Being a parent, one has a lot of responsibilities to fulfil. One such crucial duty is to teach the right set of values and important life skills to our children. Life skills are defined 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 healthily and productively.
Teaching vital life skills to children is very important to ease the coming situations of their life. But, The basic life skills, if taught at the right time, help an individual to efficiently organise and manage his/her life. Bearing the WHO definition in mind, the Basic Life Skills curriculum offers youth the emotional, social and intellectual tools needed to achieve success in life – on a personal level, and interpersonal level, and within their community and workplaces
Introduction to Life Skills
What do you understand by a Life skill? Well according to World Health Organisation, life skills are defined 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 healthily and productively. Life skills may be directed toward personal actions or actions toward others, as well as toward actions to change the surrounding environment to make it conducive to health.”
In simple words, Life skills are those set of skills that are required to smoothly sustain one’s life. But, Without proper learning of these skills, a person will find it very tough to smoothly conduct the everyday tasks of his/her life.
Good Decision-Making Skills
This is one quality that has a very solid role to play in everyone’s life. If you want your child to be a good decision-maker in his later years then have to teach him the decision-making skills in his initial years only. Making independent choices is an important skill to have so that as your child gets older, they can confidently make decisions. Hence, your child will not be relying on someone else for his life’s decisions. No matter the decisions are as minute as picking up the birthday dress or choosing the best career to pursue, your child will be independent.
Skill of Being Independent
Your child needs to be independent of the very beginning. We, as a parent, always tend to do the tasks for our kids to let the work be done quickly and without any mess. However, this approach is very wrong because it will make your child more or less dependent on you for almost all the tasks. These habits will act as an obstacle in the path of your child becoming a strong and independent adult. And as a parent, I am sure you will never want that to happen. These little habits should better be inculcated in early childhood itself because learning something like this in the later stages becomes a relatively tough task to do. We have the best grasping power when we are younger.
Hygiene Maintenance Skills
Even if your child is a little champ, still you should ask him to practice hygiene. You know, the early you inculcate these habits in your child, the better will be the results. Few basic suggestions for personal hygiene for young children you can give to your child can be getting well dressed, brushing teeth two times a day, washing face frequently, showering everyday, brushing hair regularly and washing clothes properly.
Managing Household chores
This one skill is going to be of utmost importance to your kids. This skills is actually a part of the skill of being independent only. As when your child will be able to manage all the household chores on his/her own, then definately your child will be independent of other’s assistance for these tasks. Also, you can start with the most basic chores which will not just help you out when you are at home but you can also teach your child what is required to keep the house tidy and presentable. You can start by few suggestions like, to help in putting toys away, putting dirty clothes for washing, washing dishes after a meal, help in setting the table for dinner, dust easy to reach places, feed you pet timely, do the vacuum cleaning, make their own bed, help in sweeping and take out the trash.
Cooking skills
Your juniors will now be the new Master chefs. Preparing a meal for themselves is a very exciting and fruitful exercise which is going to be very beneficial in the long term. There are many kid-friendly recipes available to help young children learn basic cooking skills across the web. You can even organise little competitions at your home for your little one and his friends so as to encourage the cooking enthusiasm in your kid.
First Aid skills
This is one skill which can be proved as very essential over the period of time. Anyone, anytime can meet with any sort of accident and hence it is important that your child knows how to do the basic first aid. This will benefit himself and also others too. Teach your kids about what is a first aid kit and where is it usually located in your house. Tell them how to clean a wound using Dettol and how to use bandages. Also, teach them about important emergency numbers like 911.
Good Communication skills
A skill that is inevitable to learn. You cannot simply ignore learning this skill. Stepping into the outside world without good communication skills is like inviting one’s troubles because if you want to succeed in the outside world then you have to be a very communicator. Good communication skills bring good chances of succeeding in one’s career. The parents must make the children learn to effectively communicate starting from their early years only.
Savings
Every child must know how to make little saving out of the money they get. This healthy practice will help the parents to create savings conscious adults. The habit of making savings always pays off well. This habit ensures that one never have to face any kind of financial mis-happenings in his/her life when any difficult circumstance erupts suddenly.
Self – Defense skills
Any unwanted voilent situation can come in front of any person in which a person has no other option than to resort to self defense. Hence, it is very crucial for you to teach your kids about the skills of self defense so that your child may never suffer because of lack of training. You can provide your child with some institute’s physical training or you can simply make your child learn the skill at home with basic support.
Time Management Skills
Your kid should definately learn how to manage his/her time efficiently. This is a skill which is very essential to learn in order to live an organised life in future. If your child doesn’t knows how to manage his/her time then no other achievement can truly be cherished by him.
Benefits of Teaching Life Skills to Children
Children’s are the future of our country and this world, hence it is very important nowadays to give children and students of the modern world life skill education. In this developing world, when workload and competition are getting higher and higher, it is tough for the children to cope with the stress and management of things.
Hence we need to educate them about life skills that can help them to manage themselves. There are various reasons and benefits behind this step. The various benefits and facts which show the importance of showing life skills to children are given below.
Social Benefits
Social benefits involve good social behaviour and social awareness. Education about life skills helps a lot in improving social behaviour and interaction with society. However, the children need to become socially active and maintain a healthy relationship with society.
Health Benefits
Education about life skills plays an important role in providing a healthy life to children. Life skills education tells about both psychological and social factors that lead to the healthy behaviour of children and students. That’s why children need to learn basic life skills.
Educational Benefits
Life skills education introduces the children effective positive impact on the relationships between teachers and pupils and children.
Tips to Improve the Basic Life Skills
Life skills enable you to deal with everyday tasks in the outer world. These skills help you exceed and do better at your work and organize your professional life. That’s why Mastery of life skills requires a determined and dedicated learning technique and awareness so that there will be always scoped for development. We are going to provide you with some basic tips to improve your life skills.
You Always try to surround yourself with positive people and distance yourself from negative people. Positivity plays an important role in anyone’s and everyone’s life. Hence it is critical to gather positivity and positive people around you. Such types of people will not only motivate you but also inspire you to achieve success and perform well.
For improving your life skills, you should always be ready to learn new things and take new opportunities. Hence keep learning, it will help you to grow both professionally and personally. But, Learning makes your mind sharp and improves your abilities to understand better. Reading books, doing workshops, interacting with people helps you to learn better and face new challenges.
A Healthy Lifestyle
A healthy lifestyle is another most important thing to attain in your life. It can help you vigorously for improving your basic life skills. You should add a balanced diet and healthy food to your daily life. It plays a crucial role in our lives. Healthy food is important for our brain and body to function properly both physically and mentally.
Another important tip to improve your basic life skill is to maintain your time management skills. If you want to achieve success and live a healthy and productive lifestyle, then it is very important to manage your time and use it effectively. Also, You should plan your day and set monthly, and weekly targets for yourself. You may not be able to achieve your targets in the start but after some time you’ll be able to complete it effectively.
There are various major components of life skills that are necessary for us to adapt in our daily life. These are important for us and for well being of society. These components helps to maintain our behavioral, psychological, social as well as our physical health.
However, Few of the important components of life skills that may help your child in his everyday life are given below:
Self-Awareness
It is very crucial to have awareness about one’s capabilities, limitations, one’s strengths & weaknesses. Appropriate Self Esteem is important for a good lifestyle. Both Inferiority & Superiority impressions are harmful to a person. That’s why self-awareness is termed an important component of life skills.
Communication
Another important component of life skills. Communication and interaction with the public and society artery important for a working person. For expressing our thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively, proper communication is important.
Critical thinking
A very essential skill to learn so as to live a better life. Critical thinking generally refers to a process of analysis and evaluation of an issue objectively to shape a judgment. It is simply the process of analyzing given facts, observations, and ideas. For the development of critical thinking skills, one can attain meditation and exercises for mental health. It also encourages us to acknowledge generous habits in our daily life.
Decision making
Another important component of life skills in decision-making. Problem-solving skills, leadership quality, teamwork, creativity, emotional intelligence, time management, reasoning skills and organization skills are important for a person to make the right decisions.
Empathy
It refers to awareness and knowledge of other people feelings and emotions. Empathy is another important component of learning life skills and is important for a person. Knowing people around you, concerning about them, having awareness and being service-oriented is important for developing empathy skills.
What are Some Bad Social Skills?
Let’s discuss few bad social skills and the popular causes behind them.
Become more insecure and unconfident about their self-worth.
Become more doubtful about their ability to do well in social situations.
Feel more anxious and worried in social situations.
Miss chances to gain social practice and experience.
Pick up unhelpful social behaviors and beliefs, instead of learning better ones.
5 Popular Books to Learn Life Skills
There are various amazing books written by well-known writers which can help you to improve social skills and can change your lifestyle effectively. These books can greatly help you to change yourself if you want to maintain yourself. Some of the best books are listed below which you can read to improve your social skills
Goodbye to Shy
There are various books which teach us important life lessons and help us to improve our lifestyle. The ‘Goodbye to shy’ is one of those books which will help you to improve your social and community skills.
Also, This book is written by Leil Lowndes and has around 300 pages. But, This book contains eighty-five proven techniques that will help you to overcome your shyness and be a confident person. Therefore, The book received a rating of 3.4 out of 5 by Goodreads and 4.8 out of 5 by Audible.
Surrounded by Idiot
Surrounded by idiots is another amazing book written by Thomas Erikson in 2014. The book is originally written in Swedish. This book is one of the world’s best-selling nonfiction book. It has been translated into more than 40 languages.
The book revolves around recognizing and dealing with different personality types. “Surrounded by Idiots” adopts the colors Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue, respectively, to relate to the four personality types.
How to talk to anyone
‘How to talk to anyone is another book written by Leil Lowndes in 1999. The book is a self-help book which is originally written in English. Over 92% of Google users liked this book. However, The book received a rating of 3.7 out of 5 by Goodreads and 4.4 out of 5 by Audible.
Also, This book can enhance your confidence and improve your personality. It talks about ninety-two little tricks which will help you to achieve success in building good relationships. It is an incredible book for those people who want to gain confidence and improve their lifestyle.
Atomic Habits
“Atomic habits: An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones” by James clear is another amazing book that helps to improve our lifestyle. It also helps us to adopt good habits in our daily life. The book is liked by over 92% of Google users and received a rating of 4.4 out of 5 from Goodreads. It also received a rating of 5 out of 5 from Barnes and Noble.
The book tells us about four steps in which we can break our bad habits and can adopt good habits in our life. It is a great and effective book if you want to change your lifestyle and want to make myself more positive toward life.
The Art of Decision Making
“The art of decision making: how we move from indecision to smart choices” is a great book written by Joseph Bikart which was published in 2019. The book contains 275 pages and received a rating of 3.8 out of 5 from Goodreads. The writer tells about the instincts of decision-making and the psychological reasons behind it.
The book talks about the process of decision-making. So if you want to learn and study the art of decision making then you should give it a chance. It also encourages us to acknowledge generous habits in our daily life.
Hand Book of Life Skills – Download
Frequently Asked Questions.
1- What skills should I make my child learn?
Some basic skill that should surely be embedded in one’s kid can be skill of decision making, preparing basic meal for oneself, time management, money management etc.
2- What are the most crucial core life skills for teens and pre teens?
Mentioned below is a brief list of few core life skills provided by World Health Organization. These are:
Developing the skill of self- awareness
Having empathy
Developing Creative thinking
Having critical thinking
Get the skill of problem solving
Good decision making
Ability to cope with stress
Knowing to cope with emotions
Having healthy interpersonal relationship
Effective communication skills
3- What are some of the drawbacks of not learning life skills?
Few of the drawbacks of not learning the basic life skills include :- they will not be able to carry the basic conversation, they can not stand out in the crowd, they will surely feel left out, their lives will be less manageable and mess – free etc
4- Is it tough to inculcate life skills in a young one?
No, it is not a very tough task to make your child learn the basic life skills. Just be careful that everyday you provide a little chunk of to-do-tasks to your child relating to the learning of life skills.
Parting Words !
As a result of successful testing through the two pilot Youth Houses – in Baku-Binagadi and Mingachevir, the UNICEF-developed Basic Life Skills programme. In parallel, negotiations with the Ministry of Education with regards to the possible inclusion of the BLS programme into the formal education curriculum
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