13 life skills parents should teach their kids before leaving home

1. How to manage/protect money, spend wisely and save.

How to have minimum requirements in life, being minimalistic. Money management is one of the most crucial life skill every parent should teach their children as early as possible.

2. How to cook, for self and others.

This is one odd skill that we think parents should teach their kids by the time they hit 15 years of age, be it a girl or a boy.

3. How to be organized and a self-starter.

This skill will help a kid master how to stay calm, composed and a get-go no matter what the situation is. Your kid will always be grounded doesn’t matter what the situation is, if he/she is organized.

4. How to talk to strangers.

The most difficult time for a kid, once he or she moves away from home for studies, is to talk to umpteen strangers on a daily basis. How to break the ice, how to talk, what to talk, what to ask, how to answer, and what not to say – are some of the practical examples parents should be teaching their children.

5. How to manage time.

Time is the costliest commodity we own. Parents should teach their kids the importance of time, and how to utilize it effectively.

6. How to cope with failures, and stand up for oneself.

Everyone faces failures. In fact, it is proven that a successful person tastes more failures than successes, in absolute number of times. Failure at one juncture of life doesn’t mean failure for the whole life. Parents should teach their kids that failures are just a part of our lives, which teaches us what to do and what not to do in our next endeavour and that failures are nothing but pillars for success.

7. How to be a self learner.

Teachers and parents cannot simply make a student/kid learn a subject. The max they can do is make the student/kid get curious about a subject. Rest, it’s that student/kid’s job to learn the subject by self studies. This one important lesson should be learnt by all kids to be self-learning-mechanisms.

8. How to do laundry (wash to iron), household chores, and self-shaving for males.

Seems to be trivial, but it is not. Just like professional work, household chores are important too to be known by both genders and should be taught its importance by parents to their kids.

9. How to clean home & kitchen.

Again, seems to be trivial, but it is not. Parents should get their kids into a habit to get their share of household work from a very early age. It will give them a sense of achievement, a sense of bondage with their household and will instil the sense that no work is small work.

10. How to drive safely on the road.

Be it a 2-wheeler or a 4-wheeler, parents should teach their kids that it is very important not to meet with an accident. It’s not only their lives at risk, but also others.

11. How to swim.

One of the best exercises for the whole body – swimming. Your kids may or may not use it every day, but it is one essential life skill that everyone should know.

12. How to use a map, to have geographical understanding.

The moment your kid is outside, he/she is at his/her own will. Basic life skill includes how to use a map, how to judge a direction, speed, how to use Pythagoras' theorem and others.

13. How to stitch, using a needle & thread or a sewing machine.

A kind of lost skill for almost all of us. But, parents should teach their kids the basic art and craft of sewing and stitching, which may help them in the nick of time, especially in times of crisis