Teach Knitting?

Both my cousins want me to teach them how to knit. At first I thought this would be fun, sort of evolve into the stitch & bitch my mom and I would go to, what, five nights a week with Tille and her sister? Then one night last week Chris asked me if I'd teach him, said he wanted to try knitting. Out came the scrap yarn and some needles. It didn't go so well. Nor did crocheting when he asked if that would be easier.

He was fighting the process all the way, knitting was almost as if he were trying to joust with the needles, crochet wasn't much better. He got too frustrated and quit. Told him it was a skill that took time to learn, especially knitting. You won't pick it up in one night. I didn't know weather I was going too fast, teaching him to cast on first. Is this what it'll be like with my cousins?

Truth be told, my grandmother taught me to knit when I was probably 8 or 9 years old. I'd run to her or my mom with plastic needles and beg them to cast on 100, 500, 1,000 stitches LOL! I don't exactly remember who or how I learnt the knit stitch but I'd happily sit there knitting 100 stitches worth of garter stitch while my grandmother cooked supper, my mom helping her.

So it's been almost 30 years that I've been knitting and take it for granted that it's easy. I just don't think about it anymore, I do it. My mom preferred crochet over knitting but she knit as well and though she eventually grew to ask me how to do this or that with it, she had the basic knowledge of how to do it down so it was never an issue. It's funny, I sit there with my cable needle and work on this Aran sweater and think how simple it is, anybody could do it. Same with Tumbling Blocks when I was knitting that how easy it was, just dreadfully tedious. I guess I take it for granted and that maybe not everybody can do it? But that still seems like rubbish to me.