‘All these skills have majorly impacted my adult life’ nd
Atlantic Canadians discuss teaching children life skills
Parenting involves passing along important life skills to children, but that can be a challenge if the parent wasn’t taught them when they were a child themselves.
Melody Pentland is a 41-year-old mother from Cole Harbour, N.S., who had her first child at 18 years old.
“I am mother to two wonderful human beings. My son is 21 years old and is a corporal in the Canadian Armed Forces, working on his next promotion. My daughter is 16 and in the 11th grade. She’s a cheerleader on All-star and Scholastic teams and she works part-time,” Pentland said.
“Teaching life skills was a hard one for me. I was 18 when I found out I was going to be a mother for the first time. Not a good decision. I had never known safety or stability and so my focus was on giving them that. My baby would know safety.”
Pentland didn’t want her child to experience the adversity that she had grown up with. So she took to educating the two of them about money.
“I saw how nice life was for some, and I wanted that for him. So, while he, and I, grew up in poverty, we learned the basics of money, together. We learned how to build a budget and pay the bills, together,” she said.
“He and I walked to the bank, bills in hand. We’d go pay them and update the bank book. He was very proud to deliver the passport style bank book to the teller to be updated. Over the years we spent a lot of time reading — me, out-loud to him — and talking about what money is and how it works.”
Having grown up with social anxiety and depression, later receiving an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis, Pentland felt it important to teach her son to protect himself.
“I feared the world as a dangerous and scary place. People are so auspicious, and caprice, so I spent a great deal of time passing these anxieties on to him by constantly talking to him about the behaviours of people I deemed untrustworthy that we would observe in our surroundings,” she said.
“It wasn’t all anxiety inducing, it was a good and protective behaviour that did serve its purpose, but my execution was lacking finesse most times. I didn’t want him to be hurt by unkind words, so I decided he would understand
what allows another person to project such unkindness out into the world.”
By the time her daughter was born, Pentland had decided compassion was one of the most important life skills she could teach her children. But it came with its own challenges.
“With both of my kids I talked about the fundamental things that drive behaviours, and the social and economic situations that bring a person to haste. I always, to this day, talk about the reasons we need to be liberal with our empathy and compassion,” she said
“I thought it would be easier when my daughter came along because I already knew what to do and I was already doing it. But no, I was wrong.
“I had no idea how to provide her with safety. Safety for a girl is not defined by financial status ... the world is simply not a safe place to be if you’re a girl. At the same time as my son was to read about finance, she was to read books on sportsmanship and spirit. Before money, I needed her to be confident enough to speak up and out so she can keep her autonomy safe.”
Pentland has been able to watch these life skills be put into practice as her children grow up, she said.
“I’m so proud to share that my son has excellent decisionmaking skills. He graduated high school, a milestone I did not meet, and has been working towards his career and life goals since before then. I’m most proud to say that my son is a wonderfully kind, caring and compassionate man,” she shared.
“My daughter is not an adult but, at 16, she is confident and intelligent and is also routinely demonstrating her good decision-making skills. She has big dreams and I hope she will realize them all. I think she will.”
ABILITY TO SELF-TEACH
Beth Rasmussen’s children are now independent adults, a 28-year-old and a 32-yearold, thanks to learning life skills as children… the most important one being the ability to self-teach.
“It was important to teach my children basic life skills including cooking, laundry, grocery shopping and tax preparation. The most important skill that I taught them was self-teaching,” explained the 60-year-old from Riverview, N.B.
“By teaching my children how to self-teach, they learned how to acquire knowledge and continue to acquire new knowledge to further their education and aid in employment. By teaching these skills to my children, they were able to graduate at the top of their class in their respective fields.”
Rasmussen was taught basic life skills from a young age and felt it imperative to pass them on to her children. There were a couple things she felt she missed in teaching them.
“I enjoyed school and continued on to university for a degree and later to two different colleges for unrelated fields of study. I believe my children inherited my desire for knowledge,” she said.
“I regret not teaching my children that people can be cruel, that one person cannot fix all the wrongs of the world, and kindness in the workplace is rare.”
SET UP FOR ADULTHOOD
Daniel Boudreau doesn’t have children of his own, but frequently reflects on how well his parents and grandparents set him up for adulthood.
“Three important life skills that I learned as a child were cooking, cleaning and gardening. Cooking was important for me because I started early with my grandmother who was a big influence on me, she let me help in the kitchen and taught me a lot of very economical ways to make meals,” the 34-year-old from P.E.I. said.
“My stepmother was very adamant that I learn to do my own laundry and contribute to the household by doing dishes, dusting and vacuuming. I know at the time I wasn’t always happy about it, but it certainly did set me up for adulthood.
“Each year my grandfather planted a garden, and I would see the effort that he put into it and the large quantity of vegetables that he would get from it in the fall. No matter where I have been, since the age of about 20, I have always had some form of a garden.”
Boudreau highly encourages parents to teach these skills to their children, not only for the tangible knowledge, but for the confidence that goes along with it.
“All these skills have majorly impacted my adult life, I consider myself to be a lot more self-sufficient because of knowing them.”
“Teaching life skills was a hard one for me.” Melody Pentland