It’s June, and the fledgling birds cheeping up in my porch eaves are starting to leave the nest. Many of our children are doing the same, whether it be college, a new job, or even marriage. Three of my own grandchildren graduated this Spring. Do our children have the skills they need to soar in their new environment, or will they crash right out the door?
Many of our children enter adulthood with little knowledge on being grown up. They have been concentrating on their academics, but are woefully lacking in real-life skills and knowledge. There are certain practical skills that will make life easier for our children stepping into adulthood. If they’ve never been taught, they may have a slow learning curve and a lot of turbulence. Unraveled hems either hang ragged or get fixed with staplers or scotch tape, toilets build up a thick layer of gunk inside, credit cards get maxed out, germs flourish and nutrition fades when our kids aren’t taught basic life skills.
“We parents, we’re doing too much,” says Julie Lythcott-Haims, former dean of freshmen at Stanford University. “We have the very best of intentions, but when we over-help, we deprive them of the chance to learn these really important things that it turns out they need to learn to be prepared to be out in the world of work, to get an apartment, to make their way through an unfamiliar town, to interact with adults who aren’t motivated by love.”1
What do they need to learn before they strike out on their own?
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