As a mom, teaching your children life lessons and day-to-day tasks is a difficult task. It still seems like when your life is the most hectic; you need your children to be more independent in your everyday routine. Take the morning routine, for example – wake up, have food, brush your teeth, dress up, plan school work, prepare lunches, and more. This at the same time as parents are scrambling to get ready for college. When children can be autonomous, they can make life at home simpler. As parents, we can get stuck in a bind where we do too much for our children or rely on day-care or school to give our children some life skills. At the end of the day, kids need our time at home to better teach them life skills.
Here are five easy ways to get started right away and teach your children to be independent:
Using slip-on shoes when kids are young – try jeans, crocs, or moccasins. Kids can get this quickly and individually at a young age.
Teach the flip coat technique — Are you familiar with the Montessori method of putting a coat on? Children can get their coats on their own at a younger age by using this process. You put the coat on the ground with the hood at the child’s bottom. They put their arms into the coat and flip it over their head to get it on.
Assign them chores that they can handle absolutely on their own – keep it super basic. Kids want to help, but often it can make it more difficult for an adult to do their chores. Aim to resume tasks such as cleaning decks, feeding cats, filling napkins, or sorting socks. Children are going to be proud of themselves that they can do so without support.
Enable a lot of preparation time to explore various ways of teaching those techniques – allow time in your routine to allow more time to practise new skills. Don’t want to teach you new skills while you’re out of the house in the morning. Test various ways to teach your skills. For eg, some kids may be able to learn how to tie their shoes in an old-fashioned way, while others can need to learn a different way.
Modify the atmosphere so that children can be independent – for example, have a sinking stool so that children can access the water to wash their face, drink or clean their teeth.
As parents, you want nothing but the greatest for your children. We are, therefore so inclined to fulfil their needs. It’s the way we show our affection. However, to offer children the ability to be good in life, we still need to teach them freedom.
With freedom, children have had to strengthen their abilities, learn right and wrong, grow their personalities, and make choices. Kids need to observe life to understand the ways of life. This way, they will grow strong, ready to face life challenges, emotionally comfortable, and happy.
