Life skills to teach your child
WITH parenting it’s very easy to get overprotective and get carried away with wanting to make the right decisions for your children. But clinical psychologist Dr Pearnel Bell said that it’s important to strike a balance, and as every experience is a teaching one for children, parents should capitalise on this from as early as infancy so that they are armed with important lessons to inform life decisions.
“Children from very early need to learn key lessons that will help them be able to analyse each unique experience that they will have,” Dr Bell explained.
Dr Bell pointed out that one such lesson, and perhaps the most important, is responsibility.
“Responsibility is a lesson that every parent should pass on to their child, and this should be started from very early. So teach your children to complete assigned tasks like homework. It’s good to start this from kindergarten. Homework should be completed and they should be taught to attend school and other activities on time.”
They should also understand the importance of caring for their immediate environment, as this will help them when they venture out into the world of life.
“Children should be given basic chores from early — to pick up toys and put them back into place, then progress up to packing a drawer with their clothes, and later as they get older, tidying a room and washing dishes, washing socks and underwear. Parents should not do this in a burdensome way, but teach children in a spirit of love so that they get the principle of responsibility,” Dr Bell explained.
Citing the principle of psychological development, Dr Bell explained that children need to develop a sense of personal control over physical skills and a sense of independence.
“Success leads to feelings of autonomy; failure results in feelings of shame and doubt. Parents need to help children resolve this crisis by giving simple tasks that will begin to help them develop a sense of independence, a skill that will be needed to function as the child develops,” Dr Bell encouraged.
She said parents need to provide opportunities for children to assert themselves, by teaching decision-making skills, like what clothes they’ll wear and what foods they’ll eat.
Children also need to feel they can do something well, that they have a purpose, and regardless of what it is, that they are masters of it. She explained that in Jamaica’s context and many other countries around the world, parents and society place emphasis on school and achieving success in school.
She explained that this stage of development could be influenced by several social and environmental factors, so parents would need to help children to cope with these new social and academic demands.
Earning success at this stage will lead to a sense of competence, while failure results in feelings of inferiority, something every parent should help their children to avoid as they work on this phase.
