Kids

5 Life Skills We Need To Teach Our Kids That Schools Don’t

by Kevyn Gohu
April 26, 2022

Schools cover the majority of the academic work. But when it comes to life skills, that’s what we need to teach them.

Putting our kids through school means making sure they’re prepared for everything in life. However, there are just some life skills our schools don’t teach our kids. And it’s not something that can easily be squeezed into a school curriculum. Nevertheless, these life skills are something that we can get our kids into by integrating them slowly into their lives.

1. Dealing with legal documents

One of the most essential life skills is teaching our kids to actually read and comb through legal documents. Those documents and requirements are what our kids need when they start working. Or, when they open a bank account. As minors, it’s okay to use their school IDs. But when they’re older, they’re going to need a valid government ID. Starting them off as teens when getting their Driver’s License is one place to start. Once they get the hang of that, filing for taxes should be a bit easier.

2. Cooking

Some schools do offer cooking but they don’t usually offer how to choose veggies, fish, chicken, and more. Here in the Philippines, it’s usually cheaper to cook our own food in exchange for washing the dishes. Although some of us have household help to handle the cooking and cleaning, cooking is a life skill that all our kids need to learn unless they want to end up spending more.

3. Sewing

Sewing is a life skill that your kids will need. You never know when one could have a wardrobe malfunction. It can be as basic as simple repair patchwork. For our daughters, a wardrobe malfunction is the last thing they want for their debut or wedding. Running stitch, back stitch — while all those things can be done by machine, they can’t lug that around all the time. Sometimes, the good ‘ol needle and thread can save the day.

4. Negotiating

Entrepreneurs, authors, and even artists have all learned how to negotiate. Negotiation doesn’t always mean relentlessly convincing people what you want. Sometimes, it can also involve stepping back and giving them what they want before being able to get what you want. There will always be a few bad eggs no matter the industry which is why our kids will need the life skill of negotiation to keep themselves out of trouble.

5. Map Reading

Sure, there’s Waze and Google Maps. But it still helps to memorize roads and street names. Some remote places don’t even have internet so, road names and maps are a big help. It pays to also know certain terms like “kanto” which usually means “corner” or “alleyway”, “kanan” – right, “kaliwa” – left, “rotonda” – roundabout. There are a lot of terms that make map reading a very useful life skill for kids especially if they’re the traveling type.

We can teach these life skills to our kids by keeping them involved.

Because technology made a lot of things simpler, there’s a danger of our kids becoming helpless when there’s none. It’s why some of these life skills are still necessary for us to teach even though some of them just love taking the shortcut or their school has taught them otherwise. Our job as parents means preparing them for the world and not all of the world has caught up with technology yet.