Students unprepared for university

[RampantIvy]

I have read such a lot of posts recently on the WIWIKAU Facebook page from parents who are proud of their DC's (usually son's) poor efforts at shopping and cooking and generally looking after themselves.

Why on earth aren't they teaching their DC to cook, go grocery shopping, use a washing machine, wash up and other life skills before they go to university?

I would have thought if you were intelligent enough to attend university, you would be intelligent enough to Google basic life skills. Doesn’t take a genius to work these things out.
No one ever taught me, I started cooking at a young age and taught myself.

Ime they’re much more receptive to their g/fs teaching them domesticity, so I leave it up to them!

Good Lord! What an awful way to bring up your sons.

Do you not read the endless number of threads in other parts of MN where women are preparing to leave husbands/partners who never do housework, and seem to think it's their GF/wife's work? Or f they do some housework see it as "helping" and require huge praise for it?

Way to set up your DS for divorce, it seems to me.

Ime they’re much more receptive to their g/fs teaching them domesticity, so I leave it up to them!
Good Lord! What an awful way to bring up your sons.

Equally someone like my son as I said previously is much more receptive to being shown by his best mate or a girl might be more receptive to being taught by her boyfriend or it could be same sex relationship.

The common factor is that young people listen to their peers more.

Were they cooking the Sunday roast by 3.5 months though?

It's not the lack of life skills but the lack of resilience that gets me on some of the WIWIKAU posts of both young adults AND parents.

This.
The number of posts from parents about when 'they' (as in the parent says "I") have to do X or Y.
I find myself inwardly shouting " You don't - the student does".

I'd say one of the best things you can teach your dc as they are growing up is "This is what is in front of me, how can I resolve it?", and that the option does include speaking to people you don't know, and asking for help, but that it doesn't include getting a parent to sort it out each time.
there are posts on there asking "What coins does the laundry take on X halls on Y campus". Surely anyone intelligent enough to go to university, ought to be able to wander down there and find out. Or ask a flatmate. Or ask a 2nd year. Then look at the app, or think about where they might get the coins from and so forth. It is the micro managing that is so strange to me.

I agree to a point Kite22 Parents micro managing everything does young people no favours. However "ask a 2nd year" isn't an option if you are somewhere like my DS where everyone in the hall is a first year. He got a literally 5 min tour from a 2nd year on the "welcome team" on the day on which he moved in and that was it. He was the first in his flat to venture to the laundry so no help forthcoming there either. There are staff around but bothering them over your washing seems more feeble than phoning home to me. Admittedly I didn't go online trying to find the answer myself, but I did talk him through "what are the options on the dial" and "is there a FAQ section on the app" etc til he figured it out etc.
As I said upthread, I think most of these kind of calls are a symptom of general stress and anxiety about the change in lifestyle, not because they actually can't complete the task. My DS builds his own computers and designs automated systems for fun, so of course he can use a washing machine. But stood facing an unfamiliar task at a time when he is feeling a bit lonely and unhappy as it is he probably thought "I could use a chat with Mum about this". And I'm ok with that. In fact I think a lot of these kind of calls are actually just an excuse to phone home!

I've been in the WIWIKAU group right from the start and can see a dramatic difference in the posts being posted more recently....I added my dd onto group as she is now a mature post grad student and thought she might be able to add some useful info, but she's just incredulous about some of the questions being raised by both parents and students.
It's only a few years since she was a first year but she can't believe how some parents are basically mollycoddling their Uni students ...yes it's a parent's responsibility to advise and encourage their children but it seems some parents feel they have to be there 24/7 and unable to let their students figure stuff out in their own time and , no, it's not essential to have all the comforts of home , including an en suite in order to thrive at Uni

As I read WIWIKAU I’m struck by how there are a lot of young adults struggling with myriad issues, and another group (who often seem to be parents who went to uni themselves) looking down on them, saying it’s fine to live on baked beans/be cold/share a bathroom with a slob character building blahblah

I think two things about this.

1. Times have moved on since the 80s. Expectations re living conditions are greater, and The Internet Has Changed Literally Everything
2. Sneering and judging other people who have less experience of uni than you is unkind. Why be unkind?

Maybe have a look at the impact of the er, pandemic. The social anxiety, the fear of letting go etc etc. A lot has changed in the last 2 years. See posts re this on previous page.

I'm a lecturer and I've come around to being very sympathetic to my students last year and this year being immature for their ages. They effectively spent two years in their rooms rather than out in the world, and I think it's understandable that they're not quite where they should be. They'll get there.

I've also had a ds go through Uni during pandemic so well aware of the issues of anxiety and social issues....

Yes but that’s not what I meant. Going through uni during the pandemic is something different and had its own different issues.

young adults starting uni now had secondary school in the pandemic. It does seem to have created a lot of social anxiety. Teens stuck in their bedrooms at home not socialising at a crucial time in their lives. Not spreading their wings in the usual way. And then starting uni without that normal social teenage development.

Absolutely. I've seen it at school, eating disorders, fear of the unknown, social anxiety.
We absolutely need to factor in that mentally, these 18 year olds are 16.
Our first year secondary kids, for the last two intakes have been like primary kids. They don't seem 11, they seem about 8.
There are more dropping out in the first few weeks of university than ever before, and it's not surprising. Then you see posts like the unpleasant one on WIWIKAU with smug mother (if she's on here, good, I don't care) having a pop because some poor kid didn't know how to use a microwave whilst her PFB was knocking up MasterChef style dinners and it's no wonder some kids are insecure. I do tell my students before they go though, that the brashest, most know it all ones are the ones who are the most desperate to impress! T'is ever thus.

I love cooking now incidentally, but despite my O level Domestic Science Grade B I lived off French Bread Pizza for 3 months. Not because I couldn't cook, but because it was just another "new" thing I didn't want to do at the time.

Luckily DS has always been very food-led and was interested in cooking from his early to mid-teens. He learned quite a bit at home and when he went away to uni he asked for his favourite recipes (mine, not from cookbooks) which I wrote up and emailed to him.
I also showed him how the washing machine worked. It's not brain science.

This.

And Because they learn when they go to uni, so save yourself the effort

Kids will do things when they have to, but not when mum and dad are there to do it for them. They soon learn that if they want to eat, they have to cook, even if "cooking" means preparing beans on toast or a tin of soup.

she can't believe how some parents are basically mollycoddling their Uni students

I am not in that group but I am in the parents' group for my son's university and some of the questions have been quite irritating. But I don't know if it's mollycoddling or parent anxiety, so I just scroll on by.

And there are always the people who don't know how to use a university website to find information and so ask a Facebook group instead. On the one hand it's lazy, but on the other hand you could say asking someone who knows is an efficient use of time!

Goodness only knows op.

Mine went to university able to cook, wash, iron, budget etc. it's called parenting

I agree with all that @MrsAvocet it is sometimes nice to connect in with 'home' - but that particular one was from a while ago, before her dd had moved there.

However "ask a 2nd year" isn't an option if you are somewhere like my DS where everyone in the hall is a first year.
Only thinking of my own dc, who mixed with all years on their sports teams and at CU and at 'sbuject' society and so forth.

I added my dd onto group as she is now a mature post grad student and thought she might be able to add some useful info, but she's just incredulous about some of the questions being raised by both parents and students.

Quite, I've had 2 recent graduates and one current student in the house this Summer (yes, one who started Uni in the depth of covid, in 2020) and they can't believe some of the questions on there. They are comparing with what they are living now (on a current undergrad, on doing a masters and one having just graduated), not comparing with 'a long time ago'.

Because we can't all be as fabulous parents as you clearly are.

Nobody is talking about being a "fabulous parent". People are talking about raising a child with pretty basic level of skills here. How can you have got to 18 without ever having used a kitchen ? We are not talking about people who haven't had parents to look after them here - remember, this thread is asking about the over invested parents, not the neglectful ones.

I like wiwikau but agree some of the parents are a bit much.

Some of the posts make me quite emotional, like when a student is looking for support and total randoms offer their help, not many people would actually put themselves out for someone they don't know.

It seems to me that everything that used to called 'common sense' and was routinely passed on from parents to children in the first 18 years of life, now has to be lauded as an amazing 'life hack' via YouTube and TikTok!

With respect, a lot of Uni websites are badly designed and have poor navigation and virtually worthless "search" functions. They often contain literally hundreds of pages, often not very well linked.

With our DS, when researching Unis, we'd often just do google searches with the uni name and then what we were looking for which usually produced more relevant pages than putting the same search term in the search function of the uni website itself.

It's basic website creation best practice that every page should be available within a couple of clicks from the home page, but often with Uni sites, they're so huge and poorly linked that you go down rabbit holes with 5,10,15 clicks until you find what you want, and then you can't find it again as you only got there by randomly clicking in the first place.

Which of course hasn't always been possible over the past couple of years due to covid where sports and face to face lectures etc simply didn't happen for very long periods of time.

This was also my experience although I am in my 40s. I put my clothes in the drier instead of the washing machine the first time I tried to do my own washing at university, a fellow student (male) kindly showed me what to do. I had never cooked a meal apart from at school, I learned pretty quickly to do a stir fry, pasta etc. It was no problem.

The thing is you should cook with them and get them to do little bits from being small, then when they are at an age when they might not be so receptive there isn't so much to learn or they want to learn themselves.

It doesn't seem to be a new thing though, I had to stop a lad from putting a whole box of powder into a washing machine 28 years ago!