10 Essential Skills to Teach Your Children Before They Finish School

School is one of the first real-world challenges that children face. It is the first time they go out in to the world, be social and make their first set of friends. It is also the first time they spend a decent chunk of time away from their parents. School days are important as they are filled with learnings that stay with children for a lifetime. Completing school is a moment that signifies the end of their basic education and the start of a journey towards independence and self-sufficiency. It is a remarkable milestone in a child's life.

As children finish school and prepare to start a new chapter in life, it becomes important for parents to ensure they are well equipped and ready to take on whatever the world has in store for them. It is an ever-changing world out there with lots of choices and challenges, including some essential life skills can serve as a much-needed compass to navigate life. These life skills not only help foster independence but also empower children to thrive in their adulthood.

10 Essential Skills Include

1. Financial Literacy

It is not time to teach them how to file their taxes just yet, but certain basic concepts like budgeting and savings can be taught. Learning to plan for the future and having a contingency are basic concepts that children can easily grasp. Compound interest is something they are taught in school and showing them its practical applicability in life can be quite beneficial for them in the long run.

Core concepts of Financial Literacy are based on simple Mathematics, learned with increasing levels of difficulty. Start with simulated Math worksheets on BrainGymJr.

2. Simple Cooking Skills

While every child need not be a chef, they should at least know a few basics to cooking and be able to produce a decent meal to consume in a pinch. But in today’s day and age, getting a ready-made meal is easier than ever so it is more crucial to teach your children about nutritional awareness and meal planning. Equip your child with the ability to make healthy choices when it comes to food.

3. Effective Time Management

Time management is something we have already spoken about in our previous post - Teaching our Children to Manage Time Effectively! As mentioned there, time management is a life skill that helps us work effectively, stay calm and have maximum results. The earlier we start to manage our time, the more effective and efficient we will be in managing our lives

4. Problem Solving

Foster critical thinking by engaging in different problem-solving scenarios. Encourage your child to analyse issues, consider multiple perspectives, and develop innovative solutions. A great way to help with this skill is BrainGymJr. BrainGymJr provides your child with new puzzles in English, Math and Real-World concepts daily and it varies the complexity as per their need. These puzzles are a great way to build thinking skills. Try them out here.

5. Presentation Skills

One thing that will always be required in this world is how you present yourself. Teach your children to improve their communication abilities, such as persuasive speaking, negotiating, and effective writing. An important lesson here is the significance of changing their communication approach to different audiences.

A strong control over the language used in daily communication and trade helps facilitate presentation and negotiation skills. Listen to Audio stories with comprehension-style, inbuilt questions and puzzles on BrainGymJr.

6. Emotional Intelligence

Explore ideas such as empathy, self-awareness, and resilience to learn more about emotional intelligence. Teach your youngster how to handle difficult emotional circumstances with grace and how to keep their calm in high intensity situations.

Solving simulated challenges in different forms and formats encourages a problem-solving approach and strengthens the base for strong EQ.

7. Basic First Aid

Minor allergic reactions, burns, cuts and scrapes, these are some of the most common everyday ailments that can affect you and while they seem like no big deal, if not properly handled even a small cut can fester and lead to more severe complications. Basic first aid on how to handle such things and a little more knowledge could save your child from major discomfort down the road.

8. Household Chores

While your child has probably grown up helping around the house, more often than not they do not absorb everything they do and when it comes to doing those things for themselves, they might be left clueless. Go a little further and teach them household skills from something as small as the importance of changing your towel regularly to managing household projects and the importance of keeping a house clean.

9. Navigating the Digital World

With the digital world becoming a key aspect of our daily lives, it is important to teach children the importance of online safety. While they may know not to talk to strangers online, there are plenty of aspects of cyber security, data privacy and responsible online behaviour they should be made aware of.

10.  Using their Judgement

Parents should encourage their children to have a deeper understanding of society and a wider world view. It’s important to teach them how to understand and analyse any data they may be presented with and how to make proper judgement calls. These days the internet is a powerhouse of information and not all of it can be taken at face value. Children should be taught how to take everything with a slight pinch of salt.

Finally, as parents, we must not only educate our children for the difficulties and possibilities that await them, but also enable them to become active and involved citizens in an ever-changing world. These 10 essential life skills go beyond the fundamentals, providing our children with the tools they need to succeed in a complicated and interconnected society. Let us invest in our children's knowledge and talents, ensuring that they are not only well-prepared for the trip beyond school, but also able to make a significant contribution to the world.

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest." -Benjamin Franklin