Tags
- How to deal with legal troubles
- How to pay taxes
- How to file legal documents (disputes, divorces, complaints etc)
- How to check a credit score
- How to apply for a credit card, a line of credit, or a small loan
- How to balance a checkbook
- How to negotiate for and go through buying a house, a car, or another large purchase
- How to tell the difference between factual information and dishonest lies
- How to keep good records of personal information for tax purposes
- How to do small repairs around the house and do basic tasks
- How to maintain and repair a car
- How to care for a child once they’re old enough to be out of diapers
A lot of people just presume that your parents are supposed to teach you these things, but what if your parents are busy, incompetent, abusive, or just plain neglectful? I’m learning how to do these myself, slowly, as an adult, but I think I would have been better off learning these in school. Voluntary “life skills” classes are not enough.
I think Anger Management classes would also have been useful in high school. Considering the number of mass shooting incidents that are taking place these days, learning how to deal with negative emotions seems an urgent necessity for our society.
I always wanted one of those “life” classes too… I remember asking my mother about it continually from about 7th grade onwards. “How can I learn life skills?” and she’d respond “what do you want to learn about?” so I’d say “how do you pay taxes” or “how do you buy a house” and she’d say “when you’re older”.
To add to the list: “How does health insurance work?”/”How do you purchase and use health insurance?”
And so many more things that I just haven’t encountered yet. It’s like htey expect us to just “get it” on our own. Riiiiiiiiight.
Yeah, I’m (some number of years) older than you, and I only know a few of the items on your list.
Well, I moved to a different country as an adult and all these things were new to me. I actually think these ‘life skills’ are not that hard for a smart person (with an Internet connection) to just pick up as they go, once they (the things) become important… Many of these lessons would not mean much if introduced too early, as you don’t have all the context… Anyway, learning these life skills on our own is part of the fun we get to have as adults.
I don’t think the ability to do these skills is associated with intelligence. My girlfriend and I are both of above average intelligence, but we struggle with these because our skill sets are not really honed towards them and we never got the chance to learn them when we were younger, and are up the creek without a paddle now.
She’s a physicist, and can perform very complicated and advanced mathematics, but doing taxes takes her days and days of agony because she never learned how to properly fill out the paperwork, even with the help of “user-friendly” tax assistance. I have excellent linguistic and communication skills and speak three languages, but the legal language on many documents confuses me greatly. Our shared lack of fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination makes doing small household repairs both painful and dangerous.
If we learned these in high school or middle school, life would be much easier. I learned how to do basic babycare in high school, for instance, and it makes me an excellent babysitter for infants and toddlers, but beyond that, I’m lost. I don’t think it’s fair to presume everybody will get the chance to learn these as adults, particularly in the case of individuals with disabilities who get very limited chances to prove that they’re ready for independent living.
I actually meant the comment in a positive way, certainly didn’t mean to put you or Jaime or anyone down (apparently it didn’t come out that way, I apologize). My point was that generally you can’t really predict all the things that you will need later in life when you are independent, but that luckily most of them are not too hard to pick up… I’m not saying that everyone can learn how to be great at everything, but I think with some help and resources most people can become decent at many life skills, or find their own way to handle them…
For instance, I don’t do home repairs; if I didn’t have a husband who loves doing them, I’d just call a handy-man every time (probably wouldn’t own a house anyway in that case). That’s my way of approaching that particular challenge. Also, I had no baby or kid care experience before I had a baby; I learned when there was no other option but to do so (i.e. baby was officially out of womb).
What I am trying to say is that perhaps these challenges can be viewed not as chores, but positively, as a bit of fun along the way. At least that’s how I viewed the many, many challenges of this type I encountered when I moved overseas to the US, where the culture shock kept knocking me over on my butt for a few years… I tried to view it all as part of the whole new-life-in-new-world adventure, I don’t think it’s such a bad outlook necessarily. And it was all so much easier to figure out than in my home country, that’s a bottomless pit of despair when it comes to administrative or legal stuff.
But you certainly have a point about people with disabilities, I must say I didn’t really think of them…
Oh, no worries!
You are correct that there’s no way of predicting what skills will always be transferable and applicable as an adult. One thing that my school did offer was an auto repair course (optional) but since I live in a city that’s highly walkable and bikeable, and consider cars to be holes that you throw money into, I didn’t really end up needing to learn how to change oil or a tire.
I do like your attitude about looking at it as an adventure though! It’s something I could learn, but since Jaime and I have been having legal trouble lately, we’ve viewed a lot of these “adult” responsibilities with irritability and frustration, naturally. I think it would be more fun to learn about them before one gets into an emergency, best of both worlds? A lot of kids in the U.S and Canada leave for college after living at home, and then (in the U.S mainly) live in a dormitory where basic repairs and home maintenance are taken care of for them, or in a place where that’s the landlord’s responsibility, and then, when they get a place where the onus is on them to do it, they’re helpless during an emergency. I cried for ten minutes the first time I clogged a toilet until I figured out how to use a plunger.
Some very good points here, and I think they’re just as applicable to Canada as the States when it comes to high schools. I certainly could have used some of those life skills!