One of the most invaluable gifts you can give your child or teen are life skills for daily living activities. Child life skills are not just about navigating the day-to-day challenges of a child or teenager but also about creating foundations for mental health, social skills, and a willingness to engage in new experiences into adolescence and adulthood. As parents, your influence is crucial in building life skills and setting the stage for their future successes and ability to navigate life’s challenges.
Importance of Your Child’s Life Skills
A child with advanced life skills is likely to engage positively with their environment, face challenges head-on, and have the ability to navigate daily living with ease. Building a child’s awareness of living skills doesn’t just prepare them for the academic and social hurdles of childhood; it lays the foundation for adult life, influencing their physical health, self-discipline, relationships, and overall mental wellness.
How Can Parents Play a Crucial Role?
As the primary influencers in a child’s early life, parents have the unique opportunity to shape their child’s inherent skills through the lens of daily living experiences. These life skills include navigating domestic tasks like tidying, cleaning, preparing food, washing, safely using tools and appliances, utilising public transport and grocery shopping, just to name a few.
Each interaction, whether through communication, behaviour modelling, or the home environment, is a building block for a child’s life skills. In 2024, the NDIS also increased its funding for the Development of Daily Living and Life Skills support, allowing parents to utilise carers and early learning professionals to actively develop their child’s daily living and life skills in an individual or group setting. Parents can ensure they provide the best support for their children’s developmental needs by adopting specific strategies to model positive living skills both inside and outside the home.
Here are six tips to boost your child’s life skills:
1. Involve Your Child In Your Activities
The journey of building a child’s life skills often begins with the parents. Children look up to their parents as role models, mimicking their behaviours and adopting their attitudes. Your child will likely emulate this positive trait if you slowly but surely educate your child about the tasks you model at home and the motivations behind them. For example, asking your child for help with cooking, such as cracking an egg or measuring and mixing ingredients, can demonstrate your trust in their competence and increase their confidence in their abilities.
2. Building a Supportive Environment
A supportive home environment is crucial for fostering child self-confidence. This means creating a safe space where children feel their actions are valued and their emotions respected. Regular family activities that promote competence-building and relationship bonding can reinforce their self-assurance and ability.
A supportive environment also means being aware of who else is part of your child’s life. Teachers, coaches, and friends play significant roles in building child confidence. Collaborate with them to communicate consistent messages of encouragement and support. Support services are able to offer assistance in both therapy as well as connecting your child to peers through recreational activities, activity camps, and more.
3. Encourage Them to Try New Things
Encouraging your child to step out of their comfort zone and try new activities can significantly increase their motivation to continue building their competence throughout adolescence and adulthood. Whether it’s a new sport, a different subject at school, or a creative hobby like painting or music, new experiences help them to discover their interests and talents. Success in these areas can be a tremendous boost to their self-esteem. However, it’s crucial to balance this by ensuring the child is not overwhelmed. Start small, celebrate the courage to try something different and reinforce your efforts, irrespective of the outcome.
4. Allow Your Child to Make Choices
Empowering children by allowing them to make choices helps build their confidence and decision-making capabilities, which is crucial for daily living. When children are allowed to make decisions, they learn to trust their judgement. Start with small choices, such as picking out clothes or a meal for dinner, and gradually increase the complexity of decisions as they age. This empowerment teaches them the importance of considering options and the consequences of their choices, instilling confidence through control over their lives.
5. Give Your Child Chores and Ensure They Perform Them
Assigning chores is a classic strategy for building a child’s life skills and understanding of daily living. Chores help children learn responsibility and give them a sense of contribution to the family. Completing tasks also provides them with tangible evidence of their abilities and fosters a sense of achievement.
To effectively use chores to boost confidence, ensure the tasks are age-appropriate and that children understand how to complete them successfully. Initially, you might need to guide them through the process, but the goal is to reach a point where they can manage their chores independently. Recognising their efforts and successes further reinforces their capability and enhances their self-esteem.
6. Don’t Be Disappointed By Mistakes
If there is a setback during a task, handling this with optimism and assurance continues to model resilience for their future development. If you’re struggling with implementing daily living skills into your child’s routine, it may be helpful to seek guidance from professionals, such as the team at Standing Strong’s child wellness centre in Perth, which can offer tools and strategies to improve your child’s eagerness and abilities to develop life skills.
Creating an environment where mistakes are not met with frustration or disappointment but are seen as a natural part of the learning process is essential. React to errors with support and ask what can be learned from the experience. This approach helps children understand that perfection is not expected and that every misstep is a chance to improve and grow, boosting their willingness to try challenging tasks.
How Early Learning Professionals or Child Counsellors Can Support Life Skill Development
Life skills don’t always need to be taught by a parent or guardian. They can be created through the influence of trusted professionals such as educators. With the recently increased NDIS funding, there is more opportunity for parents of children on the NDIS to gain assistance with their child’s daily living skills development. Youth programs such as social and emotional wellbeing classes develop child confidence and resilience through versatile activities such as movement, nutrition, dealing with pressure and emotions, cyber safety and more. Moreover, individual child counselling can target a child’s life skill gaps more specifically, aiding them with tools to deal with life and school stress, friendship and relationship struggles and developing mindset and motivation for their successful growth.
Conclusion
By actively participating in the development of your child’s daily living and life skills, you’re not just helping them succeed academically and socially—you’re helping them build a resilient, fulfilled future.
FAQs
Recognising limited life skills can be crucial in taking timely steps towards building a child’s capabilities. Signs may include:
- Inability to participate in activities with family members and peers
- Reluctance to try new activities.
- A tendency to give up easily.
Additionally, if children consistently underestimate their capabilities or are overly critical of themselves, these could be indicators that their confidence needs to be boosted. Observing how they interact at home and in public can provide critical insights into their self-esteem.
Building confidence in your son’s life skills can be fostered by encouraging them to engage in activities that align with their interests and strengths. Provide positive feedback that focuses on their efforts and resilience rather than outcomes. It’s also beneficial to model positive daily living skills in yourself; children learn a lot by observing their parents. Showing them your processes for tasks inside and outside the home can make a big difference in building a child’s willingness to take on these tasks themselves.
Kim Henwood
Kim, founder of Standing Strong, takes a holistic approach to helping children, teens, and parents navigate through the challenges and triumphs of growing up. Kim knows what it takes to get through the tough times and has worked with hundreds of children, teens, families, schools and community organisations.
