Back in the day when life was simpler, children didn’t have to deal with as many challenges as they have to today. A lot of things have changed. Before, technology wasn’t in the forefront of our lives and the internet wasn’t in the Internet of Things (IoT).
Today, however, every child has access to the internet. At home, WiFi has become a must-have for all our digital devices. Everyone in the family has a smartphone to communicate with, whether through WhatsApp or on social media. Children as young as toddlers are exposed to the excitement of the smartphone as “digital babysitters” to keep the children quiet while they run their busy lives. Indeed, lives too have gone a lot more hectic, with both parents having to work to keep up family expenses.
Time has become a limited commodity and when there is time to be together, it is again the digital device that will take the forefront. We’ve all seen families sitting together at a restaurant, but instead of interacting with one another, they are interacting with their smartphones.
In the article Alone Together: How Digital Devices have Changed Family Time, the author raises concerns about the influence of technological change on relationships and face-to-face interactions. In fact, many studies have brought this topic up over the last 20 years. At the centre of their discussions is losing the art of conversation, especially within the family, the nucleus of society.
Yet it is this conversation or communication that is crucial for building meaningful relationships and for strengthening bonds. For parents, it is perhaps time to put down that smartphone for some active and reflective listening and talking. Every interaction you have with your child – whether by speaking, by the tone in your voice or look in your eyes or the touch of your hand − is a form of communication. The way you communicate with your child not only teaches them to communicate with others, it shapes their emotional development and how they build relationships later in life.
For children, it is a key life skill, perhaps the most important life skill, that forms the foundation of all steps going forward. Whether it is learning, playing, social interaction, forming connections with others, succeeding in academics and in their careers later in life – everything begins with and revolves around, communication.
Beyond communication, there is another subset of skills that is crucial for children to learn to become successful adults later in life. They include the ability to control their emotions, focus, manage their time, and take on challenges as they come up in life without feeling overwhelmed or defeated.
What are Life Skills?
To get a better picture of life skills, the World Health Organisation (WHO) defines it 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, empathise with others and cope and manage their lives in a healthy and productive manner”.
In short, life skills are the emotional, social and intellectual tools your child will need to be future-ready to handle the world they will inherit in due time − whether on a personal level, an interpersonal level and within their community and society at large.
Essential Life Skills to Teach your Children Now
As mentioned above, conversation is an essential life skill because communication underscores all steps in life. Children have a need to be understood and to understand what others are saying. Developing strong communication skills will aid your child to express their thoughts better and understand others as well.
However, communication is not just about learning words and how to use them. Children also need to learn interpersonal skills, social interaction, social boundaries and norms such as being polite, showing mutual respect when conversing, and how to use inflections and tone in their voice to communicate their thoughts and spoken words better. This can only be learnt through face-to-face interactions and not through artificial non-personal means such as texting, social media messaging, email and images. It is all the more reason why parents should spend time with their children listening, asking question to prompt communication, responding and showing by example, the proper art of conversation.
2: Cultivating Independence and Self Reliance
We bring children up to someday let them go as individuals in their own right. Building their independence to lead up to that day begins from young. Give them age-appropriate responsibilities and let them learn to do tasks and activities on their own. This will allow them to understand some real life routines that go on in the household and that they can participate in them. It should also tell them that Mummy trusts them to do the “jobs” assigned to them and that they need not be needy or have to cling on to Mummy’s “apron strings” for assistance every step of the way. In the end, fostering independence will help them build self-confidence, self-esteem and self-reliance. Don’t forget to praise and reward when the job is well done.
Depending on the age of your child, some tasks or chores they can do include helping to pair socks, or fold laundry, pick up their own toys, clean up their own messes and so on. Older children can help put clothes in the washing machine, put in the correct amount of detergent and do other chores like sweep the floor, clean up after dinner or even prepare meals and cook.
3: Time Management
Time management is an important life skill in every child’s life. Imagine a child not knowing when to get up and get ready for school, or what time he should do his homework, prepare for his tuition/music/ extracurricular class or even when he should stop watching TV or playing or go to bed. Imagine everything in his life is run on an “as and when” basis. The household schedule would be topsy-turvy!
Teaching young children how to measure time, stay on the task, stay within the time frame, keep to a schedule, differentiate between what’s urgent, what’s important and not so important and prioritise these tasks and duties will help him learn discipline and responsibility.
Learning how to manage time will also provide him structure and routine in his life. Children benefit from structure and routine in the home as it will help them feel secure, safe, loved and included as part of a predictable family environment.
4: Critical Thinking
In the increasingly complex world we live in, children need to be able to do more than just memorise their school books to pass exams or accept everything they are told at face value without properly examining the information. They need to develop critical thinking skills to have the ability to actively and intelligently observe, understand, compare, evaluate and analyse a situation or information or problem, to come up with solutions or interpretations at the conclusion.
It may sound like a tall order to teach a child all of the above when he is only three years old but in reality, all you need to instil these skills is to provide him opportunities that encourage thinking or even thinking out of the box.
To begin, ask him open ended questions such as: Why/ how/ what do you think…, or describe…explain…tell me about, and then continue with follow up questions to keep the conversation and thinking going. It’s also a great way to get to know your child. Encourage thinking in new and different ways, listen to his ideas − for all you know they could be better than the ones you have. Inadvertently, critical thinking will also help develop his creativity and his problem-solving skills.
5: Decision-Making Skills
Teaching a child decision-making skills goes together with applying critical thinking and problem solving skills. If your child is very young, start by giving him opportunities to make simple decisions such as asking him if he would like vanilla or chocolate ice-cream, blue socks or white socks, or playing trains or playing cars.
When he reaches primary school age, you can let him decide on what he would like to wear to his friend’s birthday party or for a family outing or the food he would like to eat at a restaurant.
Ask him questions that will make him think, such as: “Why do you think that’s the best choice?” or “Why do you think this option will work better than the other?”. This will encourage him to think further as to why he arrived at his decision.
You can also include budgeting decisions as to how he would like to spend his pocket money. If he spends his entire weekly allowance in two days, he cannot have extra money and will have to face the consequences of going hungry for the rest of the week. Budgeting decisions will teach him how to budget wisely and this will help him make smart money decisions next time.
6: Money Management Skills
One of the first things we teach our children from a very young age is how to count. We also teach them basic mathematics. We can take these lessons further and turn them into life skills by applying them to real life situations like using money.
Teach your children how to manage their pocket money, how to spend responsibly, how to save and even how to invest and let that money grow for their future.
Since children are given a certain amount of pocket money perhaps weekly or monthly, teach them how to budget so they will have enough to last them for the week or month. If they wish to buy something expensive, tell them to save up their own money to buy it. This will teach them how to budget, save before spending and not indulge in impulsive buying.
Teaching your children about money now and how to manage it will prepare them for the day when they will have to manage their own earnings.
7: Build Resilience
One of the most important life skills we can help our children develop is that of resilience − being able to take on challenges, bounce back from failure or tough times and try again.
Encourage your child to try new and different things and allow reasonable risk such as climbing the monkey bars at a playground, doing the exercises and obstacles at the children’s gyms, learning to swim, riding a bike.
Let your child choose their challenges, face failure, get up and try again. Taking up challenges helps build confidence and a never give up attitude in them.
8: Perspective-Taking
Perspective-taking in childhood is understanding that another person’s thoughts and feelings are different from his own. It teaches a child to be patient with another person, to understand another person’s experience, to know what the other person wants and what might help those in need. In developmental psychology, this is a social life skill.
However, thinking about another’s point of view or understanding another’s feelings (also called empathy) doesn’t come naturally to most children but it can be developed. When you are reading a story book to a child, discuss the character’s feelings and motivations. You can ask: “I wonder why the cat didn’t like the little red hen?” This will prompt the child to think of the cat’s feelings. You can also make observations about how others are feeling. For example: “Aliff is really sad he didn’t get his turn at the game. I wonder what we can do to help him feel better.”
9: Digital Literacy
Many children from as young as the age of five are taking coding classes these days and there’s a reason. The digital age is here. We’re in the midst of the Fourth Industrial Revolution where Artificial Intelligence (AI), Cloud Technology, the Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, Web3, quantum computing and other still-to-emerge technologies are revolutionising the way we live our lives.
Digital literacy can be defined as the ability to safely, responsibly, creatively and effectively use technology to communicate, access, collect, integrate and evaluate information.
Having digital literacy may not sound like the usual life skill but equipping children with the knowledge of using these technologies from an early age is one of the most important skills a child should acquire for the benefit of their future.
It has been said that 90% of all future jobs will be digital. Although schools have computer classes, it is not enough to equip them with the competencies they will require. Needless to say, children who have digital literacy will have more career possibilities.