Ep. 5 The Top 5 Skills of Successful Kids & How to Cultivate Them

I am so excited because we're kicking off something really special this week. It's a six week series and we're covering in detail what I have been sharing with you in all these introductory episodes. The five self skills to practice with your COVID babies and toddlers every day that will set them up to be ready learners.

When they've reached the kindergarten age, I talk about these cores, right? The core four connectors and the core four skill sets that they need to be well rounded, holistic learners. Well, what are they? Okay. Well, there's lots. So I've drilled down to the five that matter the most for your kiddos, who, as we've talked about, have had limited opportunity to practice.

These are the most vital for you to see opportunities to practice, opportunities for learning, and for you to know how to support them when they're in the middle of a struggle and which skill you will be teaching them by helping them get through it. All right, here they are. Here's the high level overview of the five skills we're going to be covering over the next five weeks.

Waiting

They need to know how to wait. Patience is so important. As humans, we are impatient creatures. We just are. It's a skill that can be built, practiced.  So important that you hear me say and feel me say that just because somebody is a certain way doesn't mean they need to remain that way. We are creatures who grow and change, and we're learning and growing as adults, even as we learn and grow with our kids, even as we teach them that this growth mindset thing is there forever. We're always learning, we're always growing, so we can better our skills even if they're hard for us. Waiting is the first skill. We'll dive deeper into that next week. 

Emotional Awareness and Regulation 

The second skill that your infant, toddler, preschooler needs to practice on the daily is emotional awareness and regulation. Having a high EQ emotional quotient, the technical term, is the sign of a regulated human being, someone who understands how they feel what those emotions even are, and then what to do with them inside their bodies, and then how to express them externally outside their bodies. Very important skill to be practicing with your kiddos daily. 

Flexible Thinking

The third is a cognition skill.  It's flexible thinking.  Our brain, our frontal lobe, thinks it's in charge. It thinks it's in control. And we do too. We believe it. So, we take control. We take charge.  We make plans, we put lists in place, we predict the outcomes of the way things are going to go thanks to our conscious brain. And then, we get intensely disappointed when it doesn't work out that way. Or we are so rigid we don't know how to shift.  Flexible thinking is a skill, and we will learn how to support it in our kids. 

Sense of Self

Skill number four, sense of self. And I know this might not sound like a skill but it is. We talked previously about your journey over your lifetime to recognize, design, own, and choose who you are and who you want to be in this world, that is your journey to sense of self. But the seeds of that identity were planted when you were very, very young and you just believed everything your parents told you. Some of you had to jump hurdles to overcome some of those self beliefs and stories that actually weren't true and didn't align with who you are. As parents raising a COVID generation, these beautiful blank slate kids who are just pure joy and ease and love. We can support them to start seeing, owning, and working with inside their self identity now. We're going to be so far ahead of the game. They are going to be so far ahead of the game.

They're not just going to overcome the skill deficits that they've had because of COVID. They're going to overachieve and fly past those milestones in a way that you've never thought could happen. Self identity, self control, self confidence. Self awareness. Self advocacy. Yes, we want this, right?  Okay, getting sidetracked and fired up.

Time Management

Skill number five of the top five that we need to be practicing daily is time management.  Time management in an infant? Time management in a toddler? Yes. Yes, it starts now. It's the ability to have that structured plan that has limited steps inside the ability to think flexibly. I'm going to say that again because that's a really big statement. The fact that we can do both at the same time is something you might not have thought about. It is the ability to have our structured plan with limited steps, inside the ability to think flexibly. We’ll dive way deeper into that when we're talking specifically about time management over the next few weeks.

So how is this going to work? The next episode is specifically about waiting. I'll tell you a story, a real life story about kids, and then from the story, I will pull for you where the opportunity for learning is how to recognize it, what the skill is that you're practicing and how through intentional language and conversation, you can support practice around the skill.

You will leave with actionable strategies, real scripts, and script starters to help you. You're not alone in this. You're doing the hard work of realizing that this is the most important job that you have. And I'm here to support you in that work.  Thank you for making time for yourself and sharing this space and time together.​