5 soft skills kids need in today’s world

Recently, a 20-year-old girl turned to me for advice with a request to help her cope with fears of communicating with strangers and increase her stress resistance. Until the moment of employment, she did not think that her inability to communicate easily and freely with people could somehow interfere with her. It all happened at the most inopportune moment, when she came to the interview and, out of excitement and fear, could not prove to the potential employer that she was exactly the employee he needed.

She had an excellent resume, a diploma with honors, two foreign languages, a bright, beautiful appearance, a great desire to work. She met all the requirements, but she was refused and recommended to work on her soft skills.

Today, most employers are trying to select employees with developed soft skills. They explain this by the fact that the world is changing rapidly and the speed of these changes is constantly growing. Technologies are developing, and the knowledge gained is quickly becoming obsolete

Therefore, successful today will not be those who have learned a lot of things, but those who know how to quickly learn new things, effectively adapt to new conditions, easily enter into communication with new people and find non-standard solutions.

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What are Soft skills?

Soft skills translated from English means “soft, flexible skills. “ These are skills that are not yet taught in Russian schools and universities. But today they are more important than applied technical skills, honors, graduate degrees, and seniority. Therefore, the task is to develop soft skills is primarily in front of the parents.

If parents want to see their children successful, want their children to easily adapt to a rapidly changing environment, it is important literally from the first days of a child’s life to develop and form these skills in him.

You may wonder why it is so early, and I will answer that in the first year of life, the mental and physical health of a person is laid. It is during this period that a positive or negative perception of the child is formed, trust in oneself, in mother, in the world, which will be the basis for the further formation of flexible skills.

What skills are considered flexible?

1. Ability to manage and manage your time competently

The formation of this skill begins with the child’s elementary daily routine. When he clearly understands what time to go to bed, how much time is allotted for walks, for classes, at what time to get up.

Keep a special notebook and write down every major daily activity of your little one during the day, every day of the week. For example: 6:00: the child has woken up, 9:00: the child has eaten, 11:00: the child has fallen asleep, and so on.

Then make a schedule according to your child’s biorhythms. Try to find out if there is a pattern in your child’s current sleep and eating habits.

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Many children are already ready to set the daily routine at 3-4 months. If a child learns to follow the daily routine at an early age, then by the age of 7-8 he will be able to independently be responsible for maintaining the regime. Mom and Dad do not have to persuade the child to go to bed on time, finish homework, and wake up for a long time in the morning every time.

At an older age, the child is taught to manage his free time on his own, not to be late for school, explain the importance of a careful attitude to agreements on the time of meeting with other people.

2. Ability to negotiate with other people, work in a team, argue your position

You can start teaching this skill already on the playground. In the event of any conflict between children, the parents should not interfere – let the child deal with the situation on his own. After that, you can already discuss with the child his mistakes or, conversely, praise him for his excellent ability to argue his position.

To develop this skill, it is very important positive outlook, which is laid in the first year of life. When the child is not afraid of other children, when he treats everyone positively. Then the communication skill will develop naturally. The same is the skill of working in a team: together, together with other children, we make sand cakes in the summer or a snowman in the winter.

3. Ability to think creatively and outside the box

Every day more and more human labor will be replaced by robots and artificial intelligence. Those specialists who cannot be replaced by machines, that is, people with creative thinking, will remain in demand. Many people understand creativity only as art. Singing, drawing, playing musical instruments, dancing, handicraft – all of this, of course, is important and necessary for the development of neural connections.

But non-standard thinking, creative thinking is formed only in conditions when the child is left alone alone with himself and with the big world. From an early age, when the child does not succeed the first time, do not rush to help him cope with the task. Let him “groan”, be capricious, but find a way out of the situation. The parents’ task is simply to say: “You can handle it, I believe in you! Try it, don’t be afraid to make a mistake. I will not scold you if you fail. “

4. Ability to search, analyze information and draw conclusions from it

Children, for whom the parents decide everything, do not have a chance to independently search for information, analyze it and make decisions. As soon as children begin to crawl around the house, take their first steps, they strive to learn about the world, receive information about this world and draw their own conclusions. And often parents, under the influence of their fears that the child will climb somewhere in the wrong place, prohibit the child much and deprive him of the skills to conduct his research.

It all starts with a little interest to find something on the floor, bring it to your mouth and taste it. And if it doesn’t taste good, then make your OWN conclusion, and not believe it from the words of your parents.

Allow children to explore and experience the world around them from an early age. Do not forbid them to climb on the closets, get your things out of there, try them on. This is how the first skills of searching for information and its analysis develop.

At school age, tell the children where and how they can find the information themselves to do their homework. But don’t do it for children. Tell them about libraries, Internet search engines, teach them how to use them, and just watch how the children cope with everything themselves.

5. Ability to remain calm in stressful situations when things don’t go according to plan

Resistance to stress is the mental health of a child, his poise. I often observe on the streets parents ‘indifference to the whims and tantrums of children, parents’ misunderstanding of the true reasons for children’s disobedience and crying.

Indeed, at the moment when a child does not feel the understanding and support of his parents, he suffers greatly, he has various kinds of trauma, and then a non-stress-resistant adult grows out of such a child. And without high stress resistance, it will not be possible to do your job for a long time and do it well, flexibly adapt to constant changes.

*****

Flexible skills should be developed throughout a person’s life. I have listed only 5 main ones in order to draw the attention of parents to this particular part of the educational process. Unfortunately, today a lot of attention is paid to early development: learning a foreign language, learning to read and write from the cradle. And I believe that it is much more important to lay the foundation for the child’s physical and mental health. Because the personality is formed up to 7 years.

If a child does not learn at this age to build relationships with other children, draw his own conclusions, gain his own experience, look at the world positively, calmly react to situations when something does not go the way he wants, it will be very difficult for him in adult life. …

And I am always happy when parents understand the importance of development. soft skills in children, seek advice from specialists and begin to CONSCIOUSLY prepare children to enter adulthood from an early age.