Kids Never Stop Learning Life Skills. Neither Do We.

From 2016-2021, Christine Koh and I co-hosted the Edit Your Life podcast as an expansion on the ideas in our book, MINIMALIST PARENTING.

The theme: small steps lead to big changes.

One of our favorite topics was the importance of teaching kids life skills (or move-out skills, as I liked to call them).

At the time our kids were pre-teens and teens and we firmly believed that chores, allowance, and accountability would help them grow into functional, independent adults.

(Or so we hoped. Kids aren't machines, and input doesn't guarantee output.)

Spurred on by one of these conversations, we brainstormed a list of 100 life skills kids could learn in five minutes or less. Christine turned the list into a sharable graphic and it went viral, spawning conversations all over social media.

I was reminded of this when Christine re-shared the now seven year-old list in her newsletter. She made the case that life skills are essential to being in relationship with other people, pointing to how frustrating it is when a friend, colleague, or spouse expects someone else to handle the “adulting” for them.

Reading through that life skills list again rocketed me back to our conversations when my kids’ “functional adulthood” was theoretical. Now they're actual adults.

How did it all work out?

I'm glad to report my kids are indeed functional adults, and like so much else, my parenting choices had only so much to do with it.

My son carving a turkey.

I'm seven years further down the parenting road with a wider lens and a longer arc, and I now see that my active teaching of life skills wasn't always necessary. Sometimes it even got in the way.

Chores were a struggle when my kids were younger and their uptake of life skills was uneven. They picked up certain practical tasks easily enough, but others were a fight or took a frustratingly long time to learn. Some just fell off the list.

With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that life skills, like other childhood "learnings," can follow their own inscrutable timeline.

This is obvious only in retrospect, sort of like looking back on potty training — now I know that when it happened mattered less than if it happened. But at the time? Panicked.

Revisiting that old list feels good now that I've watched my kids become competent adults, since some of those skills only "took" after they were living on their own and had to teach themselves.

When I was in the thick of parenting, I sometimes felt behind or like I'd failed when my kids didn't follow the expected timeline — but it's a good reminder that kids keep learning as adults, and some skills simply take the time they take.

I'm committed to the importance of teaching young kids life skills. I'm proud Christine and I amplified that message and helped parents put it into practice.

Also:

Life never stops handing us new tasks and we never stop learning how to manage them (or deftly palm them off on someone else). 😉

We're all getting older and wiser. It's an encouraging thought.