Life Skills for Kids by Christine Field So if you have Jury Duty this is a good book to take along to read during all the waiting. About 300 pages, plus an Appendix that is quite helpful, of life skills grouped into the following categories: people skills, home skills, getting around in the world, managing your time, managing your stuff, fixing and maintaining your stuff, money, self care, your brain, spiritual habits, decision making, creativity and celebration. I knew some of this stuff. Ok, so there is actually a lot in this book that never would have crossed my mind to teach my children. For example, it suggests you teach you High School student about different health insurance plans and insurance. Learning to use public transportation, creating lists of pros and cons when decision making, organizing your time are others that I were not on my radar as items to actively teach my kids. Glad I have the book because I don't know about some of this stuff myself.
It provided a great service to me in that it really brought home the importance of some of these skills and the long reaching effects of obtaining them. For example, the importance of learning to settle disagreements with a sibling on his own. I would think - of course that is important because I want my son to have good people skills. This book took it a step further and put it to me this way - learning how to handle differences between siblings is a skill that will aid my son in having a positive marriage. Hey...wait. That puts WAY more pressure on me! Then I got to thinking (yikes) that my son's marriage will of course affect my grandchildren.
It is a quick read. I was done by the time Marta deposited me back at my car after Jury Duty. The book, and I, suggest reading it all the way through first. Now I am making a list of life skills for my boys that we will learn (quite literally together in some cases) over the next year. I made notes of items for the next few years. The insurance stuff...we'll talk about that down the road. The thing is with these kids, we are moving down this road much more quickly than I ever thought. Time is flying by. It isn't so far away that my boys will need this information. In the mean time, info on learning to take care of their own shoes is pretty helpful on the pocket book as well.
The book is a great resource. It is one of the few that I would recommend that you get your own because you are gonna want to look back at it over the years. It does not tell you how to teach them everything - but most. There are quite a few references to scripture and Bible stories. This is a good book. kc
