There are parts of motherhood where I feel genuinely confident — the emotional work, the hard conversations, the staying present through the difficult seasons. And then there is the practical life skills piece of parenting -- the cooking, the chores, the teaching my kids how a home actually runs. This is an area where I know that I have a lot of room to grow. My kids are 11 and 14, and they are wonderful humans whom I love deeply, and also we are not quite where I want us to be when it comes to contributing around the house, and that is something I want to keep working on.
Summer feels like the right moment to try, not because I have some grand system ready to put in place, but because the slower pace opens up just enough space for my kids and I to focus on learning how to run our home. This summer I want for all of us to learn some more adulting life skills!
So with that in mind, I brought Katie Kimball on to the podcast today to teach us how to raise capable kids.
Katie Kimball is the founder of Kids Cook Real Food and Raising Healthy Families. She's a mom of four, a former classroom teacher, and someone who has been doing this work long enough that she is genuinely living the payoff, coming home to teenagers who vacuum unprompted, who cook dinner once a week, who have internalized the expectation that everyone contributes. She is warm and practical and completely free of judgment, which makes her the perfect person to talk about this topic!
You'll hear about this in the episode, but Katie runs an annual online conference called Life Skills Now Summer Camp that is especially for kids and teens! They can watch super educational and fun workshops from experts on all sorts of topics from basic cooking, to manners and ettiquette, to finance and saving, to organization and time management. I know this is something that we are going to be watching in our home this summer as we learn how to manage our home a bit better and lean into building life skills! The LifeSkillsNow camp is free, and you can get signed up at the link in my shownotes. Katie will tell us much more about this in the episode, so let's dive in and talk about how and why to teach our kids life skills!
3 KEY TAKEAWAYS:
- All kids need to practice taking beneficial risks, and everyday life skills are one of the best ways to give them that. Letting our kids use a sharp knife, work at a stove, clean a toilet — these aren't just chores, they're opportunities for our kids to build the kind of confidence and executive function that carries over into every other area of their lives, including the ones that scare us most as parents, like handing over car keys or a smartphone.
- We need to set the expectation that everyone contributes to the home. I've been working on shifting my own language around this, moving from "thank you for helping me" to "thank you for doing your part," because our kids aren't helping mom, they're fulfilling their role on the team. Katie's approach gives kids agency over when they do their chores within a set window, which she says removes one of the biggest reasons kids push back — and I thought that was so smart.
- You actually have to teach the skills, which sounds obvious until you realize how often we skip the teaching and go straight to the expecting. Katie's framework of demonstrate, guide, and then coach to independence gives me a clear path forward this summer, and I'm genuinely planning to use it.
As we mentioned in the episode, Katie has created something really special for families who want support with exactly this. The Life Skills Now summer camp is a free week-long event happening June 8th through 12th, where kids get to learn practical and emotional life skills from over 70 teachers — and yes, I am one of them, teaching about gratitude. You can register at raisinghealthyfamilies.com/3in30. Even if you're listening after the camp has passed, that link will always have something free for you to use with your kids, so go check it out. raisinghealthyfamilies.com/3in30
As we head into the last few weeks of school, I hope this episode has planted some seeds for ways to build life skills into your home this summer. I will be joining you on that quest, and I know we can do it!
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