Life Skills For Kids

Life Skills For Kids: A Guide To Teach Essential Life Skills To Kids

Life demands everyone to be skillful, so you should be equipped with essential life skills to thrive in life. And the process of learning life skills should be started from early childhood. So here is the list of some essential life skills for kids that they should incorporate into their daily lives.

What do we mean by Life-Skills ?

In simple terms, life skills can be defined as the skills that we need to manage our daily activities with much ease. These are the basic skills that help you to deal with the challenges of life effectively. In our everyday lives, we encounter many problems, so we should be able to cope with those challenges. And life skills teach us the ability to face our daily challenges.

Why is it essential to teach life skills to kids at an early age?

It is very difficult for an adult to change a habit or learn something new but for a kid, it is very easy to learn anything. They are like clay, you can give them any shape you want. They can grasp anything very easily. So it is our responsibility to teach them the basic skills that won’t be difficult for them to learn at young age and it will be helpful for them throughout their life. So it is very essential to teach them from an early age.

And life skills for kids are nothing to be learned from books, these are simple practical life lessons that need to experience and understand their values.

Essential Life Skills You Should Start Teaching Your Kids

Self Control

Controlling yourself is an important life skill that everyone should learn. We should have control over our actions, behavior, emotions, and words. Self-control is something that cannot be achieved in a day. Many times a child goes out of control if they want something very badly. We should discuss with them and explain to them the reason behind our denial. And to teach them self-control we too need to be an example for them. We should not shout or do anything that makes them go out of control.

Communication

These days communication lacks due to excessive use of screens. People text more rather than calling. And this leads to poor communication. If a person doesn’t converse, then he/she will not be able to express their thoughts properly. Communication is one of the basic and major life skills. It is very necessary to talk with your little ones and understand their emotions and thoughts.

Organized

Staying organized makes our life much easier. It is an art that helps us to maintain mental peace. We should teach kids the basics of staying organized. They should understand the effect of staying organized and learn to be organized according to their age.

You may like to read : Age Appropriate Household Chores For Kids

Be Responsible

Our unconditional love for kids sometimes makes them irresponsible. And in life, every individual is responsible for everything they are having in their lives. So we should give some responsibilities to our kids to make them independent and stand straight.

The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence

Denis Waitley

You may like to read : How To Create Healthy Habits For Children

Decision Making

Decision Making is a basic skill of life. The way we make a decision in our life had a great impact on our life. So kids should learn to make the right decision at right time. They should be given choices like a red or green dress to wear or something like chocolate or strawberry. We should make them aware of the consequences of bad decisions too.

Value Of Money

Talking with kids about money and finances will help them to understand the value of money. And they will be better in managing their finances and spending according to that. They should know the fact that money can be earned by working hard and we should value that hard-earned money.

Being Healthy

We always tell our kids to eat healthy fruits, remain healthy but we often forget to teach them why is it necessary to remain healthy. We should teach them the importance of being healthy. Health is the most important wealth for us. They should learn that when they are physically fit and strong they could fight illness and stay stress-free.

Love for nature

Nature has given us everything, if we don’t take care of our mother earth, then we can’t stay happy. We should raise our kids in such a way that they develop a love for nature. Spend time in nature with your kids. Explain to them that we get our shelter, food, clothes, and even oxygen from nature. So it is our duty to take care of them. If they know the importance of nature from an early age then in the future they will never take nature for granted.

Perspective Taking

Not only children, adults too share their own opinions without observing other’s views. But this behavior is not appreciable. We should give our effort to understand other’s perspectives too. The art of understanding a situation from another point of view is termed as perspective-taking. Teach your child to ask the reason if another child is in bad mood. They should learn to understand other’s emotions and problems and hence try to solve them so that they can make others feel better.

Honesty

Kids should not only learn the thought ” Honesty is the best policy”, but they should cultivate the skill of being honest throughout their life, how hard the situation may be. They should know the importance of being honest. Teach them the core value of honesty, it is not only telling truth. Honesty is staying true to yourself also, it will help you to be stress-free.

Strategies Of Teaching Life Skills

I mentioned earlier life skills are nothing to memorize from book. You can teach the basic life skills to your kid by adopting some simple strategies like :

Discussion

Always try to have a discussion with your kids over any topic, this will lead them to know more and more things and help them to deal with any tough circumstances. Encourage them to take an active part in the discussion, this will help them to communicate and express their thoughts clearly.

Role play

Roleplay is the best strategy to teach kids about perspective-taking. When a kid plays the role of another, they get into the character and will know their perspective. They can able to differentiate their ideas from the ideas of the character they are playing. They can understand different situations of different people.

Activity based learning

Activity based learning methodology is more engaging and interesting for kids. Usually, kids get bored listening to our lectures, so it is better if we involve them in some activities they are interested to do and so that they can learn more easily.

Problem solving strategy

Whenever your kid is in a problem, don’t rush to them rather give them some time to find a solution on their own. If needed, help them and encourage them to solve their problem. This will help them to be independent. Studies have shown that a human being who is not able to solve their problems are very much prone to get depressed. So teach your child to solve their problems from an early age.

Involving them in household chores

Assigning some age-appropriate household chores to kids help them to be responsible. This way they can learn the effort of maintaining a home and it will also make them happy as they are contributing towards that. Involving kids also help in the development of planning and time management skills, as they have to finish their chores within time.

Story telling

Story telling is a great way to foster some basic life skills for kids. The words, expression, thoughts a kid use while story telling develop better communication and social skills among them. Story telling enhances creativity, reading, speaking, and listening skills among the kids.