Life skills? How they can help your kid?

Are you hesitant to introduce your kids to basic life skills? If you think you are robbing them of their childhood or want to keep them away from them, I would urge you not to. I believe that the life skills if used consistently and positively can give your kids hands-on training that can shape their lives differently.

My most hated life skill

If 30 years ago, anyone would have told me that I would be a banker or would work as part of the financial services industry, I would have probably laughed my heart out. I hated the bank more than anything else in the world and I hated bankers.

The reason I hated the bank, and our local bank, in particular, was that I had lousy memories of a bank as a child. Since I was from a family of two working parents, a part of that mix was that I learnt to run errands and get ahead of the game in many areas of my life. At a young age, visiting the bank to deposit cheques or break deposits were a normal chore I did to help my working parents. That was one life skill I was familiar with.

Why I hated that life skill?

I would enter the small cramped up building they call the bank and would immediately feel like an outcast. (with no exaggeration!)I felt unwelcome and if looks could kill I would be seven feet under. The staff would look as if they were forced to work in a job they hated. As soon as they saw clients, they pretended to look busy, burying their face in a whole load of paperwork. And if they saw a child like me, they always pretended it was their tea break!

Now, this was a time when the concept of ‘The customer is the king’ was unheard of. I was not the king, but the pain-in-the-ass -kid-client who came to give these staff work. I am pretty sure since I was a kid who did a haphazard job, that meant an additional pile of work for them.

So I would be met with irritated eyes, or eyes pretending to busy or eyes needing to go for a tea break or be blatantly ignored or was treated rudely. Now how could a child retort to grown-ups? So I would stand humbly and wait and pray for this chore to be over so that I could run off and be a child again! So you can imagine where my distaste for the job came.

Life skill – Lesson 1

As a child, I got why they would hate additional work. I understood that concept pretty well. But I didn’t understand why they felt the need to treat people shabbily. I wondered why on earth they didn’t leave their jobs if they hated it so much instead of torturing themselves and others in the process. Don’t for a second think that I did not know that we needed money to live. I came from the ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees’ parent generation. So that was pretty clear!

But the question that would run through my mind was that why couldn’t they earn money in a job they liked? I understood later on that’ job satisfaction’ was an alien concept for that generation. For me, the concept was important because working life constitutes a good chunk of your day. So from early on, I had promised myself, that when I would work, I would only do a job that I loved, for the greater good of myself. 😉

Life skills- Lesson 2

But as I grew, I learnt a great deal from this experience. It taught me to interact with adults in a professional set up. I also learned to ask for help when I couldn’t sort things on my own. Basic banking transactions were not alien to me any more. Besides that, I also honed two other skills, namely, patience and good manners. I had picked up many skills in my tool kit.

The outcome of the life skills I was introduced to

Life skills : Outcome -1

Learning such type of skills as a child is invaluable, to say the least, because, by the time I was 18, I had my account and was the master of it. I knew how to save money, withdraw it, put it into my account, create a fixed deposit as well as break it. It also helped me plan my expenses and budget. I remember saving all the money that I received as a gift for my 21st birthday into my account. That made it possible for me to pay for my 1st year Masters of Economics with my own money! How cool is that? Imagine the high it gave me!

Life skills : Outcome -2

This, in turn, gave me the confidence that I could navigate myself in the world of banking. So when I found myself making career choices, despite my heart voting to be a writer or a journalist or something on those lines, I prudently chose to be a banker. I probably thought that if I could navigate it as a kid, I would ace it as an adult! If I were, to be honest, media was not a game-changer 20 years ago and was still in its adolescent stage. It wasn’t as advanced as it is now and I did not see any viable career option in the field.

My conclusions

I often wonder why banking became my obvious choice even though I hated it. I believe that as I learnt to bank, it built my confidence and sense of self that I could do something well. It is that sense of confidence that culminated into love for the job. Now if you talk anything banking and finance, I am all ears and all excited. I see that as a wonderful breakthrough!

What I learnt from that experience is that if we allow are ourselves to be open to learning, open to trying and are consistent in our efforts, it can change the trajectory of the ways things play out in life. So if you find yourself hating something or having a particular dislike for anything, it may be helpful to be patient and consistent in it for love most often comes from uncertain places.

Handing over the staff- Passing the life skill to the next generation

I am so thrilled with my experience that I want to hand over the staff to my kids so that they can have the same experience that I had. Lucky for them, life has made a U-turn since then. Now banks have catered to the child’s experience. There are accounts which make banking a very pleasant experience for the child.

So when I went to open an account for my girls, M bank, imagine my surprise when I saw they get a magic money machine to put all their coins in. These coins can get credited to their account. To motivate the kids to save, they have a novel idea of giving the kids a £5 credit if they save at least £1 a month for 5 months. If that wasn’t enough, they also get a fancy prize every month for the money they save. If that is not incentive enough, I don’t know what is! My kids have collected things like lip balms, lunch bags, etc to keep them hooked on to banking.

Will you introduce your kids to life skills?

Will you introduce your kids to life skills like cooking, cleaning, banking etc. I encourage you to expose them to all of them possible. For me, this has a higher mark of success than a career counselling session because this is hands-on training and more practical. If they are lucky like me, they will find a job that they love and feel confident in. If not, at least they will learn a skill that will come handy in the future. I believe a job doesn’t have to be a chore but is full of excitement and love. Will you give them a taste for it now?