Of all the life skills to teach teens, Daily Living Skills are the simplest life skills to teach.  They are also the most used skills.  These are skills that all of us use on a daily or weekly basis.

Daily Living Skills can be defined as the routine tasks and behaviors that are essential to everyday life.  These skills are the routine tasks that each of us do as we go through our daily lives.  Many times, they are the tasks we do so frequently, that we just don’t think about our teens not knowing how to complete them because they come so naturally to us.

In this post we will discuss some examples of Daily Living Skills that your teen should know how to complete before leaving your nest.

Survival Daily Living Skills

Let’s start with survival type skills your teen will need as they transition to adulthood.  When we talk about survival, the main skills for survival are related to food, water, shelter, and clothing.  As we all learned from an early age, these are the skills we all need to survive. As we think about survival skills, what are some skills that relate to food, water, shelter, and clothing that a teen might need to know to survive? 

Food – Survival Skills

The first one that comes to my mind is food. Does your teen know the basics of making sure they have food for themselves?  Skills related to food survival skills could be things like how to obtain food, how to plan meals, how to prepare food, and how to safely preserve and store foods.  

If you are a family that cooks meals at home, your teen may already have some knowledge of these skills as they may have watched you complete these tasks for your family or maybe you have even included them in this process.  If so, this is a great start.  However, if your family is more of a take-out family, this skill may be harder for your teen. Eating out consistently is expensive and not very healthy, which can lead to additional issues for young adults. To help your teen avoid these additional struggles, be sure to teach your teen food survival skills before they leave your nest to help set them up for success.

Shelter – Survival Skills

The next skill related to survival skills is providing shelter for yourself and/or family.  Does your teen know how to secure housing once they leave your home, the different housing options they will have once they leave your home, what property managers will require to lease or rent housing, how to fill out housing leasing/rental agreements, what it would take to get a home mortgage, what type of insurance would be needed. 

Once housing is secured, home maintenance and upkeep skills become important as well.  Teens should know how to complete basic home maintenance skills such as, how to care for a lawn and landscape, unclog a drain, change the air conditioning/heating filters, turn on and off the electricity using the breaker, turn on an off the water supply, check a smoke alarm, and who to call when the maintenance and/or repair needs are bigger than they can handle.  In order to learn many of these skills, teens will need to also know the proper use of basic household tools and equipment.

Another skill set related to shelter skills, teens should also know how to properly clean a home.  This would include skills such as knowing which cleaning products to use when cleaning a house (including cleaning product safety), how to use a vacuum, run the dishwasher or dish wash by hand, change the sheets on a bed (or fold a fitted sheet 😜), and how to properly clean each room of the house (not just pick up the clutter).

Clothing – Survival Skills

Another skill we think of when we are talking about survival is how to properly clothe ourselves.  These would include skills like laundering your clothes properly, how to iron clothes, knowing how to do basic mending, knowing what size of clothes one wears, and knowing where to purchase basic clothing necessities.

These examples provide you a starting point for some of the basic survival skills that will be necessary for your teen to survive outside of your home.  However, survival skills are not the only skills needed in our daily lives to thrive in the world.  So, let’s move onto our next type of Daily Living Skills needed, Out and About Skills.

Out & About Skills

Out and About Skills are the type of skills one would need once they leave their home and get out of their immediate personal bubble and into the outside world.  These are skills needed to complete basic interactions with the public, complete civic duties, and how to get from one place to another. 

Basic Public Interactions – Out & About Skills

So, let’s start with basic public interactions.  These could be skills like knowing how to make an appointment, reservation, or placing an order, write a handwritten letter (including addressing the letter and mailing the letter), and basic safety skills (both physical and digital safety).

Civic – Out & About Skills

If your teen has turned 18, they will now have basic civic duties required of them.  These skills require them to know how to register to vote, how to find their polling place, how to research various sides of any issues affecting their community, state, or nation in order to form their own conclusions and vote accordingly.

Transportation – Out & About Skills

And finally, once your teen leaves the home, they will need various transportation skills to get them where they want and need to go.  These could be skills such as how to use public transportation or ride sharing apps.  They should also learn how to navigate using physical signs and a paper map and not just using their map apps on their phone.  I know they may not believe it, but there may come a time when they are someplace without internet or cell service and still need to find their way to their destination.  If your teen has their own vehicle or plans to get one sometime in the future, they will also need a different set of skills, basic vehicle maintenance. These are skills such as how to fill their vehicle with fuel, how to fix a flat tire, or change a dead car battery. 

Now that you have some examples of basic Daily Living Skills your teen will need to master before leaving your nest, the only thing left to do is to begin teaching your teen the ins and outs of these various skills.  There is no time to waste.  The teen years fly by and before you know it, they will have one or both feet out the door.  Get started teaching your teens these skills now, you’ll be glad you did!

Need more help?

Whenever you’re ready, here are 2 quick and easy tools to help you start preparing your teen for adulthood, so you can relax and be at peace knowing your teen is ready to take the adult world by storm!

1. Get a copy of my Life Skills Starter Kit –  It’ll give you a quick and easy activity to plug in teaching life skills to your teen in your weekly schedule…so you can start preparing your teen for adulthood, even if you and your teen are so busy or if it seems the time is flying by too fast.
2. If you’re really struggling with the busyness of life, but know you need to find time to prepare your teen for adulthood, get a copy of my Tackle Your Time Toolkit.  This kit will help you identify ways to find more time in your schedule to dedicate to preparing your teen for adulthood.