I’d rather not bathe in bleach (From Preston and Leyland Citizen)

I’d rather not bathe in bleach

9:37am Monday 30th March 2009

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This week my daughter made shepherd’s pie at school. The week before she cooked sweet and sour pork, and before that she knocked up a very tasty tuna pasta salad.

I’m very grateful to her teacher for passing on these skills – because all she’s learned from me over the past 12 years has been how to make chocolate Rice Krispie cakes.

I’m not alone – new research reveals a fifth of mothers admit to rarely or never teaching their children to cook.

It’s not the only domestic task I’m failing to pass on to my children. My husband goes crazy because they never wash up.

It’s not that I don’t want them to, but I just don’t trust them not to break things or slice their hands open on a sharp knife.

If it is a toss up between spending eight hours in casualty or doing the it myself, I’d rather roll my sleeves up.

For years I used the excuse that they couldn’t reach the bowl and it was dangerous to stand on a chair, but now there’s no reason why they can’t, and I realise that they should – whatever the consequences.

They don’t make their own beds either, something else that drives my husband mad.

He went to boarding school and was raised on hospital corners.

But I long ago discovered that allowing my daughters to make their own beds is something of a false economy time-wise.

My eldest can do an acceptable job, but still wants me to smooth things out before she retires.

My younger daughter makes a pig’s ear of it, leaving a twisted mass of sheets, blankets and soft toys on top of the mattress.

Every night I have to strip it down completely and re-make it.

They don’t clean the bath because I don’t trust them to fully remove every scrap of Mr Muscle and I’d rather not bathe in bleach.

And they can’t work the washing machine.

Although its only a question of pressing one button, but again I’d rather do it.

“You’re not passing on any essential life skills,” says my husband, who isn’t doing a great job of it himself, but I suppose because I’m at home for half the week I should be drumming a few things into them.

I retaliate with hugely sexist remarks about his failure to teach our children how to change a plug or put up a shelf.

Luckily for me, this month teachers spoke out, saying that children should be taught life skills rather than endless facts and dates.

Hopefully soon there will be a GCSE in vacuuming, a higher national diploma in stacking dishwashers and a PhD in cleaning windows without leaving streaks.

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