Teaching Life Skills to Your Teens Is Love

This is a contributed post from Katie Kimball, founder of Raising Healthy Families and creator behind Teens Cook Real Food?, a self-paced e-course to help teenagers engage with preparing and cooking healthy foods.

I have a 20-year-old son who still lives at home and a 17-year-old daughter who can’t wait to leave. Like George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, she’ll tell anyone who will listen that she can’t wait to “shake the dust of this crummy little [house] off her shoes” the moment she graduates high school in a few months. 

Of course, she doesn’t use those words. She thinks that movie is stupid because her parents love it. And it’s in black and white for crying out loud!

My son just got engaged, and I know that every month he still lives here isn’t just a 20-year-old “living at home” like a slob. Rather, he’s choosing to build up dual savings of finances and experience, almost a force of kinetic energy ready to be released into his own independent adulthood like a slingshot. 

I just caught him setting up a budgeting spreadsheet for his sister, who emphatically told me budgets are stupid. Siblings who get along are a gift for which I am eternally grateful!

My daughter is at the stage where she’s pushing hard away from her parents. I tell my husband that developmentally, it’s literally her job to do this, and it’s nothing personal. *puts up parental emotions shield*

I take every opportunity I can to spend time with her when she is willing. I’ll rub her shoulders for an hour, sore from picking up toddlers at her daycare job and holding the weight of senior year stress she doesn’t know what to do with. 

I asked her this summer, “Do you need me to make a college visit appointment? I know you’re capable, but it seems like you’re a little stuck.” 

You might also like to read: Five Reasons Why You Should Let Your Teen Struggle

I’ll sneak past her closed bedroom door when she’s at school and make her bed, not because she can’t, but because I know it will reduce her stress. It’s a little love note only made possible by the responsibilities I’ve given my kids and teens as they grew up. 

My heart wants to do everything for her before she leaves home as that quiet panic washes over me, saying: “If you don’t help, she might fail. Or worse, she might pull away and never come back.” 

Making teen life easier can make adulthood much harder

I’ve worked hard as an intentional parent to get them to this point of being ready to launch. But ironically, perhaps all that I didn’t do is more important than whatever “work” I did do: 

• I’ve never cleaned their rooms for them. 
• I stopped packing their lunches between 3rd and 5th grade. 
• We don’t pay for their cell phones or car insurance 100% and don’t even cover gas money (which of course everyone else in our middle class community does for their kids, according to ye olde high school senior).
• I don’t check their grades every week or remind them of due dates at school (I really don’t know when their due dates are to be honest). 
• I didn’t organize college applications. 

My kids understand that the house doesn’t clean itself. 

Meals don’t show up magically on the table.

And they stopped believing in the existence of a laundry fairy many years ago. 

In my line of work, I hear about a lot of parents who are experiencing “failure to launch” syndrome, where their young adults can’t quite leave home. When people hear that my kids start cooking a full dinner for the family every week around age 12, some think that I’m just shoving off my own work out of laziness. 

I know it can feel like neglect at first, like it’s unloving to give kids chores on top of all their school and extracurricular activities. But I know that those responsibilities actually show my love and care for them as I think about their future selves. 

You might also like to read: Here’s How to Navigate Your Teen’s Final Year at Home

Can you imagine how difficult it is for high school graduates, at the age of 18, to have all of the responsibilities of adulthood crash onto their shoulders at once like an avalanche? When we try to make their childhoods easier by smoothing over household duties for them, we end up making their adulthoods harder—and we steal precious opportunities to build confidence and reduce anxiety. 

Responsibility builds confidence and improves mental health in teens

Because my kids believe in themselves, in their ability to handle problems and move toward real adulthood, they aren’t as anxious about their future. They know they can figure out life in their first apartment because they’ve already shrunk a sweater in the wash… and survived. 

They’re not in knots over sleights from social circles, because they’ve been nourishing their families with real food for years, building authentic confidence and even identity in the kitchen. 

They have the courage to ask for a raise, because they know their own value through each dish they’ve washed, counter they’ve wiped, and batch of applesauce they’ve made from scratch. They’re hard workers because they had the opportunity to practice working hard. 

In spite of the fact that they have radically different personalities and their paths to adulthood look very different from the outside, I feel pretty confident that they’re both going to turn out just fine. I believe they will become productive members of society, reach their goals, share their talents with the world. 

A 2024 study showed that self-efficacy—the belief in one’s ability to handle challenges and complete tasks—significantly predicts mental health outcomes. Higher self-efficacy correlates with lower levels of depression and anxiety while predicting greater optimism and life satisfaction. 

All that academic-speak boils down to this: 

When we give kids and teens real responsibilities and opportunities for low-risk failure, we protect them from depression and anxiety. 

You might also like to read: These Essential Soft Skills Can Help Your Teen Succeed

So if you’re just a step or two behind me with a kid entering high school or just about ready to launch, and you want to do the best possible thing for their mental health and their future selves, my advice is this: 

Don’t do everything for them. 

Choose one area today where you know they can take more responsibility, and give it to them. Show them how to do it. Explain that this will be “their thing” from now on. 

We need to let our kids fail in order to grow

Then the most important step: Coach yourself to let. them. fail. if it comes to it, and don’t you dare take that responsibility back.

Finally, edit your mindset moving forward so you’re always analyzing situations and asking yourself—am I doing too much? 

If you are, teach them what you do for them and see what happens. It is far better to drop a whole homemade pizza into the bottom of the oven when Mom is still there to talk you through it (true story) than to have to learn problem-solving and resilience for the first time when a career is on the line.  

Passing on real responsibility to our teens isn’t about ceasing to do things for them out of love. It’s about making the acts of service we do for them mean exponentially more—like making the bed for a fully capable teenage girl who can’t wait to fly the nest.

With the new Teens Cook Real Food course, Katie pledges to be that voice saying what you always want your kids to hear, but coming from someone who’s “not mom” so it has a chance of getting through. She’ll challenge them to think about their futures (“No one will cook for you in your first apartment, so what are your options?”), take ownership of their health, and take charge of the kitchen with real cooking skills. It’s not even just about following recipes, but about understanding food and flavor and learning to love cooking to nourish oneself and bring others together in community. Check out her free workshop HERE! 

Raising teens and tweens is a tough job, but you’re not alone. These posts might help:

20 Ways to Show Your Teen Love When They Don’t Want a Hug

Five Effective Strategies to Help Reduce Entitled Behavior in Your Teen

How to Have “Healthy Conflicts” When Your Family Disagrees

Open Letter to Parents Who Feel Their Teens Slipping Away

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