ARE YOU READY TO BE INDEPENDENT?

Angela Rowlands recently tested her teenage children's ability to do basic household jobs in the house. When Angela and her husband Ben went to Spain for a few weeks' holiday on the Costa Brava, their son Mark, aged 18, and daughter Frances, aged 16, stayed at home to look after the house. The parents wanted to see how Mark and Frances would manage in the house on their own.

So when thеy left the house, they did not tell the children that they had prepared a few tests for them. “We took the plug off the microwave and took out some good light bulbs and put in light bulbs that did not work. We also made sure that there were other problems in the house: with an Italian coffee machine and one of the taps in the bathroom,” says Dr Rowlands.

When Dr Rowlands returned from her holiday, she found, as she had expected, that her children had failed the independence test. Mark and Frances had asked an electrician to change the plug on the microwave and to change the light bulbs. They also paid a specialist for repairing the bathroom tap. When they saw that the coffee maker was broken, they went to buy a new one. They even did not think to look for the missing part in the cupboard.

Dr Rowlands was not surprised by the results of her experiment. “A lot of 27 young people today are not able to solve simple problems in the house,” she says. “They often throw things away when they are broken. This is wrong because it shows that young people do not understand how things work or are made. It can also be very expensive because you have to pay other people to do the work for you.”

But repairing broken things is only part of the problem. A lot of young people cannot cook at all. If there is no readymade meal in the fridge, or if there is nothing to warm up in the microwave, then there is no food. This can cause health problems.

The truth is that many young people do not want to learn basic household skills as they find them boring. Though, if people want to be prepared for independent life, they should learn how to do simple jobs about the house.

1 a plug [plʌɡ] штепсельная вилка / штэпсельная вілка

2 a light bulb [ˈlaɪt ˌbʌlb] лампочка / лямпачка

3 a tap [tæp] кран / кран