Shouldn't parents be teaching freshers life skills before university?

[RampantIvy]

I am still on the WIWIKAU Facebook page as DD is a post grad student.

I keep reading posts from parents of freshers students worrying about how their student DC are going to manage cooking, laundry and other life skills.

Isn't it our job to teach them those skills? Why on earth haven't these parents done so?

I admit to challenging one parent in the past about this and got my post deleted 😁

ha ha- you’re right - that was a bad example- but there’s generally a correlation between tariff and % students who don’t commute, presumably because students are more prepared to suck up the expense of halls for higher ranked unis and probably also because there’s a correlation between wealthier families and students at those unis.

Dehumidifiers are not such a bad idea! They all seem to end up drying washing in their rooms. We bought DS one though admittedly that wasn’t until he was in a shared flat in second year.

DD had a friend at Glasgow and the university prioritises halls for non local students as there isn't enough halls accommodation for all freshers.

I’m an advocate for not teaching life skills to your freshers - asking about which setting to use in the circuit laundry, whether you could refreeze defrosted food, was it ok to put food waste in the general bin etc was about the only time DS actually contacted me in the first few weeks. If I had taught him all that stuff beforehand I might never have heard from him!!!

Meh. My eldest knew the basics but they survive. I can recommend ensuring that at least one of the flatmates having worked in a professional kitchen because after 3 years DS is now an excellent cook 😂

I wouldn't say I taught them life skills before uni, but they knew enough. It was funny to hear about their peers though. One put a microwave frozen meal out of its packaging totally into a pan of boiling water. One put tea bags and milk into the kettle.
My youngest got thankyou cards from the cleaning ladies in halls as he kept everything so neat ,making everyone take out bins etc, but mess depresses him. He couldn't believe how much some peers spent on takeaway food when Lidl was a 5 min walk. Poor son obviously been brainwashed by me!

There is a quite a bit of sneeryness in some of these replies. But the quoted post hits the nail on the head, my kids all knew the practical stuff, but the one who struggled was the one who was too rigid to cope with shared accommodation and the lack of scaffolding.
There's also an element on Wiwikau of parents who say boastfully that their kids manage on £30 or whatever a week, but in the same breath say their kids aren't coping, haven't made friends, haven't joined anything. In many unis it costs money to join societies, money to play sport and money to go out with friends. It is helpful to know all these things.

Summer before Uni we did a lesson in basic cooking of at least 5 meals . But really , now they can Google everything, download recipes with shopping lists , so less necessary. Did have a brief chat about being a decent housemate and standing your ground if someone was taking the piss . And added that no matter what they 've done or trouble they think they might be in to tell us and we can deal with pretty much everything.

It starts on here when they want advice on what ‘they’ need to choose as a perfect GCSE choice for the fantasy life in their heads of a human being that isn’t them.

I'm in two different university parent groups and they are really painful. My 4th is going next year and I'm not joining hers. Two of mine are in one uni and the other in a different one. Surely they can work out what tog duvet to buy without having to ask a group. I roll my eyes a lot.

I’m bemused there even is a parents university group! My DD’s both went without me needing too much input beyond money and some lifts

One poor mum was struggling on what colour duvet cover to buy to go with a turquoise carpet.

My DD (21) said that she was amazed in her first year at how many people didn't know how to put a load of washing on, mainly boys, she said! I agree that it's short-sighted to send 18-year-olds off to university without showing them some basic housekeeping skills and it's our job as parents to do that.

Why haven’t they learnt to drive?

God Id be mortified to have a parent drive me to uni on a daily basis although I can’t see how it would work with different peoples timetables.

I went to uni 35 years ago, we were mostly a fairly useless lot. What worked is we had each other and muddled through teaching each other.
Id never done my own washing when I went.

It’s a gradual thing. As they grew up, I taught my DC age appropriate life skills. By the time they went to uni they could cook and clean. My youngest DS is quite bossy but very popular. He soon had the others in his group on a rota. There were six of them, so each of them cooked one night a week and they had a takeaway on the seventh day. My eldest joined a supper club, where they set themselves tasks like cook a three course vegetarian meal, or three courses for a tenner.

@Lemonorzo Yes, you muddle through but that doesn't mean that it's a good thing to send a young adult off to university with no idea how to work a washing machine! My DH had no idea how to cook as his family was traditional, and his Mum only showed his sisters how to cook. That wasn't positive.

I know plenty of successful people who couldn't operate a washing machine at age 18. And tbh even at age 55 when confronted with an unfamiliar washing machine I'm not always sure about what I'm doing, but I don't consider myself a failure as a person.

This stuff tends to work itself through and isn't ever a cause of crashing out. Parents chat about it because it's a way of dealing with all the complex emotions that come up when a child leaves home using nice, familiar, easy to resolve "problems".

What? I’ve heard it all now

They can commute by public transport! My DD absolutely refused lifts to school at 11 and took the public bus with friends across a major city. Deeply pathetic.

I have just read that one.

@Gtfc Of course it doesn't mean that someone's a failure as a person (!), but I don't know why parents wouldn't prepare their teenagers somewhat for self-sufficiency, it seems strange not to tbh. I couldn't understand why my MIL didn't teach DH and his brother any cooking skills, for example, all it meant is that they lived on takeaways and strange messes in pans until they got the hang of it!

Don't read the medical threads 🤣

Fear of the dark is fairly common in adults - more so than you might think. Unlike other phobias it's fairly benign in its effects - sufferers just put a light on, hurts no one. Sometimes as they get older and maybe access therapy they discover it's due to undiagnosed ptsd or ADHD, other times they just go about their business not being in the dark, and nobody cares either way.

@BruFord but they did get the hang of it eventually so where's the harm? I ate some fucking atrocious things as a student (the day when I thought a clove of garlic meant a bulb springs to mind) . I've made other, far worse, mistakes than poor housekeeping since.

Any kid that's going to university aged 18/19 has got parents who have given them enough of a base to get them there. Have a look at the prison/homeless/dysfunctional addict population if you want to see the results of actual failed parenting.