Youth Life Skills
Achievements at school are hugely important but GCSE’s are not the only skills that kids should leave school with. So, what do they need to know and how do you teach this adulting stuff?
The best way to come up with your teens home curriculum is to ask yourself what do you need to do to manage your home?
Can your child/teen/young adult use a hoover, cook a meal, do the weekly shop, manage their income? Could they stay on top of the washing, ironing, cleaning? Can they confidently do their banking, contact the enquiries department for their phone, go to the Optician/dentist/doctors and follow through on the advice they maybe given?
These are life skill that we learnt at some point, helping your child learn them will only help them at some point in their future.
What skills are necessary for them to hold down a job?
They need to manage their time, travel independently, be responsible for the tasks assigned to them, communicate effectively, respectfully, in full sentences, using eye contact with adults, even ones they have not met before. They need to be responsible for their own belongings, they need to stand up for themselves in a respectful manner, they need to show initiative.
One of the most important life skill, in my opinion, is to learn how to live, and I don’t mean breathing in and out or cooking or exercising. I mean they need to learn to LIVE their life rather than just exist; unfortunately, a lot of young people, especially those that move through life glued to their screen, are only existing.
They need to be able to put themselves out there and that means risk.
They need to try, they need to feel ok to fail, they need to give it a go and see what happens.
They need to learn to look up and live in the world with all the 3d people.
Who teaches kids the life skill of managing emotions? Who will show them what to do when someone hurts them, how to communicate with people who let them down? They need to learn to love and love well, just as Jesus loves, with an open hand rather than a closed fist. They need to learn to give of themselves to other people, expose themselves, perhaps become a bit vulnerable
Because that is what it means to be in a family.
School will teach them so much of what they need to live this life but it is for family to teach them the rest; parents, aunts, uncles, grandparents.
Our modern world has isolated people and so our youth feel safe in the isolation of an online community meaning too many of our emerging adults are nervous of being sociable. Let us show them respect, acceptance, real emotion, success, failure, laughter, tears and real, honest love so that they will be happy socialising in the real world.
Let us model living and doing life well, the best way we know how. Be honest with your child and tell them what you want to do and why, perhaps start by speaking to them about what was good in your day today and what was rubbish because then they may be more inclined to speak about theirs. Give them the space to try their new skills and be prepared to happily (not grumpily) mop up behind them because learning a new skill invariably leads to some mistakes now and then. Then, when it is time, to let them to go it alone you can be confident in their abilities.
So if the life skill you want to teach is communicate well to others in your family you would model speaking about your day, successes and failures, then you would ask them about their day with prompts (how was so-and-so, what was the feedback on that homework, was that girl happier today…..), when they roll their eyes at you or give you a one word answer or skulk off muttering ‘my mum is so annoying’ you will just take it on the chin and try again later. And again and again and again! Then one day they will start speaking to their siblings about their day, about what they have been doing, what they are looking forward to tomorrow or dreading next week. It is normal communication which we can do well with people we don’t live with, but too often we forget to bother with the people in our own homes.
Speak to your kids often, even when they are sullen, don’t rely on messaging.
Speak to them well, and not only with requests to do something
Show them what to do
Celebrate with them when they manage to do it. WARNING this celebration may elicit a sarcastic eye roll or comment but that’s ok, it goes with teen territory.
We, the parents, are the first and most important teachers our kids have. Let us not leave it to school to do it all, let us claim our youth back and do it for ourselves.
After all, no one else loves them as much as we do.