Beth Barbeau
It’s no secret that it’s a challenging full-time job to raise our children to be capable, contributing adults, especially during a pandemic. Yet, we don’t want to miss that critical middle ground to develop our children’s life skills—the window between the delight of infants starting to walk and the anxiety of teens starting to drive. Since we all have much more time at home with our kids right now, it’s a good time to practice these practical skills. When my own kids started to launch into their adult lives, it was suddenly and starkly apparent that the base of any competency had started years ago.
So, I recently started a conversation with parents of 10-year-olds with this question, “What life skills are your kids working on? What do you think 10-year-olds should be able to do?” Their responses varied wildly, from “I don’t know if she can butter bread!” to “Sort and do their own laundry.”
One thing was apparent. Everyone agreed that it varied from kid to kid. And more skills were definitely expected from the kids in bigger, rural families. I heard things like, “We’re thinking 12 years old for milking a cow.” Skills tended to group around running and feeding the household, maintenance, and social development. Doing it “perfectly” was not the goal, or even expected. Parents understood their children needed time and practice to learn to take care of themselves, to feel responsible for pulling their own weight, and to experience pride in meaningful contribution.
Our children need to do important everyday work and learn from the natural consequence of their efforts. This might mean eating a burnt grilled cheese or having to clean up the mess animals made when the garbage wasn’t taken out promptly.
What did parents think was too much? After brief consideration, we quickly agreed that expecting a 10-year-old to use a plunger in the toilet might be going too far. There was disagreement about whether they should be changing their own bedding, and nobody was satisfied with how the kids were cleaning the bathrooms, but all agree they needed to be trying. Every once in a while, one of the adults would sigh, and say “…that one, I still don’t really know how to do that myself!”
A great deal of information can be transferred by our modeling, or those times we work and learn alongside our kiddos. It’s in those times that we also help them develop patience and stamina, explore what doesn’t work just as much as what does, and explore time management.
The development of life skills is not a one-time event, but an on-going building and teaching opportunity. All the parents reflected on the great deal of work it takes on their part to make these chores happen, and also on how frequently the outcomes are annoyingly messy and need to be re-addressed.
Yet, those with children over 18 years old were unanimous in the opinion that letting kids learn by doing, and insisting on their participation, were essential to them moving into adulthood safely and capably. And, even more, that this time arrives in a breathless blink. What skills will your child be working on this year?
Beth Barbeau, CPM, LM is a mom, homebirth midwife, and Resonance Repatterner. She is an instructor at the Naturopathic Institute of Therapies and Education in Mt. Pleasant, in the Holistic Doula program. She also consults on Natural Family Health and Maternity care in Ann Arbor.
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“I don’t really like myself,” my teen blurted out in the middle of a seemingly mundane conversation we were having last week. He tightened his lips to hold back emotion. I paused, as I noticed my jaws clench. Surprised by what he declared, I felt my eyes stinging as salty tears began to trickle into my eyes. My heart felt heavy, longing to simply scoop him up into my lap like I did when he was young, soothing him with kisses on his soft forehead.