How To Encourage Independence In Your Child With Life Skills

As parents, it’s our responsibility to ensure that our kids become independent and have the ability to advocate for themselves. We live in a time when many young adults lack certain life skills that were considered the norm in decades past. Let’s prepare them for the real world by equipping them with the tools needed for adulthood. Here are ways to encourage independence in your child with life skills.

Create A Morning Routine

One way to encourage independence in your child is to create a morning routine he can follow. Start by creating a visual chart of tasks that your child will complete every morning before leaving for school or relaxing on the weekend. These tasks include making his bed, brushing his teeth and washing his face, getting dressed, feeding the dog, and putting important papers in his folder for school. Discuss the morning routine chart with him and let him practice for a week with your supervision. Finally, let him do the routine on his own.

To make your child’s morning routine smoother, plan some tasks the night before. Have your child take his bath, pick out his outfit, and iron it if he’s a teen. Style your little one’s hair at night and wrap it with a scarf. Older kids can pack their lunches every night so they won’t need to do it in the morning.

Teach Your Kids Proper Hygiene

Hygiene is an essential life skill for kids, and this is an ongoing lesson they’ll learn for years until they become adults and leave their homes. Start teaching them how to care for their bodies independently while they’re toddlers. Purchase a toothbrush and toothpaste for your child and demonstrate how he should brush his teeth. After he watches you do it, let him practice this skill with your supervision. Then add this task to his routine and let him do it himself every day.

Tell your child why proper hygiene matters. Talk about how skin conditions, tooth decay, bad breath, body odors, and even hair loss can occur because of poor hygiene. Mention that when he practices good hygiene, he’ll look and smell better. He’ll also be more confident.

Let Them Solve Problems On Their Own

Another way to encourage independence in your child is to let them solve problems themselves. If your child lost his toy in the house, encourage him to remember where he last had it and backtrack to that location to find his toy. If your child isn’t getting along with his friends because of a disagreement, have him practice assertiveness skills with his friends so he can express his concerns and solve the problems.

Don’t rush to your kids’ rescue when they experience consequences or failures. Kids need to understand that wrong actions have consequences, and it is these consequences that teach them not to make the same mistakes again.

Teach Them to Make Simple Meals

Cooking is a vital life skill for kids to learn, and you should teach them simple meals that are safe to cook for their age. The first step is to talk to them about how to use cooking equipment safely. Never let them cook near the stove or hot pots alone. Always supervise them when they’re around these areas. Show them how to use knives safely and how to measure ingredients. Teach them some no-cook recipes. Some beginner recipes for kids are pancakes, scrambled eggs, toast, pasta with sauce, and sandwiches.

Talk About Money Management

Money management is another aspect of adulthood, and you should teach kids how to manage their finances as soon as they get allowances. When you give your child an allowance, require him to create a budget for how he’ll manage it. He should put aside a portion for savings, a portion for giving to others, and a plan for how he’ll spend the rest of his allowance. Create the budget for him for his first allowance and show him how to do his own budget when he gets the next allowance. From that point on, he should be able to create budgets on his own without your help.

Put Them in Extracurricular Activities

This is one of the best ways to encourage independence in your child because it teaches a lot of the skills needed to be self-sufficient such as a solid work ethic, organization, assertiveness, time management, and resourcefulness. If your daughter loves to dance, place her in dance class. If your son always wanted to play sports, suggest football or basketball to him.

Teach Critical Thinking Skills

Independence is not just about physically doing things for yourself. It is also about having your own mind and thinking for yourself. Teach your child critical thinking skills and how to make smart choices. Show them how to analyze what they see on the news and in commercials to verify if certain claims are true or not. Talk about peer pressure and why it can be dangerous to follow the crowd.

Let Kids Have Some Choices

While you shouldn’t cater to your kids and never set boundaries, it’s okay to let them have some choices because they practice decision-making this way. If you’re decorating their room, ask for their input on which theme and colors they want for the room. If you choose the dinner, let the kids decide on what everyone can have for dessert.

Teach Them to Take Care of Their Belongings

Kids also need to learn how to take care of their belongings. Give all of their belongings a place in their rooms and show them where certain items belong. Purchase storage bins, boxes, and shelves to make organization easier for them. Label the storage bins so the kids won’t put items in the wrong places. Assign one to two days out of the week when your kids will organize and tidy up their rooms. Let the natural consequences happen if your child breaks a toy or ruins a certain outfit. Don’t easily buy a replacement.

Safety Skills Are Also Important

Teach kids how to be safe in all situations. Tell them to lock all doors and windows at night before going to bed. If your teen cooks, remind him to check the stove burners to make sure they’re completely off to avoid gas leakage in the kitchen. Teach them family members’ phone numbers and addresses so they’ll remember them during emergencies. Teach your child not to get in the car or walk away with strangers. Teach them how to cross the street safely and how to understand traffic lights.

Time Management Skills

Independent adults know how to manage their time and this is another skill kids must learn. They should have a morning and bedtime routine that they follow consistently. Make things fun by playing their favorite songs for each task they need to do. When a song comes on, this is their timer to complete the task. The task needs to be completed at the end of the song. Give them a small reward when they complete all chores on time.

If your child has a special project that is due in a week or month, sit with him to plan how he will complete the project on time. Write an outline of all the steps he has to take and the dates those steps must be completed to do the project on time. Check-in with him during the month and offer guidance as needed.

Talk with your child about setting realistic and beneficial goals for his future. As your child discusses his goals, come up with a plan that will help him reach them.

Let’s say your daughter wants to attend college. You can create a schedule that includes time for researching scholarships, applying to different colleges, extracurricular activities, homework, and test preparation. If she sticks to her schedule consistently, she may get accepted into a good college.

Kids need to be independent so they can manage their lives as adults. When we guide them in the right direction with love and patience, they will become mature and responsible people in the future.