Realised this year how much my 19 year old just doesn't know

[davidssdt]

Bit of a random one. My eldest is 19 and it's only this year I've properly clocked how much genuinely useful "adult life" stuff just never gets covered in school - not because teachers don't try, but probably more that there's never actually time carved out for it.
I had to sit down and explain what a mortgage actually is and why an unpaid phone bill can damage your credit file for years, because none of that had ever come up in school. Also had the apprenticeship vs uni conversation recently and realised there's no real structured way for them to weigh that up - it's basically left to them and whoever they last spoke to.
So for full disclosure, I'm actually building something around this (a curriculum site for 16-25s) but not naming it here as I don't want this to read as a plug. I'm genuinely just curious what other parents experience has been around this. What's the thing your teenager had absolutely no clue about until they had to learn the hard way?

Parents job to teach life skills, otherwise why bother having them 🤷‍♀️

Schools teach what they can but life skills are a parents job. I am also gobsmacked that parents think schools do everything. I had a friend doing wa a reception teacher abdxaad constantly got at by parents who sent their children to school still in nappies and thought it was her job to potty train them. I learnt all my life skills from my parents, independence is what parents need to teach.

If he’s reached 19 and doesn’t know this stuff then you have failed as a parent. You just need to take responsibility for catching him up, not building an app.

I’m very confused that you think this stuff is for schools. How do you think they would fit it all in? That’s what parents are for.

I don’t consider any of that school stuff and if my kids reached adulthood without knowing it then that would be on me.

My parents taught me all that stuff over the years.

Expecting life skills to be taught in school ???

that is what families are for -

schools cover academics-

yes, I’m aware they do so much more - safeguarding, health, social issues, mental health issues etc etc

don’t plug your business by saying schools should and don’t teach life skills -

that’s lazy marketing

To people saying parents should be teaching this stuff - well some of them don't or can’t.

Aren’t those children allowed to learn things your children learn?

Are you gate keeping useful life skills?

I've been clear about explaining the contractual aspects of marriage to my kids because I think that comes as a bit of a shock if you aren't aware when you begin to have serious relationships.

ETA I married the boyfriend I had when I was 19, so you should probably make sure your son knows before you embark on your finance product.

We were taught basic budgeting in what used to be called 'domestic science', I actually found it really useful and still use it today (eg pay your bills first especially rent).
My parents were not good money managers, at all, so having someone explain about budgeting and money management was an eye opener and enabled me to navigate early adult life much more successfully than home life prepared me for.

I’ve always thought they should teach about relationships - what’s healthy, what’s toxic, what’s downright abusive. Healthy Boundaries. Absolutely essential stuff but I didn’t learn that until I was too far gone in an abusive marriage sadly.

Is what your building aimed at schools, parents, or the 16-25 year olds?

Schools are meant to cover these things, but it's alongside a several mile long list of other life skills that have been pushed in as well. The bloat means little time to given to most of these types of areas unless a particular teacher or head of PSHE or Maths wants to focus on these topics, so it can be a blink/goof off/miss a class and you miss it/forget it quickly sort of issue. With schools, it'll need to be something that fits in the shoestring budget while also somehow saving time that's already used on the topic. There is a reason banks are coming out with free options that schools are passing on - it's edu-marketing, they don't make money from that but what it's meant to lead towards.

I've three kids in this age bracket, and I'm not sure much aimed at parents beyond realistic expectation is going to do much good. At these ages, we shift to being more coaches/advisors, building on the foundation of what we've built before. I've discussed savings and managing money alongside their pocket money and savings accounts, we talked about pensions, when they started working. My kids have all asked for set and not think about it often options like many adults, many don't want to get into the nitty gritty details, they want someone they trust to lay out a few choices - that's why Martin Lewis's website and similar ones work so well. That sort of thing isn't going to work well for those kind of big decisions like apprentice vs uni - there isn't really a structured approach to those kinds of life choices, just a lot of discussion.

There are things they didn't know that caught me off guard, and they were all small things related to other things we did. For example, I ensured all my kids could touch type, I knew it wasn't taught in school, and started teaching it to them from 8 onward. I still ended up with teenagers I had to teach to do what I thought was basic document formatting and other little IT skills, the sort of things I was either taught back when computers were the new cool things in schools or picked up along the way, but they'd never had to figure out because in school they'd always used applications that did it automatically for them. It blew my then-16 year olds mind that she could download emails after I'd recommended she might want to save some from her school account that was going to close after GCSEs. I've since talked to some Computer Science secondary school teachers and they see similar all the time - it's just presumed that use means they know, which looking back is a bit silly. I mean, many of us work with computers regularly and know people who've done so for 20-30+ years who can use the applications they use regularly just fine, but still call over someone to deal with issues in their settings or where to check for updates. Plenty of people get by like that, and our kids are no different.

Why is it the teachers job to teach your child about mortgage, u paid phone bills etc? Isn't that your job???

Ah shameless plug for your new product 😂

This is for parents to teach. Not teachers. They have enough to cover in the national curriculum.

Why would you wait until they are 16? Kids should be learning this stuff very early on

If you don’t come from the kind of family who does {insert random thing} or you’ve simply not been around people {many foster placements} then you won’t know, and you don’t know what you don’t know.

I agree.

Unlike most of the posters on this thread I am aware that there are people leading more difficult lives outside of my comfortable, educated middle class bubble.

And I think it’s a marvellous idea OP but it can go beyond finances for sure. Mental health, relationships, healthy eating/diet etc, housing. For those saying that’s a parents job do people realise how many young people don’t have that support? As a social worker I know so many young adults who really need that extra leg up but don’t get it. It’s why supported living for that age exists and they live in a home which is a type of foster care for 18-25 where they get support to launch into adult life when they don’t have that from their family for whatever reason. How to make a meal how to budget how to find a rental etc etc.

it’s a fab idea and much needed OP.

it would also be good for loving parents who maybe just don’t have the knowledge themselves - eg about uni cos they’ve never been, or how to rent cos they never have or did it moons ago.

These are things that change though. ISAs are different from one year to the next. Not much point learning about pensions at 16.

Yes, but the list of things that schools should teach because SOME parents can't becomes huge.
I did actually get some cookery lessons, but they were terrible. There's just no way that every life skill can be taught in a 25 hour week in addition to school subjects that must be done at school because parents can't.

They do nowadays, don't they? In personal/social/health whatever?
I'm not sure I agree with it because it's totally subjective, but it is done apparently.

It is true that parents do all life admin and much general knowledge acquisition invisibly now.

When I was 10 I could

• accompany my mum paying cheques in at the bank
• see her writing accounts in a ledger to balance a budget
• pick up the daily newspaper every morning at breakfast and see the headlines even if I didn't understand it or was interested
• see my dad take his bills to the post
• write off with a postal order or cheque to join something or buy something
• see a big physical filing cabinet in the back room of the house, with files in, including the quote for the new kitchen, the handbook for the lawnmower, blah blah, insurance policies, mortgage documents. Then as I got older, I had my own file, with a savings book in, a music certificate maybe, later my GCSE certificates...
• go on holiday with paper travel insurance documents, traveller's cheques or currency, and know we couldn't lose them as they were vital.
• take photos to Boots, hand in the film, get a ticket, come.back 5 days later. Do not lose the ticket or you have lost your photos.

Even though I didn't know what adults did with everything, I knew that being an adult involved having a set of important paperwork, and there were processes for getting it in order. These were the documents required to get things and do things and you were responsible for managing your own things as a adult. All my life I was exposed to the idea that I would need to keep track of some processes and that if you weren't on top of them, maybe you would lose out.

I didn't know how to do a tax return or what tax was, or how to sign a rental contract, or get the best savings rate or a phone contract, or how to keep my money to a budget- but the idea that there was a process for everything was well embedded. So it was never a surprise to me that I would have to learn the lore of every area.

I think this is the missing bit of cultural capital that children now don't see. There is not enough visible friction and they can't see under the hood of adult life so they have no idea what it involves.

Ok OP (if you’re still here?) the woman on Instagram is bec_auseyoumatter.

No judgement, just lots of ‘this is how you do this or that’. She’s awesome with her attitude ❤️.

So some of these things OP can include in his app, and some of them he can include links to places.

Eg there is a different woman on Instagram I follow who cooks using mainly tins. Cheap, easily stored ingredients.

Schools seem teach much more life stuff, and do more actual parenting than in the past. At my kids' primary, they learn about emotions, looking after their bodies, and teachers support with many things they didn't in our day. The difference is kids don't take in as much in general these days. We watched things our parents did, tended to talk to parents more, so picked up on common sense things. Now, even some bright ones don't. Our grandparents often left school at 16 yet moved straight into jobs and relationships. The world's different. Maybe a focus on families doing things together, and talking to people, would be useful (not for everyone, before anyone says they already do this).

What makes you think you are the right person to educate anyone about things you didn't even bothered to teach you own child?

I grew up with another country's education system. The number of people here who learned to wire a plug astounds me!