Tell me my teens aren't the only ones lol

Well DD did know that you can make lemsips with water but she didn't know it was the only option.

Well tell your sister's daughter's friend that then 🤷‍♂️

My other ds (18yo) once answered the door to a John Lewis delivery driver who apologised for scraping my car, and wanted to give his insurance details. DS said it was fine and not to worry 🤦🏻‍♀️. Luckily I came downstairs in time to catch the delivery driver before he drove away. DS said he didn't know what the man was talking about and assumed he was trying to sell something 🙄. (The delivery driver and I did have a laugh about teenagers)

Haha I've also done this in the past five years. I actually measured the space between the oven racks and bought a new casserole dish that fit it! Did not occur to me to move the racks at all, until the new dish arrived and DP asked why I'd got it.

My teenager put the ELECTRIC velvetiser jug in the sink, in a basin of water.

My brother shared digs at uni with a lad who was super intelligent. But his parents had just let him focus on his studies. He was thrown into the deep end so to speak. He couldn’t make a cup of tea and put eggs to boil in an electric kettle. He had to show him how to do basic things. As the oldest of 4 my brother was quite independent.

True but most kids know at 10 -12 that plastic is not for the oven and lemsips are made with hot water right.

Actually there'd be 40+ of us if reactions to my first post on this thread are anything to go by...

I can't actually remember what 15yo DD did earlier this week but, after intervening, I did point out that for someone who is academically intelligent and really good at logic problems, she can make some daft decisions.
Then 11yo DS loves flapjacks and has been helping to make them for years. I had promised him some and then various things happened so I said to him to go ahead and make them whilst I went out to get DD. All would have been fine had he realised that I always use the small glass mixing bowl rather than the small plastic mixing bowl to melt the butter & syrup over the saucepan. It didn't occur to me to specifically tell him that it had to be the glass one. On coming home to a funny smell and a misshapen plastic mixing bowl, I did ask him if he knew that plastic melts to which he said that he did but that I always did it. The key point here was that I didn't do it but as we otherwise use the plastic & glass bowl interchangeably, I can see how he made the mistake that he did.

Oh my God how infuriating.

You and LaPalmaLlama should just start a thread on...my perfect children then

Think about how many "basic" things you know and have learned in your lifetime. We learn by watching and being taught.

If in doubt go for a low blow

My sisters daughters friend did not know how to make a pot noddle or switch the kettle on at the age of 14 not even joking.
Its not cute or funny.

I once nearly microwaved a metal pan.

That was three years ago. I was in my late 30s and DP squawked at me to stop. It was sheer luck I'd never tried it in the two decades previously. I had absolutely no idea metal and microwaves didn't go together, straight As and Oxford and a successful professional life notwithstanding.

We often learn by mimicking, not actually understanding how something works. So when one step of the process isn't as expected, things go wrong.

It strikes me that I don't really know what 90% of the settings on my washing machine do. I just do the same thing on autopilot every time and it works.

Also an intelligent mind is not necessarily a practical mind. I find competence snobs to be very dull people, mostly. Yes you were born with the innate knowledge of how to work household appliances but can you hold an interesting conversation about art.

No there's quite a lot really

Because laughing about your 14 year old swinging on and breaking bannisters because they thought that's what they were for, or your 17 year old deliberatelg cooking shell with egg, or your 18 year old dry swallowing lemsip and boiling milk in a kettle really isn't the flex you think it is

Not cute

Ok, well when she messes up she will be too scared to confide in you.

We left our 17 year old babysitter to put a pizza in the oven for our kids’ dinner. We left everything out and ready for her, plates, tongs, a plastic chopping board and pizza cutter. She put the pizza on top of the plastic chopping board and popped it in the oven. We came home to a right mess. She told us she’d been trying to clean it, but the plastic which had been dripping off the shelves and onto the base of the oven was now rock-solid and impossible to remove.

Nope. Found out about the milk in the kettle thing when I did it at work...😳😵‍💫🤫
Why doesn't it work? It should! 🤔

My ds once needed a piece of black paper for a project so decided to use the printer to print one... 🤦🏻‍♀️😩

But its true.
What as the parenting world come to when young adults are growing up without knowing the simple things.

There's always one

No i think she was raised with common sense.

I was 17 out on my own; working in a bakery; and decorating a cake that had been ordered. I misread the name, though, and a call to the owner ensued after the cake was received. Apparently, Happy Birthday Mango, didn't go over well. Lighten up, Margo. 🫣😂

Exactly, that is the WHOLE point of this thread. That otherwise reasonably competent teens have done completed some everyday task so badly that the parents are just amused as how they could have missed this knowledge gap. It’s not all of these kids not knowing all of these things. It’s one of these kids doing one stupid thing.

That is why it is parents posting funny, one off anecdotes . Rather than begging for help on how to raise their kids.

it’s story time. Sit back. Enjoy. No one was harmed (badly) in the making of this thread x