4 Life Skills Your Child Needs
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You can promote leadership and life skills in young people through academic reinforcement, organized sports, and extracurricular activities. Combine this mission while cultivating the following four skills will ensure your child will be on their way to success.
Communication & Interpersonal Skills:
- Interpersonal skills provide the life foundation for a child’s confidence and how they experience others. Exposure to a variety of cultures, extracurricular activities, personalities, and situations help to teach respect for differences.
- Working in a group helps to develop listening and negotiating skills while challenging them to work with difficult personalities. Delegating and accountability boost a child’s communication skills.
Critical Thinking & Decision Making
- The ability to problem-solve is the #1 skill employers say are lacking in high-school graduates. Grade school children are given few opportunities to explore and learn cause and effect, therefore, stunting their growth towards a rational choice.
- The rate and volume of information received daily by a young, developing mind are astounding. No wonder they struggle with confidence with their decisions. In Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell, he argues in that in an age of information overload, commonly called “Analysis paralysis“ the challenge is to sift through and focus on only the most critical information. Children need the skills and time to observe and analyze facts before connecting the dot
Coping & Self-Management Skills
- A child that can personally identify and regulate negative emotions learns resilience in a stressful situation. This self-management skill leaves space for rational problem-solving.
- A healthy example of a child’s self-management is the ability to comprehend the difference between behavior expectations and to evaluate the actual behavior afterward.
- Time-management is NOT an intrinsic skill in children and must be modeled by caring adults. Supporting your child with a structured after-school plan will help to increase their learning and autonomy.
Health and Wellness
- Positive healthy lifestyle choices need to be established early because children spend an average of 7-8 hours in a sedentary school environment.
- Regular physical play is necessary for brain, behavioral, cognitive and
emotional growth, as well as their social competence.
- Time taken away from lessons for physical activity is time well spent and does not come at the cost of getting good grades, say the 24 signatories to the statement on physical activity in schools and during leisure time, published online in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.
- Healthy eating choices that include iron, Vitamin D and lean proteins improve brain function, cognitive skills and ultimately your child’s education.
