Essential Life Skills Every Child Should Know
As a parent, you must teach certain basic life skills to children, including social, interpersonal, coordination, problem-solving, and creative skills. Children who are well-acquainted with these skills may find it easier to make decisions, meet day-to-day challenges, and handle situations better in the absence of elders.
Life skills are to be taught to children from an early age. Parents must make sure that their children learn and practice these skills to grow into successful adults in the future.
What Are Life Skills?
The World Health Organization defines life skills as “a group of psychosocial competencies and interpersonal skills that help people make informed decisions, solve problems, think critically and creatively, communicate effectively, build healthy relationships, empathize with others, and cope with and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner.”
Empowering your children to hone their life skills will help them make logical decisions and learn what to do in different situations and how to do them.
Importance Of Life Skills For Children
Developing life skills is a lifelong process and helps individuals grow, become mature, and achieve success. Building essential life skills is an exercise that helps children develop proper judgment and good habits. Life skills also help develop children’s personalities, talents, and mental and physical abilities. In everyday life, possessing life skills greatly helps children to:
- Find different ways of solving problems.
- Build self-confidence and self-esteem.
- Analyze options.
- Develop a greater sense of self-awareness.
- Appreciate others and build empathy.
- Make better decisions.
- Recognize the impact of their actions.
- Become responsible.
- Improve self-regulation.
- Prevent negative and high-risk behaviours.
Essential Life Skills For Kids To Learn
Here is a long list of essential life skills that parents should help their children acquire.
- Cultivating independence
To let children, build independence, allow them to understand a few things on their own and give them opportunities to do tasks and activities without assistance. This helps build self-confidence and self-esteem and encourages them to do simple tasks without help and be self-reliant. - Decision-making
Making appropriate decisions is an essential life skill that every child should learn and practice from a tender age. For example, allow your child to choose between different types of clothes, toys, food, and games. This will help your child learn the consequences of each decision they make. Guide your child through this process to help them weigh the pros and cons before making any decision. Also, allow them to make mistakes when making decisions and learn through practice. - Self-defence
Self-defence skills will help the child gain self-confidence and inner strength and serve them well in their lives. Self-defence is not just about protecting oneself from physical force. Instead, it includes being proactive to prevent problems and using assertiveness to respond to bullying. It also teaches children how to identify dangerous situations, assess them, and then handle them. - Understanding another person’s perspective
When your child explains some difficult situation that they or their friends encountered, encourage the child to look at the scenario from another person’s perspective. Teach your child the emotional reactions people give out in various situations. This can improve their problem-solving skills and ability to understand people around them. - Talking to strangers
As your little child grows, they will meet different people, including teachers, classmates, bus drivers, and shopkeepers. Teach your child how to talk to strangers and explain themselves. This will help improve their communication and listening skills and make them more sociable. Explain to your child that not all strangers are bad and that they need to be friendly with people, all the while knowing that they need to maintain a safe distance and not be too friendly with everyone either. - Time management
Time management is a skill that helps children in every activity they do. It teaches them to differentiate between important work and urgent work and prioritize their tasks and duties. - Coping with failure
Failure is a part of life, and it helps every individual learn life lessons. Remember that you won’t be there to soothe your child every single time they feel left out or falls short at a task. Make your child understand that failure is a part of the learning process and teach them to embrace their failures. Explain to them that failure doesn’t define a person and that it is how people cope with failures and come out stronger from that that counts. - Critical thinking
Critical thinking is one of the essential skills that every child should learn. Critical thinking helps one analyse and absorb information, compare situations, look at things from different angles, and make inferences. To develop critical thinking in your children, provide them with opportunities to play games that involve critical thinking, allow your child to solve their problems, teach them to reflect upon their responses, ask open-end questions, and encourage them to think in new and different ways. - Facing challenges
Children can develop to become a confident adult if they can learn to tackle new challenges. Therefore, it is important to encourage your child to experiment with new and exciting things. Start by teaching them how to ride a bicycle or climb a tree. Let them pick their own challenges, confront failure, and bounce back from defeat, and continue to try. Involving them in challenges, builds confidence and an attitude of never giving up in the child. - Resilience
Resilience is a vital ability you must teach to your kid. This is taught by not supplying your child with answers constantly however, allowing them the ability to think about the problem, consider the solutions they have and then solve the problem on their own. You must ensure that your child is able enough to be able to adapt to all kinds of situations and types of change. - Management and budgeting of money
Being financially aware is a crucial ability that every person should have. Help your child learn to budget their money and save to secure their future at a young age. Your child could be given the same amount of pocket money every fifteen days, or at least once per month. If your child wants to purchase something costly then encourage them to save the money before buying it. This will help them have a budget in place and save prior to spending and avoid impulse spending. - Hygiene and good health
It is crucial to teach your child about the importance of good health and personal hygiene at a young age. Teach them the importance of brushing their teeth two times every day as well as washing their hands, having a bath, and eating well.
Discuss the various kinds of foods based on the interests of your child. For example, if you child enjoys looking after their hair and nails, speak about foods that are rich in potassium and proteins. If your child enjoys sport and exercise, consider food items that improve the stamina and stability of their body. - Treatment of the wound / First-aid
It’s impossible that you would be with your child all the time. Encourage your child to manage themselves in the event of an emergency, to ensure that your child will not become anxious when seeing a cut be careful and not to overreact. Make sure your child knows where the first aid kit is located and how to treat cuts and injuries. Learn to teach your child how to press the wound with a clean cloth. Hold the wound under tap water, clean it off with mild soap, then apply ointment using the help of a cotton swab. apply gauze, a bandage or tape. - Cooking
Have your child help in the preparation of dinners. You can assign them some tasks for example, cutting up fruits and vegetables and spreading butter or jam onto a slice from bread. Or pouring the chopped vegetables in the bowl of salad. Cooking easy meals and helping with the cooking can help children understand healthy eating habits and will teach them to be self-sufficient. - Doing laundry
Instructing your children on how to clean their laundry will ease the burden on you and help instill responsible habits in them. Young children can assist with placing dirty clothes in the laundry basket. On the other hand, older children will be taught how to utilize washing machines, determine the proper amount of detergent, and hang laundry to dry and fold the clothes. - Gift wrapping
Wrapping presents can aid in developing the child’s imaginative thinking skills as well as aid them in learning various methods of wrapping. You can provide them with paper and tape and request them to wrap gifts for family members or grandparents for special occasions. Gift wrapping is an excellent way to increase your child’s motor abilities and hand-eye coordination. - Gardening
Allow your child to assist you in the garden, and learn about the various kinds of flowers, fruits, and even vegetables. Instruct your children to water their plants frequently, while the older kids can be involved in weeding, painting fence panels and mow under the supervision of a parent. It is also possible to introduce them to fun and exciting gardening ideas or garden design ideas DIY. - Looking after pets
The presence of pets in your home can allow your child to develop empathy, and also learn to be responsible and caring. Children can help clean up the cages, cook meals, take the animals for a walk and even prepare the beds for them. - Digital literacy
Generation X’s children spend a significant amount of time in front of their screens. Therefore, it is crucial to establish a few guidelines to make sure they’re safe in the online world. First, let your child to use the internet responsibly and with a legitimate reason. Then, show them how to utilize internet wisely and safely. - Doing chores and cleaning
Involving children with cleaning tasks can be difficult. Begin by asking them to keep their rooms clean or make their bed and then arrange their tables. It is also possible to request them to help prepare the table for meals or wash up after eating. Doing chores helps children learn their roles and develop independence. - Preparing for event
It is important to let your child prepare on their own. Let them choose the clothes for their day and put it on by their own. Help them clean their teeth and have bath and then comb their hair before going to school. These are the fundamental skills that every child needs to learn at an early age. - Table manners
Teach your child basic table manners, like eating with a knife and fork when eating, washing their hands prior to meals as well as eating food with mouths shut. It is also possible to teach your child to behave in a restaurant and how to make a reservation for food. - Swimming
Swimming is among the most important life skills needed by youngsters. It helps children in a variety of ways both mentally and physically and can help them develop confidence. It is also a great method of teaching youngsters about water safety and increase their endurance. - Utilizing maps
Your child should be guided through the streets of the city. Help them remember the various routes using landmarks. You can also ask your child to guide you back to your home every time you travel to ensure they can remember the exact route. Learn to teach them to read maps and how to use the GPS. - Travelling
It is crucial that your child is aware of the fundamentals of travel. From public transportation to biking, ensure you’re educated on how to travel from one location to the next. For example, they should be taught how to purchase tickets for a metro or bus ticket and also explain which buses or metros will take you to your home.
Life skills for children play a crucial role in their overall development and growth. They help them to succeed in all areas of their lives in the correct manner. Skills for life help children unlock their potential and increase their self-esteem, making them feel more self-sufficient. Making them more adaptable and learning to adapt will also improve their decision-making abilities to be a harmonious member of the world.
So, it is important to consider the teaching of these skills to your child at a younger stage, in a way that they will find entertaining and engaging. Remember that teaching life skills to your child takes dedication, patience, and constant effort.
