Teaching life skills

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My step daughter will be going to university next year. She has zero life skills. For example last week she asked me how to cut cheese and she’s never done it before. She doesn’t know how to make a cup of tea and has all meals made for her and delivered to her room. She doesn’t know how to work a washing machine etc. I am encouraging her father to start teaching her some life skills but he thinks she won’t be interested and says she will work it out. I think this is cruel and it would be far kinder to start teaching her so she knows how to do things before she goes to university next year. Any feedback? Experience? Views?

Just my own experience here, when I was 18 I knew how to do these things in that I could cook basic things for myself, put on the odd load of laundry when asked, clean up after myself in the bathroom and kitchen (but not clean them), my parents lost their tea maid when I moved out etc, however I was not at all prepared for the keeping on top of it all.

That first year in self catered halls was so hard! Trying to study, orient myself in a new place and social group and look after myself/space on a budget was very overwhelming. I wish I had taken a gap year to do something low stakes and learn those life skills or had gone into catered halls.

I remember seeing a post somewhere about parents who created a list of skills and they all had to be ticked off by time teen went to uni.
I cant remember what the reward was but I thought it was a brilliant idea.

Are you not... massively put off your partner by the fact that he:
A. Cant be bothered to do parenting
B. Isnt smart enough to understand why it needs to be done

Thats really shocking. Both my kids are nd and despite that are capable of cooking basic things, washing up, putting a clothes wash on and even ironing. I’m a single mum and made sure dd1 was able to feed herself and her younger sibling if I was ill - even if it was a fishfinger sandwich with veg sticks or tinned soup.

Your partner and his ex have chosen not to teach her any of this and it’s suddenly a big job so I would just ask if she’d like to learn a couple of skills like making tea and cooking a basic meal and if she seems keen you can gradually teach her new skills. If she’s really lazy she might not want to learn anything for fear that you start asking her to put the washing on.

if she doesn’t want to learn anything then don’t mention it again, you’ll have done your best - which is more than her useless parents.

Teens who are gormless oafs that can't do a thing for themselves are a thing you read more and more of these days. I'm sorry for this, but I put it down to poor parenting, or at least far too much coddling of children who then end up utterly hopeless at dealing with things as young adults. It's not too late to give her a crash course in basic stuff, though.

lol she’ll be fine. I had a following of private school boys coming to my rooms when they discovered I knew useful things like how to sew on buttons.

Or maybe they were just pretending and they all wanted an excuse to visit me…

Either way - the life skill they learned was that state school girls like NemoNerd know loads of stuff like how to use a tumble drier and if you pick the right state school girl she’ll teach you.

And failing that, there’s a YouTube vid on everything!

My ds can cut cheese. Is there anyone who can't?

Since he finished his a'levels he's been responsible for making two suppers a week,. I have a stack of recipe books, there's the whole internet for ideas. He can read and see what's in the fridge. What else does he need?

I've introduced him to the washing machine, including stripping his bed and washing sheets/duvet covers.

This weekend's new experience is doing a weekly shop. Other things on the list are cleaning a bathroom properly and mending a bike puncture (car-free university).

By September 18th when he leaves for uni, he should be a fully functioning adult. 😁

She will work it out, when she needs to!

I have more optimism on this front than most, as I had a somewhat peculiar and tightly controlled upbringing and was sent out into the world (aka self-catering halls) with very few life skills and very little money either. But, you know what, the first night I was there I managed to cook something, did so again the second night and it just went from there…

I made some errors - thinking that a mix of kidney beans and baked beans on toast would be a nice light lunch was one! - but on the whole I just worked it out. I did get quite underweight while at university, but that was more about shortage of money than not being a good cook! It probably helped that I didn’t have the money for convenience options, so I had to cook, but on the whole I managed. Within a year or two I was a reasonably competent cook and most people regard me as quite domestically competent these days…😊

But I do consciously teach my own teen skills and vocalise why I am doing it, as I am aware that my own haphazard entry into adulthood could have been a lot smoother!

Mine got taught as we went along, we are an all muck in and get it done family... so they both had the rudimentary skills and knowledge, but some things still slip through the cracks. Dd came home with the stick-hoover at the end of the first term... "doesn't work"... it was full, from the dust chamber, right down the stick to the brush head. I suppose it showed she'd used it. 😁