The life skills teens should know before leaving home

In the year since her son Makaih left for college, Gabrielle Santiago realized she’d done her best to prepare him, but there were things she couldn’t have planned for. “There’s just little small things that, as parents, we don’t really think about because they’re second nature to us,” she said.

When it comes to handling money and planning his finances, her 19-year-old son has always been frugal and smart, she said. And as a student-athlete with a sports scholarship, he earns good grades. But general life skills, such as when and how to get oil changes for his vehicle, doing laundry, and making doctor’s appointments, proved to be the missing pieces. It’s been eye-opening to discover what her smart, seemingly independent son was and wasn’t prepared for after leaving home. “There’s a fine line between them being grown and them wanting to be grown,” she said.

Whether teens are leaving home for college, a job, to live with roommates, or to otherwise discover what’s next, Cynthia Eidelman, a family therapist and parenting coach, said parents need to give teens more freedom of choice and responsibility long before they leave home. “Start cutting the emotional cord,” Eidelman said. “Let them fail a little and be responsible for their own decisions.”

Find opportunities to practice independence early and often

Jonathan Catherman, co-author of “Raising Them Ready: Practical Ways to Prepare Your Kids for Life on Their Own,” said there’s one well-kept secret for preparing teens to leave home: “Stop doing for your teen what your teen should and could be doing for themselves.”

Starting in middle school, Catherman suggests teaching preteens life skills such as doing laundry, cooking and managing money. Home economics, a subject formerly taught in most middle or high schools in the United States, is largely a thing of the past. Besides the life skills taught in some special education programs, tasks preparing teens for real world independence just don’t happen much at school. But, there are plenty of opportunities to practice independence at home.

Lisa Sugarman, author of “How to Raise Perfectly Imperfect Kids and Be OK With It,” advises parents to put teens in charge of their laundry, cleaning, food shopping and bills well before they’re on their own so they have a clear idea of what to expect when they move out.

For any doctor’s appointments teens need, have them find the number to the doctor, make the call, gather the necessary documents and schedule the appointment. Sugarman also suggests taking that a step further and make sure they know when to advocate for themselves when they need medical help.

Teens also need plenty of experience in arguably one of the most important adult skills: “Your teen should know their way around a kitchen,” Sugarman said. “They should be able to use a stove, understand how to food-prep, know how to shop for themselves and know some basic recipes to ensure they can always feed themselves.”

Cooking and prepping food are skills that parents can start helping kids build as soon as they have the motor skills to pick up ingredients. By the time they’re ready to leave home, teens should have a few go-to recipes and the ability to follow simple recipes.

Teach the practicalities and the psychology of money

About 74 percent of teens aren’t confident they have the knowledge to manage their finances. Because teens spend most of their money on food and clothes, shifting their spending mind-set to include bills and the other everyday expenses is crucial.

Julie O’Brien, head of behavioral sciences at U.S. Bank, said before they transition into the real world, it’s important to help your children understand the psychological side of finances. Buying new things can create positive emotions, which mentally reinforces to teens that spending is a good thing. Meanwhile, saving money doesn’t produce instant gratification, making it more difficult to do.

“Humans always have a hard time giving up short-term benefits for long-term benefits, but if we’re aware of these behavioral tendencies, we can guard and plan against them,” O’Brien said.

Some tools she suggests to help to make teens mindful of the psychological side of finances include practicing making plans and building a “saver identity.”

“You never want to wait until you’re in the moment faced with an impulse to spend to decide what you’ll do, because the temptation will just have too much pull,” she said. Instead, she said you should help your child make a plan for those tempting moments in advance. Ask your child to predict what situations might bring up spending temptation and plan what they’ll do.

O’Brien said if your child starts seeing themselves as someone who saves, their behavior will follow. “Think sports: If you love a particular team, you will root for them, wear their merch, and attend their games,” she said. “This means your behavior is consistent with your identity. The same can be true for saving, if we can create an identity around the behavior.”

Along with a healthy mind-set about money and saving, Nicole Birkett-Brunkhorst, wealth planner at U.S. Bank Private Wealth Management, said giving teens hands-on experience with checking accounts and credit cards is invaluable.

Instead of opening a checking account for them online, she suggests helping them make an appointment at a local branch to meet with a banker, then letting them take it from there. “Getting them involved in the setup will ensure that they’re ready and able to manage a checking account on their own,” Birkett-Brunkhorst said. Get a head-start on teaching teens account management by encouraging them to deposit allowances, monetary gifts, and any other cash or checks into a bank account as soon as they start to receive them.

No matter your stance on credit cards, Birkett-Brunkhorst said good credit is vital to a good financial future. She recommends parents add their children to a credit card as an authorized user before they are 18 and old enough to get a card on their own. “This allows your child to experience using a credit card and will help them build their own credit score in a supervised setting until they’re old enough to get a card of their own,” she said. It also allows for many teachable moments as they dip their toe into responsibly using and paying the card.

“Have an open discussion on why having good credit shows lenders that you are trustworthy enough to borrow money to finance things such as a car or an education,” she said.

Help them build a strong emotional foundation

No practical skills are going to work if we don’t help our children have a strong emotional foundation. “We are seeing a rise of overparenting, leading to over-involvement and enmeshment,” Eidelman said. This has increased anxiety among children and produced “less resilience and emotional preparation from kids who believe they are ready to leave home, but then find themselves emotionally unprepared for being on their own.”

According to a 2022 study in the Journal of Affective Disorders, more than 60 percent of college students meet the criteria for one or more mental health conditions, and underfunded campus counseling centers are stretched thin. Eidelman said a strong emotional foundation starts with providing a judgment-free space at home and finding a mental health practitioner for your child to talk to so they develop the habit of talking about and caring for their mental health and they “can process their feelings and experience while away from home or out in the real world on their own.”

A critical component to building a strong emotional foundation is developing healthy coping skills. In fact, Jennifer Bahrman, psychologist with UTHealth Houston, said helping your teens learn to regulate their emotions is “one of the greatest gifts a parent can give their child for emotional development.” Once teens are no longer under the typically watchful eye of their parents, the temptation to reach for vices is greater.

“Young adults may be inclined to reach for coping skills that are not necessarily healthy, such as numbing their feelings or avoiding feelings that are uncomfortable,” Bahrman said. “However, all feelings - both positive ones and negative ones - are fleeting, and coping skills are a way to manage those emotions until they subside.”

She suggests encouraging teens to develop and maintain habits that act as healthy coping mechanisms, such as exercise, getting out in nature, listening to music, journaling, mindfulness, and spending time with friends as healthy ways to cope.

Embrace and prepare for failure

Even parents get it wrong and fail from time to time - but our kids don’t always see that part of adulting, and parents don’t often admit to failure. But learning to embrace and prepare for failure makes the inevitable a little less stressful.

When Santiago’s son went through a rough patch his first semester and wanted to come home, he wasn’t exactly forthcoming at first, she said. “He was so set on not disappointing me that he withheld a lot of information from me as far as how he was feeling about school,” she said.

Such a pursuit of perfection can be a “dangerous path,” Bahrman said. “Teens can benefit from parents instilling that failure is an important part of life and success. Parents cannot shield their children from all forms of failure. Helping them understand that how they react to that failure and what they learn from it is what matters most.”

Help them prepare for failure by letting them experience it naturally. “Let them fail a little and be responsible for their own decisions,” Eidelman said. “For example, stop being on top of them to get ready for school on time. Take a step back and see if they are responsible enough to do so on their own. If they are late, that is on them.”

When they come calling for an assist, resist the urge to fix it. Santiago said she provides a listening ear when Makaih calls her to problem-solve. In the end, however, she reminds him that he’s capable of handling things himself - and it seems to be working.