Important Life Skills That Kids Acquire During the School Life

by Samiksha S. Author

We all know that teaching life skills to children can help pave the way to their independence and success. However, do you really know what these life skills actually are? So, let us first try and understand more about life skills.

Life skills can be described as a set of basic skills that an individual acquires via experiences and learning and empowers him/her to deal with daily problems. Critical thinking, decision making, problem-solving, communication, and creativity are some of the basic life skills. Besides these, personal skills, social responsibility, and the ability to cooperate and communicate with others are some additional life skills that are equally vital.

An important point to keep into consideration about life skills is that the set of skills that one person considers vital may not be the case for another individual! This means that each person has some skill sets that hold more importance for them than others. For example, if a person hails from a remote rural community, he might not have ‘driving a car’ on his list of essential skills. As such, depending on your beliefs, cultures, values, life circumstances, geographical location, and age, you will consider certain skills more important than others.

However, let us now focus on some basic skills that the World Health Organization reckons as important for an individual to acquire:

With communication and interpersonal skills, you can transfer and receive written and verbal messages, among others.
Thanks to decision-making and problem-solving skills, you understand problems, find solutions to them (either alone or in collusion with others), and take appropriate action.
Creative thinking and critical thinking are all about thinking differently and coming up with better, innovative ways of resolving issues. More so, this particular skill set trains you to process information and understand its context.
Self-awareness and empathy are the two subsets of emotional intelligence. These skills help you understand more about yourself and feel the pain of others who are in difficult situations.
Assertiveness and equanimity (or self-control) denote those skills that you need to stand up for yourself as well as others and maintain your composure under all circumstances.
Resilience and problem-solving ability help you to bounce back after facing setbacks in life and view hardships as opportunities to learn from.

Another important point to remember about life skills is that they vary in relevance at different times of life. For instance, when you’re studying in school or university, you require study skills. On the other hand, to buy a house, you should be able to negotiate and have patience. Also, by working on your employability skills, you can get a job. More so, you have to display leadership skills when you have a job. Likewise, when starting a family, you need good parenting skills. Besides, time management and organizational skills come in handy at all times. And not to forget, the most important life skill is deemed to be your ability and willingness to learn. If you have this skill, acquiring all the other skills becomes easy.

At Delhi Public School, Kangra, one of the top 5 schools in Kangra, we understand that as a parent, you want your children to acquire all the essential skills so that they can understand the world and its ways of working better. After all, these skills are rather imperative for them to lead a satisfying life and come up with ways of coping better with life’s challenges.

Having said that, we firmly believe that learning and attaining skills is a lifelong process that prepares us to understand the ways of the world better. But yes, of course, the foundation for this learning has to be laid right during the initial years of life, ideally during the school years, as that is the supplest phase of life. This is the time when the human brain is most porous and remains open to readily embracing all the new learnings and skills.

Life Skills: Benefits of teaching them to the young minds

After getting a clearer idea about life skills, let us now move on to discussing the various benefits of teaching life skills to kids. So, some of the core benefits of teaching life skills to children include:

Instills self-confidence in kids, helps them adapt to life’s changes, and preps them for facing and coping with the challenges that come along the way in their lives
Teaches them to stand up for themselves in society
Gears them up to handle opportunities, challenges, and problems by helping them understand their rights and responsibilities

In a nutshell, developing basic life skills in your child works as the key to improving their prospects in life – both personally and professionally!

Why is it necessary for schools to focus on nurturing life skills in children?

As one of the best schools in Kangra, we, at DPS Kangra, believe that along with focusing on delivering quality education to children, it is vital that emphasis is laid on teaching life skills to them in school. After all, democracies require citizens who are informed, responsible, and active. Moreover, they should be able to shoulder responsibility for themselves as well as for others. Life skills are also mandatory for them to be able to express their opinions and arguments clearly.

Certainly, some life skills develop in children because of their daily experiences at home. However, this may not be enough to equip them to play an active role in today’s diverse and complex scenario. For this reason, we, at DPS Kangra, recommend a structured approach toward developing life skills in children to prepare them for an active role in public affairs.

What are the basic life skills that children can acquire during their school years?

You all would agree that educational institutions like schools, colleges, and universities contribute to an individual’s overall development by not only providing them with the know-how to fare well in life but by also instilling in them the basic skill sets that come to their aid in both their personal as well as professional spheres. Let us discuss some of such basic life skills that kids acquire during their school years but continue to have importance in the real world ahead.

Numeracy skills

The benefits of developing numeracy skills are manifold. At Delhi Public School Kangra, one of the top 10 schools in Kangra, we believe that by honing our students’ numeracy skills, we increase their chances of getting employed. Being a parent, you would also want to empower your child to take advantage of various opportunities in the professional world ahead as they climb up the corporate ladder. And to that end, we are sure you all would agree that if your kids have firm know-how of the fundamental principles of mathematics, arithmetic, and numeracy, they are more likely to gain a lot personally as well as professionally.

Interpersonal and communication skills

Problem-solving skills, decision-making skills, and communication skills come under interpersonal skills. Developing children’s interpersonal and communication skills help them to connect with others.

During their term at school, as part of interpersonal skills, they get to develop effective listening skills, verbal communication, and non-verbal communication. This helps bring clarity in their communication and avoid any misunderstandings. Moreover, with sharpened verbal and non-verbal communication skills, children can easily build rapport with others and earn some life-long connections.

Reading and writing skills

Schools play a vital role in perfecting the writing and reading skills of children. When children learn to write clearly and concisely, they feel more confident when it comes to conveying messages to others, be it a small group or a large audience. Likewise, as they strengthen their reading skills, children find it easy to expand their knowledge base by exploring various resources available to them. All in all, reading and writing skills go a long way in not merely building the knowledge bank of children but also instilling in them confidence and self-worth.

Teamwork skills

School years entail completing assignments on time while working with other students in a team. As part of the assignments, each group member is also designated certain responsibilities. This caters to teaching children the valuable skill of teamwork and cooperation. Only when all the kids in a group project understand their responsibility and consider themselves important for the success of their team can they make their assignments/projects successful. This helps the children learn how to fit into a team while working in groups. They also get a better understanding of people’s strengths, moods, weaknesses, and emotions via teamwork.

Such teamwork skills that children get to acquire during their school years also come to their aid when they step into their professional life. Thus, if your child learns how to work with others to drive the desired results during their time at school, they will be better equipped to tackle difficult situations in the professional world. In short, they, by contributing either as a member or leader while working in teams in school, can learn lessons that gear them for professional success.

Personal strengths and motivational skills

An important skill that children get to learn during their school years is an understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses. Besides, a good school always ensures that children remain motivated to overcome their weaknesses. As such, when children learn how to motivate themselves and get a good understanding of their personal strengths, it basically preps them up for embracing as well as overcoming life’s challenges.

Resourcefulness

Another crucial skill that children acquire during school life is resourcefulness. By being resourceful, they know when to ask for help from others and when to depend on themselves. This prepares them to get out of sticky situations by using all the means that are available to them.

Organizational skills

The school years teach children to set up a symphony between their classes, assignments, and small tasks. They learn how to prioritize the tasks at hand, given their level of importance. This helps build in them organization skills, which come to their aid in every walk of life. Be it on the personal front or the professional front, if they have strong organizational skills, multitasking would become a piece of cake for them.

Thinking out-of-the-box

Today’s school education is no longer about rote learning. Gone are the days when students were merely required to mug up all of their class notes and create a replica of the same on their exam answer sheets. Today’s school education is more about evoking creativity, innovation, and out-of-the-box thinking in the young minds. Children are provided with many opportunities to polish their creative skills and polish their thinking skills. This enables children to start viewing things with an open mind. Children, in the process, grow more adaptable to learning new skills and entertaining new ideas and thought processes. They will be more receptive to different perspectives and readily apply critical thinking to varied concepts.

We, at DPS Kangra, one of the best primary school in Kangra, have seen that when children are encouraged to wear their creative hats on and apply their innovation skills, they grow more adaptable and receptive to newer ways of getting things done. This goes on to benefit them in their personal as well as professional life.

In a nutshell…

A good school serves as the training ground for young minds to attain the necessary know-how and earn the vital skills to gain success in their life ahead. However, enrolling your child in a school that emphasizes just as much on life skills as it does on the other facets of education impartation makes all the difference! By choosing Delhi Public School Kangra, one of the best schools in Kangra, to be your child’s alma mater, you can rest assured that your child is experiencing an all-round growth.

The entire pedagogy at our school has been framed in such a manner that our pupils get to learn and attain the necessary skills during both the academic and non-academic activities. The outcome of our approaches and efforts can be clearly witnessed in the huge feats that our students keep on registering in curricular as well as co-curricular arenas.