What life skills for life have they seen or known?

CLICK to view all our interactive life skills programs.

More affluent teens see the larger houses, multiple cars, fine furnishings, vacations and other leisure time and activities, and assume a general confidence about money and spending. Without any conscious consideration, they can take this for granted, they assume “that’s how life is” without considering how much college their parents had, or where their money comes from, or what skills in life are needed to get there.

On the other end of the spectrum is the young person who has rarely seen adults who hold steady jobs, live comfortably, effectively balance and connect their education, job, income, and lifestyle, and generally be a productive, stable, contributing part of society. The skills of life that would help them rise above this are nowhere to be found. These youth assume – again without much conscious choice in those attitudes – that unemployment, poverty, substance abuse, crime, and conflict are the norm. These don’t represent skills for life success.

Explore youth life skills for juvenile justice

Teens experience a vast variety of life experiences growing up, and the two examples above are only two extremes in the many complexities of lifestyle. There are many shades of skills in life in between. The key point is that youth adapt their beliefs and assumptions about life from their environment, their parents, and the social and economic context that they grow up in. Very few are taught, or more importantly, have modeled for them the power of conscious choice and intention.

One of the key aspects of our democracy is the power of entrepreneurialism. Business skills in life contexts like these are invaluable. Tens can see people with “jobs” and don’t realize that almost every job has it roots in the entrepreneurial process and spirit. They don’t see how the overall economy works, how it can work for them, and what their role in it can be.

There are many lifestyles, many ways to build skills for life, to learn the skills of life success. My daughter lives the urban lifestyle, which is unlike anything she grew up with – multiple roommates, no cars, using public transportation, spends most of her reasonably large disposable income on participating in the arts scene and saving for her next adventure. Growing up the child of suburban professionals, she had no exposure to this urban way of life, yet she has been able to reinvent herself in that way.