How to Prepare Your Kids to Leave Home

Before your child turns 18 and leaves home for college or a job, there are many life skills that she needs. Help your child successfully make the transition from living at home to living on her own by teaching her the following skills.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Teach your son or daughter domestic skills such as cooking a full meal, washing and ironing clothes, mending clothes, cleaning a house, and grocery shopping.

2. Make sure that your child has the organizational skills to maintain an address book, balance a checkbook, save recipes, avoid clutter and create a budget.

3. Social skills are extremely important. Help your kids learn a clean joke to tell, to carry on a conversation with someone they've never met before, to sing aloud in front of people, to play a musical instrument, to ballroom dance and to learn a game like bridge, chess or cards. Being able to pull off a respectable karaoke performance is a plus.

4. While your child is still at home, let them help with home improvement projects. Skills such as painting, hanging pictures, tightening screws, assembling furniture, or replacing light bulbs are essential to have.

5. Also, teach your child how to find his way around town. If you live in the city and use public transportation, find a way to teach your child how to drive a car. If you live in the suburbs, teach your child how to use public transportation. Make sure your son or daughter can read a map, follow directions or program a GPS unit. Explain how to tell which way is north, south, east or west.

[sonni57]

on 8/24/2009 Great advice on helping the kids to leave home.

[maiden239]

on 8/3/2009 Excellent advice for preparing kids for college! Very well written. You didn't miss a thing!

[aussiebev]

on 8/2/2009 Great ideas, although I always told my girls as a joke that when they turned 18 I would give them a ladder (to climb out the window) and a suitcase..
Needless to say, I cried the longest and the hardest when they finally did leave :)

[paigeturner]

on 8/2/2009 Extremely useful skills to have as an 18 year old leaving home!5*

[Merriment]

on 8/2/2009 These are all great tips to prepare our kids for life on their own when they leave home. They were some good reminders that I need to make sure my child has practiced such skills.