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Students need to learn about laundry and be prepared about pasta
THERE'S no shortage of takers, apparently, for a two-day cookery course called How To Survive Uni Without Mum, being offered by a college in Surrey.
For 175, groups of eight students at a time learn how to make quick and simple pasta dishes, noodles and stir fries, salads and vegetables, a roast chicken supper and sweet treats. This is supplemented by tips on nutrition, shopping, food storage and kitchen hygiene.
Also covered are "essential life skills" – how to clean a bathroom, sew a button on, sort your smalls (yes, really), iron a shirt and basic first aid. Previous young consumers give glowing endorsements.
But – it's hard not to sound critical of other people's parenting here – why would you pay strangers to teach your children the kind of thing they should be learning at home? This is by no means the only pre-university survival course to have sprung up, either.
Bettys Cookery School in Harrogate also runs a two-day Back to Basics cookery course in late August (300), which is proving very popular among youngsters about to fly the nest, teaching them to rustle up beef stew, macaroni cheese and fish goujons with tartare sauce.
It seems laughable, not to say a tad embarrassing, though, to imagine someone else being paid to sit down with your teenager and showing them how to approach a grubby sink with scourer and detergent.
That's not to say my own daughter had much of a clue about anything when she started at university last autumn. She went off with the Ikea student starter kit, a couple of cookbooks and a box of groceries to a self-catering flat with an open-all-hours supermarket around the corner.
She hadn't shown a great deal of interest in cooking before leaving home, but hunger is a great driver. She could knock up a couple of pasta dishes, various salads, fajitas, baked potatoes with different fillings and fairy cakes. She has a great appetite for fruit and isn't particularly into junk food. All this boded well.
The first term was punctuated by a series of texts and emails asking for favourite family recipes – our old friend paella became her signature dish when cooking for her flatmates.
With a few skills learned by osmosis from home and school over the years and use of technology in emergencies, food wasn't the problem. It was laundry that became her biggest bugbear.
At home, clean ironed clothes just appeared in her room as if by magic. Now that she had to do it herself, the approach was a firefighting one. The iron remained untouched, but the crumpled look didn't seem to hinder her socially. She also coped without changing the sheets every week.
We learned that sending kids off to university with a little knowledge of how to eat healthily is essential, but they don't actually need to keep up all the standards set at home. We certainly never did as students. As one friend said, if a window becomes so dirty that they can't see out, then they'll eventually clean it if they want to enjoy
the view.
That's quite a good maxim for the stripped-down, relaxed approach I now think is necessary. There's no point in boring your 18-year-old with lessons about how to clean an oven or make those bathroom tiles glisten. Is that really how you want them to spend their last few weeks living at home, and won't they figure the job out when it becomes necessary?
So what are the real essentials? One mother I know says it boils down to three things: an understanding that credit cards and overdrafts are not free money; a realisation that foods have use-by dates and that knowing how to make Yorkshire pudding is non-negotiable.
Another friend says the most important thing you can teach your child, well before they go to uni, is what one unit of alcohol actually is and give them the confidence to feel okay about calling a halt to drinking evenif others around them are carrying on. Learning to budget for the term ahead and that bail-outs are not automatically on offer is up near the top of the list, too.
One comforting thought is that, even if your child appears inept at many life skills before they leave home, and is resolutely determined not to listen to the tips you lovingly and desperately dish out, they can and do learn from each other. They will share food ideas, information about where to shop cheaply, how to make a fantastic fancy dress outfit for 2 and what to do with an aubergine.
And there is always someone in there who is less tolerant of squalor than the rest. He or she gradually works their magic on messier housemates, helping to send your student child back to you in a more socialised and helpful state.
Or is that a mirage?
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Saturday 11 February 2012
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