It’s never too early to start teaching your children essential life skills. In fact, the earlier you start, the easier it will be for them to learn and the better the lessons will stick. Today, we’ve rounded up 17 essential soft and hard skills that every child can start learning as soon as they’re old enough to understand.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking teaches kids how to think rationally and figure out the logical connection between two or more ideas. Learning this starts in childhood and continues into adulthood and beyond.
Divergent Thinking
Divergent thinking is different from critical thinking and involves creating many different ideas by exploring all possible solutions. This encourages original over conventional thought and teaches your kids to be creative problem solvers.
Perspective Taking
When they are young, kids may struggle to take other people’s perspectives and have empathy for them. While some of this will develop with time as they move through the stages of childhood, it’s never too early to prompt them to consider other people’s thoughts and feelings.
Self-Motivation
Little kids often do things just because adults say they should. Work with them to encourage open-ended play and other scenarios where they make the choices and decide what they want to do and why.
Goal Setting
Setting goals, and working out a plan to achieve those goals, is an essential life skill. Kids should start with simple and immediate goals: making a fingerpainting of the family dog, saving up enough allowance to get a candy bar, etc. and then move on to bigger, more complex goals that will take time to achieve.
Decision Making
Making decisions takes practice so get them started young. Begin with simple decisions that you help guide, such as letting them choose between two pairs of toddler girl shoes (vs. all the shoes in their closet). Over time, you can make the choices more and more open-ended until they are making decisions all on their own.
Spending Time Alone
Many kids these days are constantly monitored and overstimulated, so they have no idea how to spend time by themselves or how to rest. Make sure that your kid has a healthy amount of unstructured free time where they can do nothing at will. Much of adulthood consists of scheduling your own free time, so they need to learn how to do it early.
Meal Prep
Even small children can learn how to make a sandwich, and they can shadow you in the kitchen for more complex tasks such as chopping and sauteing. Even if you don’t leave it wholly up to them, getting them involved in meal planning, grocery shopping and cooking will teach them the basics early on.
Time Management
Managing time is one of the most essential life skills, and given how rigid most school schedules are, your kid might not actually learn time management if you don’t help them. Teach them how to measure time, make a schedule and how to estimate how long something will take and they will be set for life.
Health and Hygiene
Every kid should know how to wash their hands, take a bath or shower, brush their teeth, brush their hair, change their underwear and so on and they should know why they need to do all these things. Lots of young kids don’t understand why hygiene is so important, so you might have to explain it to them.
Money Management
Even if giving and receiving change is going the way of the past, your kids still need to know how to budget their money, save for the future and manage a checking account. Since they can’t work yet, consider giving them a small weekly allowance to teach them this money management skill and prepare for the days when they finally start earning a paycheck.
Cleaning the House
Vacuuming, mopping, wiping down cabinets, putting away dishes, sanitizing the bathroom it takes a lot of work to keep a house clean! Kids enjoy being mom and dad’s helper, so ask them to pitch in young and model how to do these chores for them.
Yardwork
Not everyone has a yard, but if you do, you should definitely get your kid involved in outside chores as well as inside chores. Kids can help with pulling weeds, digging holes for plants and other simple tasks. Once they get older, they can help with mowing the lawn, fertilizing the flower beds and other chores that involve machinery or chemicals.
Home Maintenance
Alongside cleaning the house comes occasional home repairs, such as replacing light bulbs, oiling squeaky doors and hanging pictures. Let your kid tag along as your helper for these tasks so they can learn how to do them.
Laundry
If you have kids, you will basically be in a constant state of doing laundry, so it’s only fair to ask them to help with it. Teach them the basics of washing and drying cute dresses for little girls. Soon, they will be able to put in a load on their own before you know it.
Morning and Evening Routines
Older kids should be able to put together the skills on this list to form a morning and evening routine: selecting an outfit, getting dressed and tying their shoes in the morning; washing their face and brushing their teeth at night, etc.
Ordering at Restaurants
You probably order on your kid’s behalf to make things go faster, but this is a great opportunity for them to exercise decision-making and practice a lifelong skill. When you’re at a restaurant that isn’t too packed, let them take the lead and order for themselves so they can feel like a big kid.
It’s never too early to start modelling life skills for your child. Look to this list for inspiration when you’re not sure what life skill to teach them next.
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