Learning how to do basic chores and other life skills at a young age matters. Here are two examples why…
Adulting (v):
The ability to behave in an adult manner and fulfill such grown-up responsibilities as: hold a 9-5 job, make monthly mortgage/rent, or car payments, or accomplish anything else in such a way as to make one think of grown-ups.
Two Teenagers. Two Different Situations. Two Different Results
Teenager #1: Situation
The daughter of a successful professional, our first teenager grew up in an upper middle-class home in which she and her siblings never had to do any chores. All basic household tasks were always done by the maid, leaving this young woman free to focus on more important things (such as how to safely drive her brand-new car to high school).
Teenager #2: Situation
The second teenager grew up in a home with a working mother who was single. This young woman was taught how to help around the house, sew her own clothes and get a job. She certainly did not have a new car and her family never had a maid.
Question: When it was time to be an adult, which young woman do you think was more prepared to take care of herself? When faced with life’s basic home-management challenges, which one do you think experienced less stress and had higher self-esteem?
Teenager #2: Results
Before she even graduated from high school, the second young woman in our example above could not only manage a home decently, but could to design her own clothing and operate a ten-key machine with such speed that she had a good-paying job. She also had a confidence many of the rest of her classmates didn’t have but wish we did (and yes, I was one of those fellow classmates).
Teenager #1: Results
The first young woman, however, did not fare so well. Her father died suddenly one day, leaving the family penniless. They lost their home, their previous life style, their friends…and their maid. Later on in life, this young woman (now with a large family of her own) described her lack of preparation with regret. “I didn’t even know how to make a bed,” she told me. Rather than having a maid and a new car, she wished her parents had instead taught her and her siblings how to do chores at a younger age. For this woman, her lack of competence in such basic tasks was a source of stress and low self-esteem for many years.
Competence Breeds Confidence
As you might sense from the examples above: “Competence breeds Confidence.” Success in one area of our lives can help us have confidence in other areas of our lives, while a lack of competence can lower self-esteem.
If you want your children to succeed at “adulting,” then don’t wait until they leave home or some disaster happens that forces them into unfamiliar territory unprepared. (After all, learning, acquiring, and developing new skills gradually is much less stressful than having to do so all at once.) Begin now to teach your children how to do chores and gain other life skills that will make them ready to take care of themselves and manage their own homes when the time comes. It will be one of the best things you could ever give them and they will thank you for it in the end.
Are you ready to help your younger children with their “adulting” skills, but don’t know where to start? Begin with this list of Age-Appropriate Chores for Children from Brambleglen.com
