Important context: While age-based milestones are helpful guides, they’re not rigid rules. Daily living skills develop at different rates, often unevenly or asynchronously, especially for neurodivergent learners. Use these milestones as a flexible reference, always considering each individual’s unique profile.
We’re continuing to roll along on our series about Daily Living Skills. After posting our Executive Functioning Skills By Age: What to Look For article, many of you asked us for similar step-by-step guidance for daily living skills. Today’s the day! We’re posting our guide to Daily Living Skills At Every Age.
Using a developmental model, we’ll take a deep dive into how we learn and acquire the essential skills for independent living as adults.
Click here to jump down to the TL;DR summary.
What are Daily Living Skills?
As the title suggests, daily living skills (DLS) are all the behaviors we engage in to be successful and independent in everyday life. Without these skills, we may struggle to make healthy choices and meet our basic needs.
While different researchers may categorize DLS differently, in general, the primary daily living skills include behaviors around:
- Communication
- Executive Functioning (planning, organization, time management, etc.)
- Primary Needs (food/eating, health, household, safety)
- Secondary Needs (transportation, personal finance, vocation/work)
- Advanced Needs (leisure/recreation, stress management, self-care)
- Advanced Plus+ (citizenship, legal, advocacy, self-determination)
How Do Daily Living Skills Develop
We all know humans aren’t born knowing how to do the laundry. So how do we develop daily living skills in areas that allow us to live independently as adults?
Most researchers subscribe to a developmental model for how we develop daily living skills. That is, we have an innate, genetic capacity to develop daily living skills. However, we learn the skills through environmental experience. Therefore, if we expect our students to develop daily living skills, we must provide the opportunity and, in many cases, specifically teach these skills.
What Happens For Unique Learners?
Not all individuals develop daily living skills milestones in the same way. Many teens and young adults with unique learning needs develop some daily living skills but struggle to gain independence with others. Whether it’s because of a diagnosis, language and communication difficulties, low motivation or another learning barrier, the foundational communication and daily living skills aren’t sturdy enough to support more advanced behaviors.
For some diverse learners, daily living skills plateau at a particular stage and don’t continue to progress towards more complex behaviors. Or for other learners, they may continue to develop more advanced daily living skills, but it’s at a much slower pace than we’d expect from their same-age peers.
Regardless, many studies support that it’s possible to overcome these barriers. Targeted learning interventions for teaching daily living skills are well-documented in research, including behavioral skills training, visual schedules and supports, and positive reinforcement.
The important thing as parents and teachers of unique learners is not to give up. Progress can always be made towards greater independence.
Daily Living Skills By Age
Unsure what to expect for your learner’s daily living skills or if your learner’s skills are delayed in a specific area? Review the summary of each of the daily living skills below. Or download our free .pdf printable chart. It includes a brief description of each of the daily living skills areas.
Communication Skills
Achieving independence with daily living skills begins with a strong foundation of communication. It’s difficult to imagine how learners with unique needs will acquire skills like job training, financial management, or navigating public transportation without well-developed communication skills.
Regardless of how your learner communicates (vocally, visually, with adaptive supports, or a combination), dedicate the time to help your learner respond to instructions and share with others. It may mean dedicating time to teaching appropriate requests, or new vocabulary, or even conversation skills. Often, we have communication activities embedded right into working on DLS with a student.
Executive Functioning Skills
Our learners also need a strong foundation of executive functioning skills to tackle other DLS areas successfully. For example, planning, time management, organization, and attentional control behaviors are often prerequisite skills to learn more complex routines and advanced DLS.
For a detailed look at a developmental model of executive functioning skills, review our previous article, “Executive Functioning Skills by Age: What to Look For.”
DLS: Primary Needs
Primary daily living skills involve meeting our basic needs for food, safety, health, and household. As humans, we are one of the few species that need all of these basic survival needs provided for us at birth. It’s not until the ages of 2-4 years old do we start to gain some independence in feeding, dressing, and taking care of our hygiene.
Children acquire many of the skills needed to cook, clean, and manage their health and safety during pre-teen and teen years. They may need frequent adult reminders and occasional ‘boosters’ to generalize skills to new settings. However, by young adulthood, we’re
DLS: Secondary Needs
Secondary DLS involves navigating the environment around us, including behaviors related to academics/vocation, managing finances, and transportation. As young children, adults support nearly all of these skills, essentially providing models and opportunities for us to “learn by example.” In addition, young children participate in parts of these skills (e.g., handing money to the cashier for a candy bar) as opportunities arise.
By pre-teen years, we start to perform more and more of these skills without needing adult support. Throughout adolescence, we provide opportunities to learn to meet secondary needs (e.g., saving allowance, taking public transportation with friends, helping with yard work, or babysitting to earn money). But we don’t require our learners to complete these skills independently but create safe spaces to make mistakes and learn the DLS behaviors. We also continue to develop executive functioning and communication behaviors required to be independent with secondary DLS skills.
By adulthood, we’re able to meet all of our secondary needs, including identifying and holding a job, managing the details of finances and a household, and successfully navigating in our environment.
DLS: Advanced Skills
Once teens and young adults are skilled at meeting primary and secondary needs, we start to consider developing advanced DLS skills–or behaviors that support our physical and emotional well-being. These include hobbies, recreation, leisure time, and stress management.
It’s odd to think about these behaviors developing in childhood and adolescence, but often it’s where we first learn about what activities bring us greater joy and happiness. Throughout adolescence and our teenage years, we learn different ways to manage stress and establish good habits before the stressors of adulthood pile up.
Many parents and teachers spend a great deal of time focusing on primary and secondary DLS areas but miss out on the opportunity to teach leisure, recreation, and stress management skills. However, we know the consequences of too much stress as adults, so dedicating resources throughout childhood is worth the effort.
DLS: Advanced+ Skills
Finally, we recognize that part of being independent adults involves being an active participant in our community. Behaviors around citizenship (voting, volunteering, environmental stewardship), the law, and self-advocacy are essential skills we develop as young adults. But many of these skills begin to grow in childhood as we model them for our students.
Even though children and teens may not participate in Advanced+ skills yet, teaching them a foundational understanding of the importance of these behaviors and modeling participation in them is one of the best ways to ensure they generalize into adulthood.
Where to Get Started
If you’ve reviewed the daily living skills chart and decided your student may need some booster training, check out these resources to get started:
- 6 Key Steps for Making Values-Based Decisions for Your Child’s Daily Living Skills
- How to Evaluate Your Teen’s Daily Living Skills
- Executive Functioning 101 Hub
- Life Skills Advocate – Executive Functioning and Life Skills Coaching
TL;DR – (Too Long, Didn’t Read)
What: Daily Living Skills (DLS) are essential skills we use to live independently. They include:
- Communication
- Executive Functioning (planning, organizing, managing time)
- Primary Needs (food, health, household, safety)
- Secondary Needs (transportation, money management, work)
- Advanced Needs (hobbies, recreation, stress management)
- Advanced Plus+ Needs (citizenship, legal rights, advocacy)
How: We learn these skills gradually through experiences, teaching, and practice. Everyone learns at their own pace, influenced by their environment and unique needs.
Neurodivergent Learners: Neurodivergent teens and young adults often develop DLS differently or face challenges due to:
- Communication or language difficulties
- Executive function struggles
- Lower motivation
- Learning barriers related to specific diagnoses
The good news: research supports targeted methods—like visual schedules, behavioral training, and positive reinforcement—to help overcome these challenges.
Not sure what skills to expect at your learner’s age?
Check out our Daily Living Skills by Age Chart for a helpful overview you can view and download.
Key takeaway: Wherever you or your learner is starting from, progress toward independence is always possible with patience, support, and tailored strategies.
Further Reading
- Bal, V. H., Kim, S. H., Cheong, D., & Lord, C. (2015). Daily living skills in individuals with autism spectrum disorder from 2 to 21 years of age. Autism: the international journal of research and practice, 19(7), 774–784. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362361315575840
- Conversation Skills Video Course
- Life Skills Advocate – “School Is Pointless!” A Parent’s Guide to Low Academic Motivation
- University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) – Stress Management: Helping Your Child With Stress
sungguh sangat senang bagi saya, mengetahui ada yang memiliki perhatian penuh kepada remaja. ini sungguh menolong saya dalam pelayanan di gereja. terima kasih, matur nuwun.. (thx from Javanese-Indonesia)