26th March 2024
Teen Life Skills
I am starting a new series of blog posts aimed at helping parents focus on how they can help prepare their teen for life as a university student or an employee. In each blog I will describe four key skills that help our teens become resilient for their future independent life. I really believe that sons are often not expected to help in domestic tasks and learn valuable skills the way that daughters are. No son should ever complete a three year degree and still have zero cooking skills and a disregard for regularly washing clothes!
In today’s blog Im going to consider four key skills out of a total of sixteen covered over three more blogs. As parents we can give our teenagers chances to develop:
- Time management and planning skills
- Study skills
- Practise at domestic tasks
- Food preparation skills
The Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University has described this stage of a young person’s life as ‘ a vital window of opportunity‘ for building core life skills. This relates to the brain of a teenager being turbo-charged for learning new information. This is a challenge for busy parents who work hard and want to have some enjoyable family time. It is easier to prepare a meal as an adult than to take an amateur cook through the steps and deal with a messy kitchen. But the pay off is immense! My twenty-year old daughter has been cooking since she was fifteen and now she can create meals that she has conjured up without following a recipe. And they are delicious!
So what steps can busy parents take to support a teen in these skill areas?
- Model good examples of managing time and meeting deadlines. When it comes to the family holiday, with the admin and tasks that a trip abroad demand, talk to your teen about each step that you are organising. If you are organised with no last minute panic about renewing a passport or getting vaccinations then this helps set an example to your teenager.
- Study skills involve more than taking notes and prioritising competing demands. Talk to your teen about the environment in their bedroom for their study periods. Are they trying to do homework or revise in a messy room, lying on their bed with multiple screens on? Its essential that they set themselves up for effective study or revision. An uncluttered desk, a comfortable chair and a phone on flight mode (with no other screens on) are much more productive. Compartmentalising study areas from the bedroom is even better. Regular study in a local library or a quiet cafe can be quieter than a house full of family and pets.
- Domestic tasks are often called chores because they don’t inspire joy! But the self-discipline and positive impact of your teen adopting habits around a clean and tidy bedroom are well researched. And learning to do dull jobs to a high standard is one indicator of future success. ‘Effort plus perseverance’ is the key message in a book about building personal grit by Dr Angela Duckworth. She is a world leading researcher in non-IQ competencies. Effort goes a long way to build the character of a successful and happy individual.
- Food preparation skills – a young adult who wants to lead a healthy life needs to know:
- a) the practical skills of cutting and preparing fresh food (and storing it) and
- b) knowledge of what a healthy diet actually looks like. When my daughter’s university friend said that she thought the message of ‘five a day’ was a joke because it was a high number, my daughter was shocked. We regularly eat meals that include six to eight portions of fruit and vegetables at every meal time.
- The ‘lead-in’ time to preparing a teen for the next stage of life can be a number of years. Like in the previous developmental stages it takes sound judgement from a parent to build up a teens’ skill levels gradually. Your patience will be rewarded in the years that follow, I promise!