Doesn't this just delay learning about responsibility and consequences until later, when the consequences might actually be real? Parents getting this involved in the children's learning seems really, really weird to me.

This is the content I've seen so far, limited to primary school children.

I'm German so my view may not be the prevailing one in the US, but I see my role as including making sure that the kids get a proper education. This includes making sure they are doing their homework and are revising for tests.

The consequence of forgetting (or "forgetting" ;) ) to write down their homework assignments or their books is not a work-free afternoon, an inconsequential negative remark by their teacher or a slightly worse test score (I'd argue that at primary school age consequences have to follow directly; a delayed test score does not register).

The first time it happened, they got a friendly expansion of the expectations. The second time an expression of disappointment. There hasn't been a third time.

Also I was glad they could ask for anything they missed when my girls were still learning the language and were spending most of their class time trying to grasp what they were told in class.

We are talking primary school, when kids don't have their own phone/computer and it is unrelated to taking responsibility and consequences. If my daughter ask me to relay a question/message because she didn't wrote well / forgot a detail, she is actually taking responsibility for it.

There are loads of reasons its useful for parents to communicate which have no bearing whatsoever on the long term psychological health of the child. I feel you might be reading a little too much into the implications of having that channel that simply aren't founded.

Like: My son loses his sun hat. I could make a point about personal responsibility and let him get sunburnt for a few weeks until he saves up his non-existent pocket money to pay for a replacement, or I could just ask if anyone has it and find out that Joe accidentally took it home and that Joe's mum is going to leave it on the fence post at drop-off.

Why is this weird? I can make sure my child faces consequences for this myself. If I don’t get the learning material on time, the consequence is that my child doesn’t learn what they need to, has a slightly harder time keeping up in the next day’s lesson. I don’t want my child’s punishment to be “insert obstacles to learning”.

Also that might not even be an very unpleasant experience for them. In my kid’s school the teacher has plenty of other things to deal with so their practice is generally to have kids do the missed work quickly in the classroom and move on. I’m not sure my child is going to learn much about responsibility that way.

Instead, I take the time to make sure my child is able to get their work done on time. But that costs me time. This is where the consequences and learning responsibility comes in. Because I value my time, and the ways I make my children compensate me for my time when they have been irresponsible is much more memorable what they’d experience being unprepared in school.