There comes a time in every parent’s life where they stumble across a night of zero sleep, their brain ticking like a clock on the fritz as they wonder whether or not they did enough as a parent to set their kid up to be successful in life. This usually happens right before your kid decides to leave home.
You will sit there, staring down the barrel of an emptier nest, panicking that you never did enough to prepare them for college, work and just life in general. Well, to help you panic less and rest assured more, we have pulled together a list of essential life skills your teens will need before they close the front door and wave goodbye from the driver’s seat of their first rust bucket. Think of this as a sort of checklist if you will.
What’s Cooking?
Every teen would love to have takeaway pizza for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but this isn’t exactly ideal. Neither is a life of Ramen noodles. That is why you need to teach your kid the life skill that is a few basic meals that they can fall back on and build off. Something nutritious and delicious.
Money Matters
All that time at school, enduring a life of pop quizzes and exams that are meant to get you the best job possible, and yet not a single class on money management or budgeting. That is why you need to make extra sure you teach your kid how to budget, the dangers of debt and how to make their money stretch further.
On Time
Teenagers are famous for their inability to wake up before 11 am, but being on time is a pretty important skill to have. We’re talking job interviews, doctor’s appointments, dentist check-ups, meeting friends and whatever else. Sure, some places use an appointment reminder to help overcome the pain in the-you-know-where of having people not show up, but it’s a skill that will come in handy. That’s a fact.
Social Skills
Getting a great education is super-important, but having the social skills is on another level. Being able to hold a conversation, communicate with others, work well in a team, talk in a way to get people to listen and inspire with the same veracity as, let’s say, Jon Snow. That starts with basic manners like saying please and thank you and ends with sympathising other people’s opinions. You want to make a great first impression and then deliver from then onward.
Lust Or Love
Just think back to when you were young and foolish for a second. All those romantic pit-stops you made, your vision clouded by ideas of young love and finding the one you were meant to be with while working as a barista in some tiny coffee shack in the midwest. It is a time of euphoria and total heartbreak, and that is why you need to help your child understand the difference between love and lust, and why you need to help them recover from a breakup.