30 Day Life Skills Challenge – COMPLETED!

May 14, 2024

Now that the amusement park that he is looking forward to going to this summer is officially open, my son was increasingly motivated to knock out the rest of his life skills challenge. After we sat down and reviewed the remaining skills, we quickly realized that we would need to carve out time to research some of the remaining skills. Due to baseball practice being cancelled, we were able to devote about 2 hours one weekday evening to looking up information on some of his remaining life skills and planning out when to practice the others skills (see below).

Overall, I can say that while this challenge did take us some time and effort, many of the skills were done as part of our regular routine or the chores that I do on a regular basis! An unexpected benefit was that his younger siblings often participated in what we were working on. This led us to make this a whole family experience and his younger siblings created their own Life Skills Challenge with age appropriate life skills for a 7-year-old (e.g., weeding the garden, helping to spread compost and plant vegetables in the garden, cutting up vegetables to make stir fry, learning how to look up the weather forecast to plan for what he needs to wear to school) and a 9-year-old (e.g., making a budget for our vegetable garden, packing her bag for an overnight school field trip, writing a thank-you note, planning our summer of camps and trips). While they were definitely motivated by their own reward, they also seemed to get genuine satisfaction from building their skills and their overall independence!

Use a fire extinguisher – We looked up information on how to use a fire extinguisher on the wikiHow website (it is a great resource that has clear instructions with pictures and videos!). After reading through it together, we located our fire extinguisher in the kitchen and read through the directions before practicing how he would use it. His little brother was also fascinated by this topic so he listened and learned along with us!
Learn how to put out a grease fire – We also used wikiHow to learn about how to properly put out a grease fire by using baking soda, a fire extinguisher, or snuffing it out with a lid. We also debunked the myth that flour should be used to put out a grease fire!
Know when to go to the doctor or urgent care – Our local children’s hospital has a great infographic on when to go to urgent care vs the emergency room – and we talked through this. We also talked about when we would just call his pediatrician (e.g., sore throat, fever, etc.).
Stop a leaky faucet – While we do not currently have a leaky faucet, we read through a wikiHow on the topic and then examined our own bathroom faucet to see how we would take it apart to replace the seal.
Prevent pipes from freezing in cold weather – Instead of consulting wikiHow again, my partner discussed how he prevents the pipes in our home from freezing and walked through the steps he went through this winter when our pipes were in danger of freezing.
Unclog a drain – We again did some research on wikiHow and read through the steps for unclogging a drain. We discussed what products we would use to unclog a drain and I promised to let our son take the lead in helping with this the next time we have a clogged drain.
Fix Wi-Fi connection – While I do not pretend to know how and why it works, I showed my son how to unplug the Wi-fi router and ethernet cord that seems to always fix our internet connection when it stops working.
Understand how fuses work and how to fix a broken fuse – I showed my son where the fuse box is in our home and also walked him through how to flip the breaker when it needs to be reset. We discussed that he can help with this the next time that happens.
Know what to do in a power outage – We reviewed what typically happens in a power outage (e.g., our energy company notifies us by email or text) and reviewed what steps we would need to take depending on the amount of time it was estimated for the electricity to come back on.
Pay bills (read and understand the bill, pay it online) – I reviewed my cell phone bill with him including all of the different charges and showed him how it automatically comes out of my checking account each month.
Understand how to register to vote – We got a book from the library (updated edition from a book that Eleanor Roosevelt wrote!) that discussed this topic in great detail and he read through it before we chatted about it. He had a lot of questions about the upcoming election and how we registered to vote for it that we were able to then talk about!
Clean the shower – He is in charge of cleaning the toilets and sinks in the bathroom in our house, so it was easy for him to learn the steps for cleaning the shower after I showed him what products he should use and what the steps are. We also discussed how to look for mold and mildew in the shower – especially on the shower curtain.

30 Day Life Skills Challenge – COMPLETED!

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