Francesca Rudkin: How can we raise more competent kids?

This week I received a letter in the post. It was from my 17-year-old son who lives at home with us and is in his final year of school.  

The address was in the top right hand side of the envelope where the stamp goes, and my name was underneath the address. The writing was tiny and illegible – and my eye sight isn’t that bad.  

It is a miracle this letter, a half-hearted attempt at writing a Mother’s Day card which ended in him jokingly asking for petrol money, actually made it into my letter box.  

It is a reminder of the little things we assume our children can do, but the reality is they have never needed to. Why send a letter when you can email, text, or Insta someone?  

I shouldn’t really worry about this. I can remember a former producer here at Newstalk ZB, aged 25, asking me how she should address an envelope when sending out movie tickets to a listener. I thought she was joking. She was dead serious. Anyway, she’s a superstar at what she does and is killing it in Australia, so I’m not so too worried about my son not knowing his way around an envelope.

However, it did make me think about the fact my son is hoping to head away to university next year, and whether he is ready for solo adulting.   

Many wiser parents than I, tell me teenagers, especially boys, learn to do what they need to do when they have to. So don’t worry about whether they can iron a shirt or change a tyre or knock out a spaghetti bolognaise. They will work it out when they have to.  

But I just can’t quite leave it to chance. I want my children to leave home and love it out there, and be useful and competent.  

Motivating me on my new crusade is data just released by Britain’s Office for National Statistics, which revealed that a third of all men under the age of 35 still live with their parents. The figure for women is less than a quarter. 

Now there are some very real reasons why this is happening. High rents, the difficulty in raising a home deposit, a cost of living crisis, and poor mental health means adults are getting around to adulting later in life. And then, there’s the reality that life is so much easier when you live with someone who might just do your cooking, cleaning and laundry.  

So, it felt like the universe was speaking to me as Mother’s Day approached this year. My son isn’t as useless as the envelope implies – he’s held down a part time job for 18 months, works hard and is a responsible kid – and it’s not like we’ve done everything for our children, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t a whole lot of other little things to start trying to skill him up on to make sure the adulting kicks in a lot earlier than 35. 

LISTEN ABOVE

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.