I come from a family that encouraged us to be independent and have carried this legacy on through my girls. We both want them to have enquiring minds and the bravery to experience things and take chances. Here’s how we have encouraged independence in our children:
1. Positive Attitude
We’ve never made out that trying new experiences is scary or can go wrong. And we’ve definitely always congratulated our girls for stepping out of their comfort zone and going for new challenges. This prep school in London suggests encouraging a positive attitude towards challenges and mistakes, emphasising the importance of learning and growth.
2. Start young
We’ve never been big ones for strict household chores (we are definitely not organised enough to create chore charts!) but we have always encouraged the children to help around the home and kitchen. From being toddlers, we’ve let them take the washing out of the machine and chop vegetables, using safety knives. If your children show interest in learning how something works around the home, it’s well worth investing the time to teach them.
3. Involve children in making decisions
You probably do this already without realising. We often talk about choices, what to eat, where to go, where to put something new, what colour to paint and who can forget those toddler years where you try to get them to wear something sensible by giving them a choice of 2 outfits? All good practice for not feeling overwhelmed later in life when the decision feel that little bit more serious.
4. Money
I really wish more skills around money and budgeting were taught in school but we can do the best we can at home.
Discuss if you spend on one treat, that you won’t have any money left for the next treat and stick to it. Our girls have had bank cards from as young as they can get them – They know to keep them safe and that the money on them is not infinite.
We talk about the unseen bills like Council Tax, Electricity – even the Recycling waste collection scheme, so they won’t be a shock when they have their own homes. Can’t you tell we are just riveting as a household?
5. Time Management
Now this one is more difficult – Its so tempting to constantly be the talking clock and keep reminders of when they need to be organised and need to leave the house.
I will admit we don’t rely on our girls using their alarms and actually getting out of bed in a morning for school. We’ve picked our battles and realised we just don’t want to deal with the fall out of them being late for school/college but its something to work towards!
6. Learn from mistakes
We know that sometimes we all make the wrong decisions and regret that we didn’t do something or took a different path than we should. No worries, always an opportunity to learn from and talk about what we might do differently next time.
7. Giving Responsibility
Children love being given their own tasks to do and equally love seeing when their siblings don’t do their own tasks! By allocating certain tasks, like putting on the car cover for hail and snow or emptying the washing machine, children will start to understand the variety of chores involved with keeping a house organised.
You can even go as far as to give them responsibility over your family pet. Of course, we’re not talking about sole responsibility, but some. You can get them to feed the pet, walk the pet, and do other things that care for its well being. We do recommend that if you’re leaving them in charge of letting them out in the garden though that you have an invisible dog fence or something similar just to be safe.
