Jayne Dowle: Home truths for children who need lesson in responsibility

As a result, employers are turning to foreign workers, leaving our own hapless youth on the shelf, the shelf that they won’t be stacking while someone from Poland, more cheerful and enthusiastic, will. And I am pondering because we had what I call a “responsibility episode” yesterday morning.

My son simply cannot keep track of his belongings. At any given time, his school jumper / swimming kit/shin-pads/cricket bat is missing in action. Yesterday, it was the school trainers which had mysteriously disappeared. Did he know where they were? No. Had he left them overnight in the garden, by the trampoline? Dunno. Could he remember when he last wore them? Shrug.

I have learnt many things as a mother, but developing a memory that would astound a Mastermind contestant must be one of the most useful. Fast rewind back to the weekend, Saturday morning, and I remembered that we took said trainers to cricket at Hoylandswaine but he didn’t wear them, preferring to keep his cricket shoes on for lunch at the pub and then the village gala at Thurgoland and then we brought his bag home before nipping up the road to a barbeque at his friend’s house.

See what I mean? Sorry if it’s hard to keep up. The trainers were still in his cricket bag, in his bedroom. Crisis averted.

Jack is almost nine. As he will testify, “responsibility” has become a key word in his vocabulary these past six months or so because he must hear it every day of his life.

I say that at his age, he should be capable of taking responsibility for his personal items and ensuring that they are not left on cricket fields/football pitches/at school/in other people’s gardens. And he knows, because I go on about it enough, that taking responsibility for yourself starts with taking care of the things that belong to you.

The answer to a lost item is not to roll your eyes and say: “Well, I’ll just have to get another one then.” I knocked that out of him – not literally, don’t worry – when we started this Age of Responsibility thing, because I am ashamed to report that it used to be his stock answer.

But, I am pleased to report that despite the trail of abandoned items he still leaves in his wake, we have got the “money/responsibility” matrix well and truly embedded. The way he can make his four pounds pocket money stretch for the week would impress a wartime housewife. He has grasped the concept of saving, and understands that supermarket deals on chocolate are usually cheaper than a splurge at the corner shop.

So I am hoping that should lessons in responsibility find their way on to the school curriculum, Jack will have a head start, for once – although, I can’t for the life of me imagine how you would begin to actually teach it as a concept.

What I would say, as a mother, and as a university lecturer, is that adults should never be afraid of handing over responsibility. Obviously, you don’t want to put anyone in danger – it will be a few years before Jack or his sister and are allowed into town on their own – but I think all too often we are terrified of letting kids do things for themselves.

I know many mothers, for example, who still insist on driving their teenagers to school every morning, and picking them up at 3pm. In most of these cases, there is a perfectly good bus, and a perfectly good pair of teenage legs which could walk or cycle. If a 17-year-old has been ferried about all his life, how on earth is the poor soul going to cope if he has to get himself to work every morning for 9am? To another town or city even?

And, it is regrettable to say, with the cost of higher education soaring, more and more students will end up living at home with their parents. This state of affairs has many downsides, not least of which is the prolonging of adolescence for even longer.

So good luck with that responsibility mission, Mr Duncan Smith. But when you’re scratching your head and getting a load of grief off teachers who already have enough to do thank you very much, it might be worth reminding everyone involved that responsibility begins at home.