick of hearing about it,\u201d she said. \u201cTheir dad will always say, \u2018Hey guys, that\u2019s in the book. For cryin\u2019 out loud, it\u2019s in the book.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 Becky Blades wrote her oldest daughter a letter after she left home for college offering all the advice and words of wisdom she wished she had dispensed beforehand. Her daughter had some advice of her own: Turn the letter into a book. Blades, who lives in Kansas City, Missouri, did just that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-33559","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33559","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33559"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33559\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33559"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33559"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33559"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=33559"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}