Dad 101: Help Your Teens Acquire These Essential Life Skills

When the kids enter their teenage phase, as in when they turn 13, your responsibility as a parent gets doubled. You need to ensure that they live a free yet responsible life. However, it is easier said than done.  

But we must say it is not impossible. By imparting a few essential life skills in your kids, you’ll ensure that they become self-dependent and all set for their future.  

You must be getting curious to know what these skills are, right? So, without further ado, let’s get started!

●     Budgeting skills

Needless to say that people need money to live a comfortable life. However, living a convenient life is only possible if people know how to manage their money. No matter how much a person earns, by the end of the month, they might find themselves in a cash crunch without proper money management skills.  

Therefore, you must teach your kids how to budget their pocket money and manage it. You can also give them a target to save at least 10% of their pocket money. Another way to teach them to save is by using cards. For instance, you can get a debit card for teens from Greenlight card, which will provide you flexible controls. These controls will allow you to set saving goals. Moreover, you can also get real-time notifications whenever your kid spends money.  

Besides that, you should also take them to the bank and ATM with you. It will help them understand how a country's financial system works.

●     Cooking skills

Another important life skill that you need to teach your kids is how to cook. Believe it or not, but they will be very grateful to you when they become adults. To start with, you can take them grocery shopping with you. It will help them understand different food items, spices, and other ingredients (not just instant noodles or soup).  

After that, you can teach them how to cook basic food such as sandwiches, spaghetti, toast, etc. Once they are comfortable working around the kitchen, you can teach them to do dishes. To make it more fun and less of a task, you can schedule a weekend cooking time. It will also help in creating a strong bond between you and your kids.

●     Personal healthcare skills

Last but not least, you must teach them healthcare skills. It will ensure that they can take good care of themselves as well as those around them. Teach them about every medicine, how to do first aid (such as cleaning wounds and using bandages), and take care of themselves with the weather changes.  

In addition to this, you can also teach them about health insurance and its payments. So that as soon as they turn adults, they get their health insurance.

To sum it all up!

These three are the most important skills that are essential for everybody. That’s the reason why you must teach these skills to your children as early as possible. Not to forget, it will also give you peace of mind that your grown-up bundle of joy would do well in life.