What area would you like to see your child improve
4 Areas Where You Can Help Develop Your Kids
“Mom!” my five-year-old son exclaimed. “Dad said the F word.” His mom, my wife, thankfully decided to ask some follow-up questions. Turns out he heard me saying “freaking.” Kids are listening more than you think—and they’re changing faster than you can imagine.
My son is growing up and processing everything, including what he hears his dad saying. He’s changing. He’s maturing. Child development happens so fast. Here are 4 changes to be ready for with your kids.
1. Physical
Maybe you have young kids now. If not, think back and recall all the physical changes they’ve had. Kids go from laying there crying, to rolling over, sitting up, standing, and walking. From walking, it isn’t long before they’re running. My youngest is at the stage of climbing everything. He loves to get up behind me when I’m working at my desk and climb as high as he can. He usually gets wrapped around my neck before he stops. It’s often annoying—until I’m reminded that he won’t do this forever. Kids change so quickly. We need to take advantage of the time we have with them in every stage.
This is a crazy time unlike any other when you think about it. During those early years, we need to be there physically for our kids and engage with them. Sure, talk all you can, but just being there to get on the floor, wrestle, and horseplay is invaluable for your child. By showing up, you’re creating a bond that won’t easily be broken.
2. Social
Your child’s first relationships are with you and his or her mom. Then come siblings and other family members. My son is in kindergarten and learning about friends of his own. Soon, there’ll be birthday parties every weekend. It’s a vital time for your child to learn how to interact with others.
Who you hang out with matters. Jim Rohn says, “You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” Proverbs 13:20 says, “The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.
” The point is, as your child matures, he or she will be strongly influenced by many voices. I’ve not enjoyed kindergarten for any of my three kids, mostly because I’ve seen how my kids are influenced by classmates. They came home like different kids than the ones I dropped off at school.
Be prepared for the influence of others on your kids. It happens quicker than you think. That said, over time, your voice as a dad shapes your kid’s life more than any friend. Keep talking to your kids. Talk about everything early and often. You’re storing up points for later so when they really need your help, they’ll come to you.
3. Intellectual
Think about those first years, when your child quickly learns words and language. Every experience is new and exciting. My son will jump for joy to go to the store with me on a quick errand. I’m treasuring it now because I know it won’t be long before I get a sigh—like when I ask my teen to go with me now. My youngest wants to “help” with anything.
And, he questions everything—always asking why this or that exists or why the grass is green. Kids learn to talk and have feelings quickly.
One study says we spend less than 85 minutes a day with our kids. We must guard our time with our kids as they mature. It takes time to truly connect with your kid. We need to be available for long periods of time in order to be there mentally and be engaged. As your kids age, they’ll have more and more experiences and circumstances that need your care and advice.
4. Spiritual
More unseen but just as vital, your child is developing spiritually. You have a huge role in every change, but especially in the spiritual development of your child. In fact, you are your child’s primary disciple-maker. Whether you know and love God or you ignore God’s role in life, you have an influence on your child’s spiritual development. You either point your child to God or away from Him.
When you rightly relate to God, you can relate to yourself, others, and your circumstances rightly.
The Pharisees asked Jesus, “Teacher, which command in the law is the greatest?” He said to him, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and most important command. The second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself (Matt. 22:36-39).” Then he said, “All the law and the prophets depend on these two commands (Matt. 22:40).” Everything hinges on your view of God. When you rightly relate to God, you can relate to yourself, others, and your circumstances rightly. Relating to God is the most important thing your kids will do—so they need to see it modeled well with you.
Sound off: Which area do you need to help your child with the most?
6 Life Skills Your Child Needs and How To Develop Them – Primrose Schools
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By Primrose Schools
Did you know you can help your child succeed in the future by encouraging a few simple skills at home? The foundation for executive function skills (like problem solving and self-control) is built in the earliest years of a child’s life and can ultimately lead to more success in a future career.
According to a recent survey, executive function skills are more highly valued in entry-level job candidates than technical abilities, academic background and other factors. Here are tips and resources to help foster these important skills: teamwork, adaptability, critical thinking, problem solving, self-control and working memory.
Teamwork
Teamwork is an essential skill for every young child to learn – it comes into play in many everyday situations, like during a playdate with a friend or when helping parents or siblings with chores. Encourage your child to strengthen her teamwork skills at home or on-the-go with these tips.
Read More
Adaptability
Adaptability might seem like a skill that is too advanced for a toddler, but it’s actually important to nurture it early in life. Use these activities to help your child learn to adapt. Read More
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking – the ability to take in new information and determine how best to use it – plays a large role in the lives of young children. Playtime is a great time to naturally focus on this skill, so try these activities to intentionally nurture critical thinking at home. Read More
Problem Solving
All parents want their children to be excellent problem solvers, but did you know that nurturing skills like problem solving early in life can help children become more successful adults? Here are tips for encouraging problem solving at home. Read More
Self-Control
Whether it’s an argument between siblings, an angry outburst before bedtime or crying about not getting their way, all children struggle with self-control at some point.
Try these activities to help your child build his self-control. Read More
Working Memory
Your child’s working memory does more than just help her remember information; it gives her the ability to put information to use, like following directions or rules and completing multi-step tasks. Help your child develop her working memory with these activities. Read More
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What skills to develop in a child and how it will help in the future
Photo: Nicolas Picard / Unsplash
85% of a person's success in a profession depends on soft skills.
Together with Natalia Gatanova, psychologist, mother and scientific director of the MKEBI Foundation, we figure out what it is and how to develop it in young children
Scientists divide human skills into two conditional groups: professional hard skills and supraprofessional soft skills.
- Hard skills - highly specialized skills for performing certain tasks at work. For example, a programmer's skill is to write code in python. hard skills can be learned at school, university, at work, courses or trainings.
- Soft skills (“soft” skills) is a set of social skills that help a person solve problems in life: communication, leadership, teamwork, people management, emotional intelligence. Soft skills cannot be learned in training, they are formed in childhood and develop throughout life.
A simple model of professional competencies in the form of a doll. “Hard” skills inside, “flexible” skills outside (Photo: Moscow School of Management Skolkovo)
According to the results of a joint study by scientists from Harvard, Stanford and the Carnegie Endowment, soft skills determine the success of a person in the profession by 85%, and only 15% depends on highly specialized skills.
In a survey by the UK's Sutton Trust, 88% of young people, 94% of employers and 97% of teachers surveyed said they considered "life skills" as or more important than academic ones. The changing VUCA world requires a person to quickly adapt to the new. VUCA is an acronym for instability (volatility), uncertainty (uncertainty), complexity (complexity), and ambiguity (ambiguity). It is important now to pay attention to the development of soft skills in a child to help them cope with changes and not get lost in the future.
Like adults, the most important skills for children are communication skills, while you need to pay attention to leadership and group work, says Natalia Gatanova, scientific director of the MKEBI Foundation.
- Communication skills. The child must learn to communicate: introduce themselves, get to know each other, agree to play together. If necessary, ask for help from adults or peers, offer to provide it yourself.
Explain exactly what they need and why. By developing communication skills, the child learns to accept different points of view and argue his own. - Leadership qualities. Leadership is confidence in yourself and your abilities. The child learns to take responsibility for the decisions made and the people around. If no one wants to play, he will offer to start. A toddler can feel invisible and unreal if he constantly waits for someone to organize the game for him or solve all the problems. Children should feel like full-fledged people who know how to achieve their goals and make the right decisions for this.
- Working in a group. The ability to work and be in a group with other children helps to achieve big goals, compete and negotiate, develops leadership and communication. Working in a group, the child is not afraid to accept the rules of the game, to maintain his role and enjoy it.
Six major megatrends that are changing the world.
From the Skills of the Future report
Global Education Futures and WorldSkills Russia experts recommend developing ten key skills that people will need in the future:
- Attention control and concentration. Will help you cope with information noise and overload, manage processes and solve complex problems.
- Creative thinking. In the future, routine tasks will be automated, so the skills of creative thinking and the creation of creative ideas will help to remain a sought-after specialist in the labor market.
- Logic. Logic develops computational thinking. Helps to solve complex problems and make informed decisions.
- Spatial thinking and imagination. Helps to correlate oneself with the surrounding space, imagine new objects and navigate in it.
- Information handling skills. Digital literacy and programming skills are as important as reading skills.
These are basic skills that everyone needs in a new complex world. - Self-organization and time management. Zoomers and millennials are more likely to choose a free schedule and change jobs. Remote work is becoming the norm and sets a new era - self-organization. Skills will help you manage time, projects and life.
- Emotional intelligence. Through emotions we react to what is happening around us. The skill helps to manage your emotional state, avoid neurosis, depression and apathy.
- Intercultural communication. Global changes are forcing economies, corporations and communities to come together to solve common problems. Intercultural communication skills help build relationships with people from other areas and countries.
- The ability to learn, unlearn and relearn. Self-learning helps you learn skills on your own in a rapidly changing world and adapt to change.
- Critical thinking.
The skill helps to think clearly and rationally, to look for a logical connection between facts and to formulate strong arguments.
In her TED talk, teacher Rimma Rappoport talks about how children can develop soft skills in Russian language lessons0097 RBC Trends ), the child understands his needs if the mother adequately responds to them. That is, if a mother feeds her son when he is cold, he develops an incorrect understanding of himself at an unconscious level. Already at the age of three, the child wants to decide for himself: what cartoon to watch, what to wear and what toys to play. He imagines that the world is built around his desires. If a child does not understand himself, he cannot satisfy his needs.
In the theory of self-determination, there are three basic human needs.
- To be accepted — the child plays with other children, feels needed and useful.
- To be independent - the child understands that he can change something if he wants to.
For example, put toys in your own way or choose clothes. - Be successful and competent - the child knows that if he is given a difficult task, he will cope with it. Adults may not pay attention to this, explaining with the phrase “you will grow up, you will understand,” but this is not true. You need to treat the child as a complete person.
Psychological comfort and health depend on the satisfaction of basic needs. If a child learns to understand and meet his needs in childhood, he will grow up to be an independent adult who responds calmly to difficulties. Such adults are sure that any problem can be solved.
Circles and sections develop, but you should not rely only on additional education. Soft skills are formed from birth, so it is better to set a personal example for a child and take him seriously.
- Personal example. The child adopts behavior patterns by imitating adults. Parents set patterns of communication if they openly communicate with people, express feelings, ask for help, solve problems.
For example, if you want your child to say hello, say hello yourself. - Attitude. A child is not a small adult who begins to live after 18 years of age, but a full-fledged person. Take your child seriously, ask his opinion. If you give a choice, it must be real. For example, the offer to choose a cup for milk is imaginary, because the child will still have to drink milk. Better ask what he wants to drink: tea, water, milk or juice.
- Inner environment. Relatives, friends and acquaintances are the inner circle of the child. They set patterns for all forms of communication that develop soft skills. If a child comes to a development group with an atmosphere of mutual respect and the opportunity for self-expression, soft skills will develop. At the same time, sending a shy child to a development group and expecting him to become a leader in it is not worth it. It is better to give the child a responsible task with the right to make mistakes.
If there is a bakery on the ground floor of the house, assign a child to be responsible for the bread in the house. This is a task with real actions: take money, go to the store, choose bread and bring it home.
In order to see the difficulties with the development of soft skills in a child in time, look at his behavior. For example, if a child comes to a group of children, but cannot find a friend to play in 5-10 minutes, then he has difficulties. The child may not say hello, hide, or stand aside for a long time and watch other children play. Try to talk to him and find out the reasons for this behavior, contact a child psychologist.
Talk to kindergarten teachers, school teachers or parents of classmates. If it is difficult for adults to work with a child: he refuses everything, bullies the guys, “pulls the blanket over himself” - and this is not a one-time phenomenon, then there are difficulties.
Psychotherapist Andrei Kurpatov in the book Happy Child.
Universal Rules” writes that not understanding the reasons for children's crying, parents defiantly leave the child alone with his misfortune, making a lot of mistakes in emotional education
Soft skills develop gradually throughout life. Some skills form others. For example, communication develops emotional intelligence and the ability to manage people. There is no set age when a child will grow up and trade one set of soft skills for others.
In order for the child to understand his needs and be able to meet them, the mother must correctly respond to the emotions and demands of the child in childhood and give the right feedback in a timely manner. Then, if a child breaks a toy and cries, he will understand that he is crying because of a broken toy, and not a bad mother. You need to believe in your child, love him and give him the opportunity to live, and not prepare for life in the future.
To develop your child's soft skills:
- Respond correctly to needs at an early age, give timely feedback.
So the child learns to understand himself and satisfy basic needs. - Pay attention to communication, leadership and group work - these are the most important soft skills in a child.
- Lead by example in how you behave, communicate, and work with others.
- Treat your child like a complete adult with your own opinion.
- Watch your inner circle - ask relatives to set the right example, send the child to development groups with an atmosphere of mutual respect.
- See a specialist if your child has difficulty developing communication and soft skills.
- Love and respect your child.
"Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" — Work.ua
This favorite question of recruiters deservedly causes such a reaction from applicants as in the photo. Why it is asked and how to answer it correctly — Work.ua figured it out.
If you have ever been to an interview or read a couple of articles about how to pass an interview, you know for sure that the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” extremely popular at interviews — practically eternal, according to Work.
ua.
In theory, it is asked in order to find out:
- the level of ambition of the candidate;
- the adequacy of self-assessment;
- whether the candidate thinks about his professional future;
- How do you plan to reach your goal?
- will join the team and share the internal corporate culture of the company;
- to what extent the candidate's long-term goals correspond to the opportunities that the company can offer him.
Regarding the last point, it is worth remembering that the opportunities of companies can be different: someone is looking for ambitious candidates who want to constantly grow, and someone needs to close a linear position, which a priori does not provide for career growth.
How not to answer
There is no universal correct answer to this question. But it will obviously be wrong:
- To say that you don't know anything about it or haven't thought about it yet.
- Reply that you don't know what will happen tomorrow, not to mention such a long-term perspective.
- Talk about the personal and touch on the professional quite a bit.
- Talk about entrepreneurship.
You won't like these answers anyway. After all, you come to the company to help it develop, and you yourself must strive for something new. Of course, you can laugh off this question by answering something like: "Celebrate the fifth anniversary of your question." But after that it is still better to move on to a reasonable answer.
How best to answer
Work.ua finds a three-part answer considered.
1. Show the right amount of ambition
Most employers are pleased to know that their employees have the desire to grow and develop. Healthy ambition should always be shown, but it is important not to overdo it.
A potential manager will most likely not want to hire you if you say you plan to take his place in 5 years.
Even as a joke. The following answer can be considered moderately ambitious:
“I want to learn the ins and outs of this industry and become a professional in it” .
But remember that even moderate ambition may not always be an advantage. Especially if the company expects you to be satisfied with working 5 years in the same position without any career ups. If you really apply for just such a position, you should not talk about ambitions that do not exist.
2. Show an interest in learning
Many people don't know exactly what they want to do tomorrow, let alone the prospects in a few years, but you can always express a desire to learn and grow in a certain area.
Tell us about an aspect of your working life that you would like to improve. Maybe this is an area of knowledge in which you still understand little and would like to learn more, a foreign language or some courses - any interest and craving for knowledge.
Also, when answering this question, you can ask a counter one and find out from the recruiter how long this position has been open and where the person who held this position 5 years ago is now.
3. Explain how your goals are similar to those of the company
Prepare for an interview. At a minimum, search for information about the company on the Internet. It is good if the company has an up-to-date website, with the help of which it is easy to find out the purpose and mission of the organization. This is key information for the applicant - here you understand whether you are on the way with the company or not.
Select a few items from the company's mission that resonate with your goals, and note how you plan to achieve them within the company in the coming years. For example:
“I like that your company invests in the development of its employees. I would like to manage my team in the organization in five years and help each member of the department develop. .
Neutral response
Neutral response to the question “Where do you see yourself in 5 years” looks something like this:
“I do not have a specific plan for where I see myself in 5 years.
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