How to Get Your Older Teens Ready For Adulthood

*This is a collaborative post.

How do you know that you’ve succeeded as a parent? As your children grow up and show qualities that you’re proud of, like kindness or a good work ethic, you will have your first clues that you’ve done well. After all, one of the primary purposes of a parent is to help their children to succeed in adulthood.

When your children reach the age where they’re ready to leave home and start university or enter the workforce as adults, we’ve got one last job to do to make sure that they’re prepared. But really, this should start before they actually leave home. Here are a few ways to do everything we can to help our older teens get ready for college and adulthood.

Chores and Household Skills

Why do parents get children to do chores? Despite what kids might think, it’s not because we’re lazy and don’t want to do the chores, nor is it because we just want to punish our children in some way. Chores are a fact of life.

Every adult has to either do chores or make sure they get done. Even if you get a cleaner to handle most of the day-to-day chores, you still have to earn enough money to afford the cleaner and you will probably still have to tackle some things as you manage your home. 

The knowledge of how to do these chores doesn’t just come ready-loaded into our brains once we move out. We have to learn how to effectively clean a home, cook, do laundry, basic maintenance tasks, and everything else involved in keeping the house presentable. It’s best to learn all of this in childhood.

Of course, it’s also true that parents might want a bit of help around the house as well. After all, getting your kids involved in chores can be beneficial for everyone. As well as teaching them these skills, making sure they have some responsibility around the house also teaches your children about responsibility and, in some cases, the consequences of not meeting those responsibilities, whether it’s a punishment, a withholding of a reward, or just having no dishes when it comes to wanting to eat dinner.

There are different ways to get your kids involved in chores. As a general rule, it’s a good idea to start early. If you suddenly dump a load of chores onto your sixteen year old a day after their birthday, it’s probably not going to be a fun conversation for anyone involved. Besides, they don’t know how to do any of these chores.

Instead, assign chores based on your child’s age and maturity. Maybe they start out by helping you with certain jobs before getting chores of their own. Ideally, these chores shouldn’t take up the majority of their day, but it’s a good idea to make sure they have some experience in everything. As they get older, it might be an idea to get them to plan and cook a meal during the week, so they learn how to shop and cook certain recipes. 

Some parents have chore charts, while others assign specific chores to different children. The most important thing is that you find a way to manage chores that works for your family and that makes sure that your kids get the life education they need.

Financial Literacy

As well as teaching your kids how to look after a house, it’s vital to make sure that they know how to manage their money. Young adults tend not to have a lot of resources, and it’s very easy for them to get into debt. You don’t want your children to unnecessarily struggle through life because of unavoidable mistakes, especially in today’s financial climate.

So, make sure your children understand the value of money early on. Part of this comes down to making sure they can handle money. Some parents give their children an allowance, and this may or may not be tied to their chores. If your kids are old enough and their education won’t be negatively affected, it might be an idea to encourage your children to get a summer job or a weekend job so they can earn money.

In any case, this makes sure that your children handle money. It becomes real, rather than an abstract thing that comes out of thin air. If they want to make certain purchases, you can teach them how to save their money and even offer to match their savings to incentive smart money practices.

As they get older, it can be helpful to walk your children through your finances so they understand the costs of running a household. Kids don’t think about things like utility bills and rent, so it can hit them like a ton of bricks when they get their own property and have to handle all of these expenses. 

Preparing For College

As your teens get older, they need to make decisions about where they want their early adulthood to go. While college isn’t the guarantee of a great job that it used to be, many teenagers aim for further education. As well as the traditional college courses, some kids might learn practical skills and trades that might result in a career.

Ideally, your teenagers should be thinking about this before they leave high school. Give them plenty of options and time to think about what they want to do. It can be a lot of pressure to suddenly have to decide what to do for the rest of their lives, which is why some people decide to hold off for a year and work instead. 

This extra time gives your kids more time to think about what they want out of life, as well as the potential to build some life experiences before entering college. This can work out for some people, but each family should be willing to consider different options. 

At the end of the day, it’s your children’s decision to work out how they spend their time. If you’ve had a few conversations with them beforehand, you’ll both have a better idea of what they might decide to do.

In any case, it’s your job to prepare yourself and your children for this next phase of their lives. Some college students can still live at home while they attend college, and this can save a lot of money in the long run. However, if the university is further away from home or your children want a taste of independence, they may want different accommodations.

They might be able to move into dorm rooms, or they can find student rooms for rent near their university. Generally, this involves sharing accommodations with a roommate or even multiple roommates, which is another challenge altogether. This is where teaching your children how to manage a household can be helpful, because they can cook and look after themselves.

Building Resilience

Whether we like it or not, life doesn’t always go the way we want or expect it to. This is true of our children, and it will be even more difficult when they branch out on their own. It can be one of the most difficult parts of being a parent to let your children fail, but this can be an incredibly important part of their education as they grow up.

If you’re too protective and don’t let anything happen to your kids, they don’t have the opportunity to build resilience and understanding. Actions have consequences. So, if your children do something wrong, good discipline will help them understand that they can’t get away with everything. 

Building resilience is a complicated process, and it takes time. Resilience can be defined as your ability to cope with the challenges life throws at you. This might be a bad grade, an upsetting breakup, a lost job, or anything else that can and will happen to your kids.

You need to ensure that your children are strong enough to cope with what life throws at them. Therapy from an early age can be really helpful to give your children the skills they need to deal with this. This is especially important if they have suffered some kind of trauma, whether it’s the death of a family member or the divorce of their parents.

Kids are naturally resilient and adaptable, but this doesn’t mean that you don’t have to guide them through hard times or shield them from things that can hurt them too much. Try to be approachable to your children. It’s been said that there’s a difference between being a parent and being a friend and, while there is some truth to that, this doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be kind and friendly to your children.

Spend time with them, be open with them, and especially as they get older and life gets more complicated, make sure that they feel safe with you. This way, if and when things do get hard, they know they can handle it like an adult.