Teach children life skills part 3

In part 3 on how you can teach children life skills we discuss how your children learn and you save time

The main thing you want to do while you teach your children life skills is to add them to your daily life as it happens, while both of you are home.

You must simply invite your child to help you while you make dinner, go shopping or do the laundry. They need to learn these life skills because when they leave home one day when they are grown up, they will need to be able to do these thing on their own.

I regularly say to my children life is all about learning, not just the work that you have to learn in normal school curriculums, but after school you still learn and every day is a learning opportunity. We never stop learning, maybe from other people, maybe from each other, but learning is a daily thing.

Parents teach by loving and sharing things with their children on a daily basis. They cannot take responsibility for their own lives if we don't show them how to do it and allow them to do it when the time comes. When the day comes that they have to live their own lives it will be easier if you know you taught them these essential life skills and they can handle life "on the outside." You can also read 10 things they won't teach you in school.

Imagine your child goes to college or gets married and they cannot do laundry, cook a simple meal or go to the supermarket and buy within their budget. We have a simple saying in our home and sometimes the kids don't think we are very funny, like when they ask us to help them to cut their meat (simple example) we would say "how is it going to look when you are out of the house and calls me to do it for you - or - what will your wife/husband say one day if she/he has to do it for you. By then it will be too late to start teaching the necessary life skills.

Sadly, if you do too much for your children instead of guiding them on how to do these thing for themselves, they will struggle to be independent. Like the saying, if you give a man a fish he can eat for a day, but if you show a man how to fish, he can eat for a lifetime. You must teach your children how to fish.

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Although not literally meant in the description, I thought this is a good picture for teaching how to fish.

Here are some of the things you can teach your child on the go:

• cooking
• gardening
• cleaning
• laundry
• shop smart
• reading a map while on a road trip
• set the table
• making coffee
• use the phone book
• read the classifieds to find a job

These life skills are much easier to teach if you start when your children are young, like from birth. They learn from you every day. Think about the number of things you do for your child and how many of those things they could be doing for themselves.

Do you pick out the clothes they should wear every day, from the age of three years they can begin to do that for themselves. Sometimes the colors won't exactly match, or they will wear pants that you wanted to be with another top, or even wear boots in summer, but this is the way they learn.

Are you still doing their laundry? Children should have responsibilities to help you with the laundry.

Do you still clean their rooms? If they are old enough to unpack their toys, they are old enough to put it back.

You must ask yourself if you are really helping your child by doing these thing or if you're enabling them to continue depending on you for things they should be learning to do alone.

We as parent teach by showing appropriate behavior or by passing along knowledge and experience.

If you did not read from teach your children life skills part 1, be sure to start there and before you know it, your children will be helping you and you will have taught them the most important in life - the skills to be able to help themselves.

Be sure to stick around for allot more important information on how you can teach your children life skills and share this with your friends. You can go to teach your children life skills part 4 from here.

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Clik here to view.