Kids need to be taught certain life skills from an early age.
With so much for our children to learn in today’s high-tech world, it’s all too easy for them to get overwhelmed and miss out on practical life skills.
Even your cute toddler can begin to learn these vital life lessons listed below.
Do not wait until your kids are teens to teach them valuable life skills.
You can start the lesson at an early age.
Time Management
Every parent who is able to keep the family on track certainly understands the importance of time management. However, it is also very important for our youngsters to start learning time management lessons now.
Not only does teaching younger children how to calculate and say time, keep to a schedule and carry out tasks within a stipulated time help make your days easier, learning this life skill also helps them become masters of the time. That way, they can do everything from preparing for classes and then getting to work on time.
Decision-Making
Making good decisions is a vital life skill every child should begin learning as early as possible.
Begin with basic decisions like a pencil versus a crayon, white socks versus black or toy bikes versus cars. As they grow up and become adolescence, you can now teach them the benefits of good decisions and the disadvantages of bad decisions.
Walk them through the many levels of decision making. Help them spell out and weigh their options, analyse the pros and cons and then let them take the final decision to see how things play out.
How to Handle Failure
Failure is tough. And seeing your kids fail? Even tougher, I know, but as difficult as it is to sit on the sidelines and see our kids make mistakes – failure is full of wonderful lessons and absolutely inevitable.
When you erase their kid’s mistakes like they never happened or prevent them from naturally making mistakes, you might be helping at the moment but ultimately doing more harm than good.
Kids who have never had to deal with failure find themselves unable to cope as adults when a relationship goes sour or a work project goes fails to work out as planned.
Sound Health and Hygiene
No child is ever too young to begin learning about health and hygiene; it least none should be, for their own benefit.
Yes, we encourage them to take a bath, brush their mouth, wash their hands, and change their underwear often, but we forget to school them on the reason for this.
Explain why any action that promotes good health and hygiene are always going to be vital parts of their days.
The quickest way to have them remember this vital life skill is to set up a chart where they can check off each task as they complete it.
And when you can attest to their mastery of the activities, you can now take away the chart and they will mentally go through the checklist throughout the day without you having to remind them from time to time.
Here is a list of things mums need to do for their kids every day
Prepare a Meal
Even the youngest children can learn how to prepare a meal in the kitchen.
Of course, the toddlers should do no more than watch (let’s contain the mess, shall we?) But you can teach your primary school kids how to fix a sandwich and then how to use the microwave, the gas cookers, prepare food from quickies as noodles, to Jollof Rice, beans and soup, as they grow older. It is inevitable that a time or two in the nearest future will call for them to put this skill of taking care of the stomach.
Money Management
Does your kid know how to count? Can he/she understand basic maths? You can take those lessons further and turn them into life skills they can begin using right now.
Here is a list of kiddies savings accounts in Nigeria
As you know, money management is something even adults have trouble with. As soon as your child is able to talk is an awesome time to start teaching them about money, its use, importance and how to manage it so they’ll be better prepared when you start handing them upkeep money or they start earning their own paycheck.
Teach your kids effective money management skills so actions as saving, shopping and spending wisely, come naturally to them.
How To Stand Up For Themselves
While it may be tempting at times, and occasionally necessary for parents to speak up and advocate for their kids, this should be the exception, not the norm.
Rather, embrace opportunities for kids to take the lead, and stand up for themselves. This is one of the great life skills to teach your kids.
These moments will help heighten your kids’ confidence and certainly increase their chances for success as adults.
You can also coach them through tricky situations by painting scenarios and being willing to listen and offering counsel when it’s asked for.
Sometimes kids just need to talk about difficult situations about friends or teachers in order to figure out the solution on their own.
Also, bear in mind that kids watch intently and are taking mental notes of how you advocate for yourself and react to situations generally.
Housekeeping
Sometimes it’s easier for parents to do all of the housekeeping themselves.
It gets worse when there’s a housekeeper or nanny to readily make the chores go away.
It’s a missed opportunity for us to teach our kids how to keep the house clean, which they’ll eventually need to know when they leave for the University and someday run their homes.
Remember the chart game, yes. Start with age-suitable chore charts that feature simple tasks as learning how to make the bed, empty the trash bin, arrange their toys, take dishes to the kitchen after a meal, etc.
Set a daily chores schedule to make housekeeping a part of their routine and help them stick to it.
Laundry
Teaching your children how to wash, fold and organise their laundry is not only a life skill that will help them, it will also help you.
Your young ones can learn a lot by helping you with laundries, such as sorting clothes by color and understanding fabric textures.
As they advance, they can now start putting the clothes in the washing machine to wash.
Primary school children can then learn how to operate the washing machine and estimate how much laundry detergent is needed and in no time, they’ll be handling all of their laundries by themselves; maybe yours too if you want.
Comparison Shopping
Thanks to adulthood, we understand the value of money and the benefit of comparison shopping, which is why in all that you do, you must never fail to share this valuable life skill with your kids.
The next time you go to a store with your youngsters, take your time.
Compare products across brands, take out your phone to search for the item on a variety of shopping sites if you can spare the time.
Show your kids these comparisms and have them give their opinions on the item(s).
Raising kids to be smart shoppers and taking the time to do comparison shopping will help them save money everywhere they go while also making smart decisions on the kinds of products they pick.
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