I am a strong believer in the value of education, and I think it’s extremely important to making you a well rounded person. I want my kids to learn everything they possibly can: how to read classic literature, how to logically work through a complicated math problem, how to come up with a scientific experiment to test an idea- I love everything that schools do for kids. However, there are some things that schools simply don’t teach: life skills like cooking, car and home maintenance, child care, budgeting, cleaning, and job skills that most people do on a daily basis. It’s not a school’s responsibility to teach kids how to survive as adults- it’s ours. So, if you have a teenager who is almost done with school and ready to move out on their own, make sure they know how to do all the things on this list by Susan Merill at Imom:
-Basic cooking skills
-Budgeting and money management skills
-Personal healthcare knowledge
-Auto and domestic maintenance skills
-Work skills, basic responsibility, and manners