What to Teach Your Kids - Part One
Maybe you know about the concept of hard and soft skill sets a person should have, but you know it in the context of a corporate environment. However, as a dad, there are both hard and soft skills that you should be handing down to your kids as they grow into adulthood. Taking intentional time to teach these skills to your kids will give them a vital head start as they enter adulthood. They will still probably call sometimes, or a lot of times, to make sure but you will have the confidence that they really do know how to do it. Let’s start with hard skills and can look at the soft skills later.
Steward their Resources
Stewardship goes beyond just handling money. Being able to budget, plan for expenses, make purchasing decisions, and so forth are all a part of stewardship. But they are not the only part. Stewardship includes and goes beyond those things. Stewardship looks at your money, your abilities, and talents in a bigger picture. Are you teaching your children to be good stewards? Your child should learn how to save a portion of each paycheck and give a portion of each paycheck. Teach them about IRAs and insurance plans. Show them how they can give things away and volunteer their time. Talk about the consequences of debt and its impact. Model these things for them. Teach them to the value of money, but not the love of money. At the same time, teach them the value of not hoarding it either. Help them
Basic car care
You don’t need to teach your kids how to repair everything on their car, but if they want to learn, why not? Assuming you know how. But this means teaching them how to deal with the basic care of their vehicle. Teach them how to change a flat tire and what to do when that happens. They should know how to check the oil and when to have it changed. Or, how to change it if they want to learn that. What about changing the air filter, the cabin filter, or adding washer fluid? Feel free to hit with the blinker fluid joke, but then let them know about the fluids in the vehicle. Help them know what to look for, or listen for, when the battery is getting weak and about to die. Don’t know these things yourself? Hit up the internet and learn them yourself so you can pass them along to your kids.
Do laundry
It isn’t cruel to make your kids do laundry. It is an important skill for them to learn and bring into adulthood. Teach them how the machines work, how to and why to separate the whites and darks, and how to fold things once they are all done. Teach them how to iron a shirt, or pants. Teach them difference in the temperature selections. And, yes, there is a chance they might shrink something in their beginning efforts. It is a worth risk to take for them to become functional adults.
Cook three basic meals
Your child doesn’t need to be a Michelin star chef once they reach adulthood. But they should be able to easily cook three basic meals by themselves in a kitchen, without using a microwave. You can figure out what the three meals are together. Maybe a pasta dish, a chicken dish, and burgers? Maybe something entirely different. But teach them to use the stove and oven. Help them learn to monitor the pots so they don’t boil over. Teach them to proper internal temperature for the different proteins. Help them gain the confidence to know they can feed themselves. These three meals can form a foundation from which they can build a menu of options for themselves over the years.
Home maintenance
Every home comes with particular maintenance requirements. Just basic upkeep. Teach your kids where it is and how to change the air filter for your home. Living in a space could mean dealing with any number of things. Do your kids know how to turn the water off to the faucet, toilet, or whole house? What if the smoke detector starts chirping in the middle of the night? Because they never start in the middle of the day. Beyond those basic things you should teach your kids how to patch small holes in the drywall, touch up paint, and hang pictures. If you really want to get industrious, like the vehicle care, you could teach them how to hang a light fixture, ceiling fan, or replace a faucet. There are all sorts of things around the home, whether a house, condo, townhome, or apartment, that your kids can learn as they get ready for adulthood.
You may come up with other hard skills that you can teach your kids. This list is certainly not exhaustive, but meant to get your brain thinking about what things your child will need to know and learn as they get ready for adulthood. The most beautiful thing about all of this is that these are things that you do together. The personal time together is the best part of all of it. Make the intentional effort to invest these skills into your kids as they are growing up. Start with things that are appropriate for their age and skill level. If there is something you don’t know very well then maybe it is something the two of you can learn together. It will be an incredible time for the both of you and will not soon be forgotten. What is even bigger is that doing this for your kids will help them have the confidence in doing it for their own children. That creates a lasting legacy for your family.