Preparing children for adulthood with good confidence self-reliance and with high self-esteem, is more important. Keep in mind that there is no one right way to raise a child.
Before your child ventures out from home, make sure that they are prepared to live autonomously while having a constructive outcome on the world. Take a second to read this agenda of fundamental abilities your child should learn before stepping into becoming independent.
Commonsense or practical life skills:
1. Manage time. Be a good example and allow your child to manage time and keep setting time frames for small goals so that they learn to manage their time as they grow. Teach your teenager the best way to utilize a schedule and work towards fulfilling a time constraint.
2. Study productively. Your child may certainly be profited from the teachings in school but encourage your child to adopt the habit of reading. Demonstrate how to recognize key concepts in the subject and design self-tests on any given subject.
3. Financial management. The decisions your child makes today will assist with deciding how successful he or she will be during their adulthood. Give them a head start on dealing with money related obligations, by allocating some responsibilities in financial handlings. For example, allowing them to manage and deal with their scholarship or giving them pocket money and allowing them to maintain the expenses responsibly.
4. Health and wellness. Smart dieting patterns should start early as well. Take your child along for shopping of groceries and welcome the child into the kitchen for cooking. Make them self- dependent. Stress the significance of eating a good balanced diet which is rich in vegetables, fruits and natural products.
5. Cleanliness.Children who grow up doing household chores turn out to be more mature and responsible in life. Show your children how to vacuum, dust, and keep their rooms clean. Give them the concept of a healthy environment. Make sure they maintain their personal hygiene. Parents should be a role model to their children in maintaining personal hygiene.
6. Staying safe. Talk with your child about being safe outside the house and caution them on all the danger they might encounter while they are out.
7. Handle crises. Does your child realize what to do when they have a minor accident or there’s an extreme emergency? Discuss various situations and teach them on how to react to these situations.
Social and psychological life skills:
1. Explain fundamental beliefs. The qualities your teenager picks up will define their conduct. Point them a promising way by guaranteeing that they can explain their convictions and put them out without hesitation.
2. Give liberally. Your teenager is going to be the mirror image of you in the society. Children learn watching and imitating elders and develop the attitude to help other people in need. Urge them to share their assets and volunteer their services so they will develop this habit of charity.
3. Act carefully. Over usage of cell phones are reducing the normal capacity to focus. Children consider their parents as idols and hence demonstrate a healthy way of using the gadgets and follow and adopt certain principles in regards to usage of gadgets in the family. For example Make it a family rule that no gadgets are permitted during supper, develop a habit of making conversation while eating at the dinner table, never watch television while eating and so on… to ensure there is proper communication among the family members enabling them to have a good bonding.
4. Oversee pressure. Caring and counseling will help your child in handling the stress. Parent can encourage the child to take part in a physical exercises, and allow them to develop hobbies in-order to divert the stress factors.
5. Basic telephonic etiquette. Regardless of whether your teenager spends quite a lot of their time on telephone, they may not know the basic etiquettes. Train your children on such issues and help them to speak to elders and different sect of people and extend the basic respects and courtesies.
6. Talk with eye contact. Your child might be more inclined to web-based networking media than having a discussion face to face. Encourage child to have a face to face communication instead of speaking over a gadget. Amidst of busy schedules ensure there is some time for the family discussions.
7. Healthy relationships. Healthy relationship plays a vital role in well-being. Teach your child to make healthy friendships and relations with their own and opposite genders.
8. Assertiveness. Help your child to develop good self-esteem and speak up for themselves. Knowing how to share their wants and needs will bring them closer to fulfilling their goals. You can ease your child’s transition into adulthood. Protect your children when they’re young, and then gradually give them more responsibility so that they can acquire the skills to speak for themselves, so that they are independent, when the time is right.
Research tells us that to raise a child with good confidence self-reliance and with high self-esteem, it is more important and effective to be democratic parent than authoritarians. If you want your child to give respect, confide in you and trust you rather than hide from you and fear you, one need to be a supportive and comforting parent and not a dictating parent.
All of these things are easy to set as goals, but hard to achieve. How do you find the right balance?
As your child develops, the challenges will change, and your thought may evolve, but your approach should be caring, loving, firm and consistent. Always allow them learn through experience, that makes them build their confidence and helps them to learn to tackle challenges. Calibrate your expectations about what your child is capable of doing independently, whether you have an infant learning to crawl, a toddler helping to put toys away, or an adolescent child resolving conflicts.
Keep in mind that there is no one right way to raise a child. Do your best, trust yourself and enjoy good parenting.
Also Read: HOW DO YOU TALK TO YOUR KIDS ABOUT THEIR FUTURE?
Dr.Hemamalini Krupakar
Clinical Psychologist/Counselor
Mysuru