Essential life skills every parent should start teaching their kids at an early age.

 

The right time for any parent to start teaching their kids some major essential life skills is now.

Every good parent wants to raise their kids right and be there for them. The best and only time for every parent to instill good habits in their children is from the early days of their childhood.

It is the duty of every parent to give their children an insight to how the real world works so when they grow to become adult they would have built the capacity and wisdom to face the hurdles of daily life activities.

In school education some of these virtues are being provided, it’s all theoretical but real education starts at home. Parents have a much bigger role and influence in education than any school or any teacher.

 

While it’s impossible to instill in kids every skill imaginable, there some essential life skills that all parent should teach their kids. By essential skills, I am not just talking about how to ride a bike, wash dishes or play a musical instrument, although these are good skills but this article focusses on essential life skills that will help your child better cope in the world and grow into a responsible, respectful and valuable member of the society.

Teach kids the importance of reading and learning.

Reading and learning –in another word “curiosity” is one of those things that kids actually want to do, like being toilet trained, walking and speaking.  But if you push it too far, you can ruin their enjoyment of it.

Children are excellent observers. Most things that they pick up, they do so by modeling your behavior at home. So if you want your child to be interested in reading, you need to be interested and curious too!

Read to your child.

Read with your child.

Read to set an example.

Let the kids also understand that the more they read and learn, the more they become open your mind to a wide range of possibilities and know all sorts of things that will make them smarter and wiser.

Children should also know learning does not involve reading textbooks only. There are many ways to learn. Encourage your children to be open-minded and receptive to learning from life situations (both positive and negative), other people who are good role models, as well as their parents.

 

How to make Decision

Making good decisions is an essential life skill every child should begin learning at a young age.

Begin with basic decisions like chocolate versus vanilla ice cream, blue socks or white socks, playing trains or playing cars. When kids reach elementary school age they can begin learning about the rewards of good decisions and the consequences of bad decisions.

Walk them through the many steps of decision making. Help them weigh their options, evaluate the pros and cons of that decision and then let them make the final decision to see how things play out.

How to manage time.

Every parent knows how important time management is to keep your family on track. But it’s also important for kids to start learning time management lessons now.

Not only does teaching younger children how to measure time, stay on task and keep to a schedule help make your days easier, learning this life skill also helps them become masters of time so they can do everything from get up on schedule to ​someday getting to work on time.

Tell them what is important in terms of prioritizing the tasks that need to be done first. Teach them how to make a to-do list on a daily basis, placing the most important task at the top.

Tell them to tick off any item that is complete, this way they will feel a sense of accomplishment and it will motivate them to tick off more items on their list.

Also, make sure to reward them when they come to you to tell you the great news about having completed their tasks or finished the whole to-do list.

This habit of writing their tasks down, prioritizing them, maybe help them figure out how long a certain task should take and see how long it takes them; challenge them, and see how they jump to fulfill the tasks assigned to them especially when they know that there is a reward waiting for them at the end of the day.

Teach them about money management.

 

Financial literacy for kids is as important as it is for adults. Our childhood is the foundation of that structure we are going to create in our adulthood.

Help them distinguish between needs, want, and desires in a light-hearted manner using the correct analogy.

make it a duty to talk to your kids about money as often as you can including how money works, how we get money (from working and investing), how to shop for bargains, money values, etc. and if they’re young, read books to them about money.

Let them have an allowance so they can practice with money. Let them make mistakes with it now rather than when they’re adults (the stakes are lower when they’re kids)

Money management is something adults have trouble with. Now’s the perfect time to start teaching your children about money.

Resilience & Adaptability

Another essential life skills would be to teach your child to be resilient. How you can do this is by ensuring you don’t feed your child with solutions all the time.

Empower your child to solve problems by themselves so that they’re ready to face challenges as and when they come. They must learn resilience to adapt to different changes and different environments.

Make sure you have an open channel of communication to understand what your child is going through and help them out – and of course, as a parent, you too must model resilient behavior at home!