So your child is 17 or 18 and looking at places to go to university. They might be looking to move as far away from home as possible and the whole thing can get a bit stressful. If they have part time work in teen modelling they may be looking to fund part of it themselves, or saving for the famed fresher’s week antics. Let’s look at the practical stuff first. What do you need to buy? If they are self-catering in halls, they’ll need all the kitchen stuff and it’s worth buying reasonable quality pans and knives as they have to last at least three years (provided they don’t get pinched or broken by shared use) and if you buy cheap stuff it never lasts as long.
If your kid can barely boil an egg and if they aren’t keen on the idea of living on pot noodles for three years then the summer holidays before is the time to teach them how to make a handful of standard meals. Teach them about the basic carbs, potatoes and pastas, the best ways to cook them – how to know when they’re cooked, and how to make sauces.
Show them the different cuts of meat in the supermarket, buy a few and run through how to prep them. Something as simple as adding salt to a raw steak instead of cooking one side, turning it and adding salt onto the cooked side will make a difference. Putting salt on raw meat dries it out before its cooked, browning seals in the moisture. It’s not a bad idea to let them cook for themselves, or at least do a weekly shop from the safety of home for a week on their own and have someone to ask when they’re unsure. Teen modelling style diets are popular in print but harder to follow at university where fast food or alcohol will often preside over healthy eating habits. Can they do their own laundry? The number of kids now who don’t know what temperatures to use, what setting to use, even which holder to put the detergent in is absolutely incredible. Teach them what a clean bathroom looks like, and how to keep it that way. Teach them to separate the colours from the whites before they do laundry and also to hang things while they are still damp to minimise creasing. All the things we do automatically aren’t second nature to most kids.
