Important Life Skills Your Child Should Learn
When you are raising a child, you want them to be independent. The goal is for them to one day be able to take care of themselves and their own home. To be sure this happens, you should be constantly teaching by example and by your words. The following are some of the important life skills for children to learn.
Basic Planting
A good skill to teach your child is basic planting and growing skills. If they can plant and grow a seedling they will feel a great sense of accomplishment. Many children will learn the basic skill during their early years of school, but you might want to give her a few more lessons when they gets a little older.
First Aid
It is good for every child to learn first aid. They should know how to treat a bee sting, what to do for a deep cut, and how to dress a burn or laceration. Knowing that they know the basic rules of taking care of minor injuries and cuts will give you great peace of mind. Furthermore, teach your child the life skill of knowing when further help is needed. For example, consultation with a doctor or a hospital emergency room visit.
Mental Health is equally important to physical health, if not more. Give your child the tools to advocate for themselves and never make them feel shame when they share their feelings or thoughts.
House Maintenance & Repairs
A good skill to start teaching your child is how to take care of the home. This may include basic cleaning, bigger home repairs and minor repairs. For example, how to clear a clogged sink or toilet, and how to use an auger instead of calling a plumber every time. As well, how to change light bulbs, put new batteries in the smoke detectors, and hammer nails.
Every child should learn the importance of picking up after themselves, general home safety and basic home repairs. Of course, always keep it age appropriate. Click To Tweet
Finances
Being able to make, and stick to, a budget is another extremely important life skill for your child to learn. Paying bills, balancing the checking account, and watching the credit cards for fraudulent activity are a few important money related skills. This particular skill requires patience, basic math, the ability to track well, and to use logical reasoning. Teaching these skills while sitting in front of the banking screen is all well and good but the education actually starts quite differently.
Ask questions that require deeper thinking and play games of all different varieties. Some that come to mind are Monopoly, Chess and Connect Four. Playing board games or online games can each be useful in their own way. Then, of course, playing games that allow for practicing life skills such as grocery games.
The most important thing is to spend time with your child and to explore concepts together.