Life Skills Every Homeschooler Needs
Add these essential life skills to your homeschool curriculum.
Homeschoolers get a bad rap sometimes for shielding our kids from the real world, but we’re actually in a prime position to rear kids who are well-prepared for their adult lives. The key is to step back and let kids take the reins well before their eighteenth birthday, says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University and author of How to Raise an Adult: Break Free of the Overparenting Trap and Prepare Your Kid for Success. Here’s what kids should know how to do before they start on the college applications:
FEED THEMSELVES
When: By high school
You don’t get to turn in your oven mitts just yet, but by high school, your kids should be preparing meals for themselves on a regular basis — making oatmeal for breakfast, slapping together a sandwich for lunch, and yes, whipping up a quick stir-fry or pot of soup for dinner.
How to help: Put cooking on the curriculum with a cookbook like Alton Brown’s (which is great for teaching kitchen science, too) or Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything (which includes straightforward, doable recipes for anything you might want to cook).
ADVOCATE FOR THEMSELVES
When: By high school
You don’t want to be one of those parents who calls her kid’s college professor to complain about her grade, right? The best way to avoid this is to gradually move the job of advocating for your kid into your child’s hands. (Obviously, when a situation calls for a parent advocate, you should jump in.)
How to help: When your child is upset about a grade or confused about an outside class assignment, help her figure out how to solve the problem herself. Practice with her, but assure her that you’re confident she can get her point across. It’s also important to prepare her for the possibility that she won’t get what she wants — “Many times they won't get the outcome they desire, and it's ‘Well, I tried.’ And they come home and they learn to cope with it, because not everything in life will go your way,” Lythcott-Haims says.
GET UP ON TIME
When: By late middle school
“By the time your kid is entering high school, you ought to have confidence they can wake themselves up and get themselves washed and dressed in clothing that's clean," Lythcott-Haims says. That may mean you miss the occasional co-op class or park day — which is preferable to missing a final exam with no make-up date or being late to work when you have an important meeting.
How to help: Homeschoolers don’t have to be clock- watchers, but you can let kids know your timetable: “We’re going to leave for the library in an hour, so it’s time to start rounding up your books.” Buy your child an alarm clock, teach him how to set it, and let him be responsible for getting up and ready on a few low-pressure occasions before easing into bigger responsibility.
WORK INDEPENDENTLY
When: By middle school
Twentysomethings in the workplace can sometimes struggle because they’re used to being told what to do, step-by-step, and patted on the back for every accomplishment, says Lythcott-Haims. They don’t know how to identify work that needs doing or to recognize when someone else could use a hand. Successful adults know how to make their own projects — something homeschoolers should be able to get very comfortable doing by high school.
How to help: By 7th or 8th grade, start giving your child looser and looser assignments and letting them set their own goals and deadlines to complete the project. At first, you can make suggestions — “Don’t forget to leave yourself enough time to edit your final draft” — but your goal should be to let your child be in charge.
PLAN AN OUTING
When: By high school
It can be scary to turn your kids loose to hang out with their friends, but that’s exactly what they’re going to be doing when they hit adulthood — and they’re likely to make smarter and safer decisions on their adventures if they’ve had a safe space to practice them. By late middle school, kids are ready to spend an hour at the mall in a pack or to see a movie at the theater where you’re watching a different film.
How to help: When your child’s peer group is old enough and interested in planning an outing — whether it’s to get pizza at a restaurant or see a movie — help walk them through a plan and enlist adult support for pick-up and drop-off, but let them handle the logistics of figuring out tickets, snacks, tips, etc. “This is how kids spread their wings,”saysLythcott-Haims.
