Skills For Life

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💿This week's track: Let's Teach Our Kids Skills For Life 💿

Dad Meme and Joke Of The Week

Dad Meme

Dad Joke

Q: Why did Thom Yorke become a farmer?

A: Because he wanted to grow "Creep-y" vegetables!

Let's Teach Our Kids Skills For Life

Dads, our kids must learn skills for life.

Schools are required to teach our kids to be test takers.

There is a big risk in raising test takers.

Sir Richard Branson, a dyslexic billionaire and self-described horrible at “the maths,” believes education should focus on applied learning.

He noted in a recent article about education, “In my experience, life is about looking at a problem and seeing how you can fix it. If you can turn that into a business idea, even better.”

Kids must learn skills that produce outcomes that the world values.

If schools are forced to teach test-taking, then dads we must teach skills for life.

It might seem daunting but here are the 5 things you can do today:

1/ Start with the basics

An example; is when your child asks you to buy a toy.

Use this as a small moment to share how dad and mom work hard to earn money, most of that money pays for the things we need like food, clothes, and housing.

The rest is savings for the future.

Ask them if they can think of ways to earn money.

They might need some ideas.

Suggest a few like selling old toys to their friends, baking cookies, and going door to door to sell them or shoveling a neighbor’s driveway.

We shouldn’t expect them to become money printing machines overnight but the lesson is that money doesn’t grow on trees.

Money must be first earned. And money pays for necessities first and then for fun after.

Teach the basics.

2/ Embrace new tools

I recently read two separate articles about professors (ChatGPT professor, TikTok professor) breaking with convention and requiring students to embrace tech (and social media) to pass their classes.

They used it to teach students how to use tech practically.

There is a lot of concern and research around the harms of social media.

Of course, too much of anything can be harmful especially social media.

But if we see these things as tools and challenge our kids to use them to create value, it might allow us to work with them on limits while teaching them the value of these tools.

What do I mean?

When our kids are old enough to use social media (the research shows probably not until their late teens), we encourage them to learn how to test messaging, communicate and build and grow an audience.

This a critical skill for any leader or entrepreneur.

For some trends, simple exposure is all that is needed.

Like ChatGPT, my 4 yo and I use it to create Mario and Luigi stories.

He gives me prompts by describing the level (ex: snowy mountain), and the final boss (ex: evil rat).

I type these into ChatGPT and it spits out a story I can read to him.

He loves it and he is getting exposed to ChatGPT.

Oh by the way he likes ChatGPT better than Google’s version called AI Test Kitchen.

The key is to find healthy ways to weave tech into our kids’ lives and teach them to use it as a tool to make life better.

3/ Teach skills that produce real-world results

As dads, we should find ways to teach skills that produce results the world values.

The first thing that comes to mind is food.

Not every dad is an outdoor guy but teaching our kids how to produce food for their family is powerful.

For our family it’s learning to hunt, fish, keep bees, forage, and garden.

Or being able to build things.

Find a building project, maybe building a birdhouse, it will expose them to the skills that might inspire them to go into the skilled trades (i.e. plumbing, electrician).

Or for entrepreneurial skills, suggest they try the paperclip challenge where they start with a paperclip and haggle to get items of increasing value.

Or encourage them to start the classic lemonade stand.

Lend them the money to buy the supplies but expect repayment of your loan.

Teach skills that produce results the real-world values.

4/ Be like Nike and ‘Just Do It’

Encourage action over planning.

Have a bias for action and teach doing, failing, and retrying to discover what works until they see the results.

This applies to any practical skills from marketing to farming. From selling to plumbing.

The best way to learn is to do it with your hands (or thumbs) and use real-world results to guide the learning.

Back to the professor and her TikTok students were learning the importance of writing and testing hooks, creating knowledge gaps, and being consistent to grow an audience.

Action is always the best way to learn.

5/ Teach soft skills

Soft skills are underappreciated but are some of the most valuable life skills.

Skills like empathy, communication, and negotiation.

Every day we have dozens of moments that could be used to teach.

For dads with young kids, one common teaching moment we see daily is…fighting over a toy.

Fighting over a toy is a great opportunity to teach empathy and negotiation lessons.

When fighting over a toy, I often remind my kids, “what is in it for the other person?”

Or “why is the other person unwilling to give it up, and what might they want in return?”

Surprisingly even a 4 yo and a 2 yo can learn the skills of empathy negotiation.

Empathy is a superpower in navigating a world filled with people.

And over time, they will learn to master these skills.

My takeaway:

Educators are forced to teach to a test.

Kids must learn skills that produce value the world values.

As dads, we must teach our kids these skills or find programs that will.

Pick one of these and start today.

Our kids’ future depends on it.

This Week's Interesting Watch:

Dads, you’re vital!

This is a TedX by a hard-hitting divorce attorney and why she advocates for dads in divorce.

Because we dads are crucial to the success and well-being of our kids.

And there’s research to prove the point.

Now don’t go around tossing these stats in your wife's face.

This is only for you, daddio, so you're aware of just how important you are in the lives of your kids.

According to the CDC:

As many as 30 million children in the US are growing up without their fathers.

63% of youth suicides, 90% of runaway and homeless children and 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes!

Dude, we're not just important…we're critical to the health and well-being of our kids.

Cheers to being a dad that is involved and cares!

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