The COVID-19 pandemic has put many countries at a standstill and confined everyone into their homes. In Singapore, the government has strengthened its social distancing measures to prevent the virus from spreading further.

For parents, finding ways to keep their children busy during this time is tricky, especially for the teens who would want to hang out with their friends at the mall. Although they do have the full home-based learning to keep them busy, they will need other activities to keep them occupied and productive during this period.

As our teens are approaching adulthood, it will be a great way to start imparting life skills to them and ease away their over-reliance on you.

Here are some great life skills you can have your teenagers learn during the circuit breaker period:

Know how to sew clothes

Instead of discarding clothes that doesn’t fit anymore, it will be a good money saver skill if your child knows how to savage broken zips and busted seams. Your child should learn how to sew a button back onto his pants to hemming the ends of a skirt to make it shorter.

Build them their own sewing kit and teach them basic sewing techniques that they can practice in their own time.

Use spare fabric or even the clothes they use that have tears in them. Of course, you also have to teach them how to take care of their sewing kit and always keep it stocked for any emergencies.

Planning & cooking meals

Learning how to make your own meals and plan them are life skills your children will appreciate, especially now that having healthy meals is important in keeping one’s self fit. Should your child go overseas to study or work in the future, you don’t want him or her to eat takeouts everyday.

It is also a skill they can use as they start a family and help them understand the costs involve in managing a home.

You can start them with this life skill lesson by bringing them with you when you shop for your family’s grocery and have them research the benefits of each food group. Watching cooking shows together and try out new recipes are awesome ways to motivate interest and bond as a family too.

Master a new language

If you want your child to have an advantage over their peers, especially when they work abroad, you should get them to master a new language. This is one awesome way to boost employability in your child’s resume! In fact, mastering a third or fourth language will help in scholarship and university entry application.

There are a lot of great apps out there that can help your children get started such as Duolingo and itaki. Our tutors online are ready to help your child to kickstart the learning journey.

You can also immerse them to foreign movies and shows through Netflix and Amazon Prime by playing them in their original language but with subtitles so they can become familiar with these languages. Want to know which language to learn? Check out our advice here.

Change a light Bulb and Fix Simple Electrical Faults

You are not always at home to fix electrical problems at home that your teens can do on their own.

Teach them what electrical faults they can work on themselves like changing a light bulb or turning off the power fuse.

Of course, you need to make sure they are familiar with the various terms and values of electrical items like voltages and the proper ways to handle these items. The next time, your child screams when the lights went off, start by showing where and how to turn on the circuit breaker.

Being good with cars

For those reaching 18 years old, your teenager probably wants to learn how to drive. Being able to change your tyres and understand what happens when your car breaks down is a part of passing the driving test.

It is important they are taught how to take care of their vehicle. They must be able to determine where the problem started, what problem it is exactly and how to sort it out. You can use your family car to help them become familiar with cars and how they work.

There are also great videos that your teenagers can check out online to help them be familiar with car parts and repairs.

Budgeting

As your child becomes older, budgeting their allowance (and later on, their salary) is important so they know how to manage their daily expenses.

They must be able to determine how much they spend, how much to save and understand the importance of having a good education so they will be able to get a job that will help them with their financial stability in the future.

A good way to teach your child how to budget is by making them familiar with the usual expenses that they make every day and how they can save money despite these expenses. You can also teach them the right way to spend money by visiting this article. 

Filing Taxes

Taxes are a nightmare to sort out, especially if you do not know how to file and sort it out in the first place.

As early as now, you should teach your child to understand the complexity of taxes. You can show them your tax documents and show them how to compute their monthly tax through your salary.

Who knows, next year, they may be filing your tax for you instead!

Trying out coding

Coding is now becoming very popular considering the popularity of the internet.

When teenagers learn how to code, they will be able to build great websites which they can use for their portfolio and even explore how to code applications and programs.

To begin teaching them how to code, you can enrol them in coding academies online or just check out apps that offer coding lessons for students. If you need more reasons why your child should learn how to code, check this out.

Learn how to sort out their chores

Most Singapore kids are fortunate that they don’t need to do housework and all they need to do is to focus on their school work. This also means that they do not know how to efficiently clean the house, effectively organise their wardrobe or even which detergent to use for indoor drying.

Show them how to do laundry, cleaning and cooking and how you schedule these chores daily. You can also have them take over some of the chores around the house and teach them to be responsible for these chores.

This life skill actually should impart from a young age so that a sense of responsibilities can be instilled as mentioned here.  

Doing first aid and respond to emergencies

Accidents and other medical emergencies can happen at any time.

With this said, they should be alert when these events happen and know where to get the first aid box. They must also be able to do basic first-aid and stay calm during these events.

Take some time to prepare them for these situations and give them a demo on how first-aid techniques can be done.

Conclusion

There are many life lessons that you can teach your teens during this circuit breaker period and these ones above are just some of those lessons.

Although your teens may be reluctant to learn these at first, they will definitely see its value in the future. So, inspire them to use this time to train these skills.

What are other life skills you can impart to your children during this period? Check these articles out: