Independent learning required

I had a conversation with a young man in KS4 because he was wearing a pair of trainers instead of shoes. I asked him, very politely, where his shoes were, and he told me that they had got very wet and needed cleaning. After he completed his sentence I looked at him in a gesturing fashion in the hope that he might say a little more. Which he did. He said, “Well, my Mum hasn’t got round to cleaning them yet.”     So, I then asked, in what I thought were very restrained tones  “Might there have been another solution to this problem?” He thought for a second or two and then said quite definitely “No, not really, I don’t think she will be able to do them until she finishes work tonight”.