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?

I never knew there was a ' non members request ' page, and that the Op has paid £30 just to write this thread.

As one can join for free ( and accept cookies etc. ) why pay £30 for one thread ?

Wiring a plug is a good example though. I used this knowledge ONCE. Later on, it became unnecessary.

I had cooking and sewing and I can't do either...

When and what else should go to make time? I agree these kids need support but I'm not sure school is the answer.

Parents have 40 hours a week with their kids to show them these things. Many of them are daily or weekly practical tasks which benefit from actually doing them and repeating it. School can't replicate that. It's why even though they do actually touch on quite a bit if this, eg finances, no one remembers because it's a one off lesson out of context.

I think we can see why their kid didn't get any financial guidance at home.

With respect, this is stuff that I learned through a mixture of my parents, being around older friends who had bought property, parents taking me to mechanical/historical sites/museums the much mocked stately homes. I left home at 17, was working more or less full time from 15 but went to college, got A levels and went to university but worked more or less full time throughout that.

Young people now are infantilised, thought to be too fragile, vulnerable, stressed, anxious to either do adulting or to take in information about life.

My dad was an expert at DIY, in those days you did your own plumbing, electrics, building things, now everything is overregulated so you get someone in, darent touch the gas pipes or plumbing or electrics so no one learns. Plugs are impossible to change these days as a stupid example. I learnt a lot about physics, household things, diy, mechanics and engineering from him.

So that's not part of the school curriculum and is something parents should be teaching their children. Surprising it took you until they were 19 to realise you never taught them this stuff.

They should absolutely be teaching these things in school, some parents won’t have the skills themselves to teach these things, most of us aren’t fully aware of all the ins and outs of these things so it would be a great, informative class.

As most young people will be living at home until at least their late twenties these days, covering how to get a mortgage at 14 seems a bit pointless. I get asked about how to figure out tax - unless you are self employed (and then get an accountant) it has never been an issue I have any experience of!

To be clear, my 11 year old knows all this. This is on you.

Yes this is included under the Work pillar - Your Payslip, Tax Code and Pension Auto-Enrolment

I think if you manage this well it could be really useful OP.

I agree in principle - ideally it's a home conversation/lesson. Where it's fallen down for us is a lot of parents never got taught this either, so we're patching gaps with half-remembered stuff from 20 years ago. That's part of why there's a fun "quiz your parent" bit in what I'm building — https://www.stuffschooldidntteach.com/ — not to replace parents, more to give both of you a starting point neither of us had.

I’d say that’s unusual to be fair.

I mean if the only thing studied was compound interest and price per pound/kilo and supermarket 'offers' scams that would be a start.

Definitely think it should start at home. In practice though, most parents I know (myself included) are working full time and only get the 10-minute version in when it comes up, usually reactively rather than properly explained. I'm not saying parents can't or won't help, I'm just trying to make life easier for everyone. There are a lot of topics and modules I have identified under 9 pillars - see more here https://www.stuffschooldidntteach.com/

Lots of 11 year olds are in care. Lots of them are being brought up by really ill parents. Tons of other reasons.

Awesome, all covered in what I'm building. Thank you

Sooo. What’s the price? Tell us how it works. Website/app/both?

Interesting. I didn't think of this. Thank you

Why would the OP be the right person to “educate” other peoples kids with their new website or whatever though?

Only just realised when his kid was 19…an adult, that he’d taught them fuck all. Really can’t be that switched on. Stick with MSE if you don’t understand it yourself

Some parents aren't in a position to teach these things. My parents have never owned their own home and never will. My dad probably does more or less understand how a mortgage works, but not in the indepth way that you understand it if you've had one. He was surprised to learn, for example, that DH and I will have paid for our house twice over if we ever manage to pay off the mortgage. He's clever, good at maths, university educated, but he's worked his entire life for a small non-profit that doesn't pay well enough for him to get a mortgage. He has taught us how to get by on an extremely small budget without having to rely on benefits, so he is financially savvy, but he could never have taught us about mortgages.
But my generation and all those coming after mine are fortunate to live in the era of endless information at our fingertips, so I was able to learn, long after I'd left school.

Ideally, life skills are something that parents need to instill from an early age, in an age-appropriate manner.

So for that reason, this idea might be better executed by a parent who managed to accomplish this with their own children, rather than by someone who had an alarming realisation after their child had already reached adulthood, and even now needs other parents to fill them in on what else they might have missed passing on to their children.

Thinking about it..... general knowledge around things like pensions, taxes, debt , the welfare state etc is the type of knowledge that needs to be picked up along the way as children /teens learn about other things.
I mean how can a Victorian novel like one by Charles Dickens be taught without including what society used to have - workhouses, orphanages, children living on the streets, the huge differences between rich/poor etc.
If the historical financial situations are being taught while reading Oliver Twist - then the modern options that are out there need to be taught too.
By the teen years general knowledge about what a mortgage is and how interest on a debt works should be understood on a basic level but then it should be taught in a more formal lesson to clear up any gaps in the knowledge.

There’s a book called something like ‘what they don’t reach in school’

car maintainence
safety for girls
red flags for relationships
signposts to citizens advice etc
warning signs of cancer

I am building an app and looking for feedback from real parents. Why do you think I'm trying to hide something? This board's literally for that reason, so I genuinely don't get your point. On the parenting dig, we've talked about mortgages, she just glazes over the way most teenagers do when a parent explains something rather than a random YouTuber they trust more. That's kind of the actual problem I'm trying to solve, not deny.
On Martin Lewis - I genuinely rate MSE, but it's adult-general and money-only. What I'm building covers renting, work rights, tax, decision-making etc as one structured thing, and includes stuff that's changed recently that even a lot of parents wouldn't know off the top of their head (renting law overhaul this year, for one). Different job to what MSE does, not competing with it