Teaching your child essential skills they’ll need for the rest of his life isn’t easy. Doing it from home? Even harder.
And trying to teach those skills during the middle of a quarantine, like the one we are currently experiencing due to the COVID-19 pandemic?
You deserve a presidential medal of honor.
However, as a parent, it’s important that you help your transition-age child learn the necessary skills he or she will need once he gets out into the working world. Luckily, there are steps you can take now to prepare your child for lifelong success.
Here are some ideas you can try.
1. Teach Basic Responsibility
You might not think that vacuuming or folding laundry has anything to do with the workplace, but the reality is that encouraging your child to get involved in basic household tasks can really go a long way.
You can easily prepare your transition-age child for adulthood by showing them the importance of responsibility in tasks as simple as washing the dishes or as complex as managing a budget.
You can evaluate what level of responsibility your child is ready for depending on his age and ability, but ultimately, instilling responsibility through household tasks will lay the groundwork for successful adulthood.
2. Do Some Interview Practice
Think back to your first interview. Chances are, it was probably a terrifying experience!
Your child likely feels no different about the prospect of his or her first interview, too. Add to that the fact that learning difficulties often bring along with them heightened feelings of anxiety and self-doubt, and you have the perfect storm.
You can help to quell some of those nerves by working with your child on in-depth interviewing skills.
- Teach your child some basic skills ahead of time, such as:
- Wearing appropriate attire
- Shaking hands
- Keeping the cell phone stashed away
- Maintaining good eye contact
- Asking and answering questions
If you have a few people in the household, why not make this a fun activity? Use your spouse or another sibling to showcase what to do as well as what not to do, and get the whole family in on the schtick. Hold mock interviews and ask your child – the interviewee – common questions that might come in an interview.
And for even more laughs? After you’ve gone a few rounds, turn the tables and let your child interview you. Having your child put themselves in the interviewer’s perspective is a great way to build interviewing skills and a sense of empathy, both of which are important for a transition-age child.
Has it been a while since you’ve been to an interview yourself? Here’s a helpful interview checklist and some tips you can reference while working with your child.
3. Teach (or Re-Teach) Basic Manners
You’ve probably already done a great job of installing basic manners in your child. However, etiquette and manners are vital for any job, and it doesn’t hurt to brush up on the basics every now and then.
Teach your child the best way to greet people, how to maintain eye contact, and of course, the quintessential “please” and “thank you.”
A fun way to teach and re-teach manners is to put yourself in a practical setting, like a dinner out at a fancy restaurant. Unfortunately, during a time of quarantine, that’s not really an option. But why not recreate that setting at home? You can set your dining room up as the fancy seating area in a five-star establishment and practice those basic manners in that way instead.
4. Go Over Their “Digital Hygiene”
Ask any employer, and they’ll likely tell you that one of the biggest issues with teens headed out into the workforce is that they don’t have any idea what kind of impact their digital footprint has. A person’s social media profile – public or not – provides a ton of information to an employer about how they will perform on the job, as well as on their basic work readiness.
Go over your child’s social media profiles. They might not like it, but it’s important that you stay apprised of their digital goings-on regardless of anything else. It’s a matter of safety, after all. Make sure your child understands how much of an impact their Facebook, Instagram, or other social media pages can have on their “hirability,” and encourage them to the greatest extent possible to clean things up.
Get rid of any offensive or inappropriate material and make sure they take the opportunity to stylize their coconuts to reflect the person they really think they are. A picture speaks a thousand words!
5. Practice Listening Skills
Listening is another skill that’s vital for the workforce, and unfortunately, it’s a skill that many transition-age children simply don’t have. Luckily, listening skills are easy to build with fun games. Again, this is an area in which you can get the entire family involved.
Play some basic listening games, like Telephone, or even some elementary-level games like Mother, May I or Red Light Green Light. Your child might scoff at the idea of playing such juvenile games, but chances are, once you’ve got the whole family reeling in laughter, he’s sure to crack a smile and play along!
6. Work On Basic Time Management Tasks
Time management is not an area of strength for many teens with learning challenges. Start small by giving your child small tasks to complete. If you can, choose fun, easy-to-complete tasks that won’t be too overwhelming.
For example, you might tell your son that he has ten minutes to complete as many items as possible on the list you give him. Determine each task’s value ahead of time and don’t be afraid to assign different values to different tasks of varying importance. This will teach the benefits of prioritizing, after all.
Make the tasks simple. For example:
- Take the laundry out of the dryer (2 points)
- Come up with a nickname for each family member (5 points)
- Do fifteen pushups (10 points)
Afterward, go over which tasks your son or daughter was able to accomplish and ask what they would have done differently. Make sure you take the opportunity to reflect!
7. Use Games to Build Collaboration Skills
Again, games are a great way to build another crucial job skill- collaboration. One fun game that you can play with items you already have at home involves just rubber bands, paper cups, and a few strings.
You’ll need a few people for this game, so it’s best for kids with other siblings in the house. Tie strings to a single rubber band (the number of strings will depend on how many people are playing). Each person should hold one of the strings, and together, they’ll use the device to lift the cups.
Not only will your child have to be able to think critically and practice problem-solving skills (both of which are vital for the workforce) but he’ll also need to exercise patience and good collaborative skills, too.
8. Go Through All The Steps
For children with learning difficulties, it might be challenging to understand why, exactly, you have to say please and thank you.
Make sure you break down why each job skill is important. Will the skill help them be self-sufficient? Will the skill help them to avoid hurting the feelings of others? No matter what the purpose is, make sure you discuss the specific how’s and why’s, so your child has a complete understanding of why each skill is important.
9. Model Appropriate Behaviors
This sounds obvious, but as a parent, you are your child’s best teacher. Children don’t learn from being told to do something – they learn by seeing a behavior repeated, time and time again. You have a ton of opportunities to instill good job readiness skills in your son or daughter.
Think about how you interact with your child and ask yourself whether you are displaying the skills you want them to have.
If you tell them to clean up their social media, make sure you brush yours up first to remove any offensive or inappropriate material.
If you tell them the importance of manners, don’t think you can get away with asking for them to pass the mashed potatoes without saying “please” and “thank you.”
Often, you don’t need fancy games, activities, or tasks to teach your child job skills at all. You just need to model the very best practices and behaviors yourself.
What Are “Soft Skills” – and Why Are They Important?
You’ll notice that none of the tips I mentioned have anything to do with schoolwork.
While academics are undoubtedly important, it’s more important that you teach your children the skills they’ll need across the board, regardless of what industry or line of work they ultimately pursue.
As a parent, it’s important that you work to actively instill “soft skills” in your children.
What are softs skills, you might ask? They’re the job-readiness skills that are more like personal characteristics. They’re incredibly difficult to teach, but the good news is that you, as a parent, have the best shot at installing these skills in your son or daughter.
Soft Skills might include things like flexibility, motivation, self-confidence, negotiation, communication skills, teamwork, responsibility, respect, and more.
These skills aren’t tangible, and it’s tough to determine whether a transition-age child has mastered them without actually interacting with that child over a long period of time.
However, once your child has developed these skills – which he or she can do by trying the job skill-building tasks I detailed above – he will be able to become a successful, well-rounded member of the workforce.
Further Reading
- Alison Doyle: Top Soft Skills Employers Value with Examples
- Pandemic Social Stories Direct Access by Carol Gray
- Beth Hall Davis: Helping Teens Navigate Social Media
- Encourage Play: Listening Games for Kids
- GreatSchools: Organization and Time Management Strategies for Kids with LD
- Mercy Home: 7 Fun Ways to Teach Teens Job-Readiness Skills
- The Center for Parenting Excellence: Responsibility and Chores: Parents as Teachers