Why You Should Be Teaching Home Ec Skills to Your Children

I would hope that it is obvious why you should be teaching home ec skills to your children, because, of course, they are life skills.  No matter where your children go to school each day (the local public school, a private or parochial school, or your kitchen table), they are depending on you to teach them how to function in life.  These are some of the skills they need!

Before I get into my Top Ten {Tuesday} (which is hosted here each week) list of why you should be teaching Home Ec skills.  I want to talk about something else very quickly so that I don’t have to touch on it later in the series.

My Method for Teaching Home Ec Skills

I want to share something about what I have found, in general, while trying to teach a variety of Home Ec skills to my children.  When I try to help all three of them at once on a skill, different children need help in different ways.  I am often pulled between kids and their needs, and the how experience can sometimes be frustrating.

However, when I take time to work with just one child at a time on one skill, it gives me time to focus on their unique needs.  We both end up having a nice time and we walk away feeling successful.

So, if you have had difficulty trying to work with Home Ec skills with multiple children at the same time, try to find time to work with just one at a time, and prepare for a huge difference in the outcome!

10 Reasons You Should Be Teaching Home Ec Skills to Your Children

1. Tradition – Throughout history, there is a long tradition of the skills of life being taught by parents and older relatives.  There is a reason that this has been the way of the world for thousands of years.  It works.

2. Training, Instead of Trial and Error – While there is something to be said for being self-taught at a skill, by training up your children with skills for running a household, you are blessing them for the future.

I love that my Mom showed love for us by doing so many things for us as we grew up.  But, it means that I went into marriage really lacking a lot of skills for running our home.

3. A Concrete Way to Give Back to the Family – As a general rule, children like to feel like they can be a help.  By equipping them with the skills to be helpful, they can recognize that their efforts are actually a support to the things happening in your home.

4. Extra Hands for Tasks – For almost all of the last five years, I have made gift baskets of baked goodies for therapists, people we take lessons from, Eric’s employees, etc.  Most years, this leaves me exhausted at the end of the day when I have worked on it.

While I was still exhausted the last time I did it, my workload was lightened because my kids felt confident enough to help.  And, they weren’t that kind of help where it actually takes more time to have the kids “help” with a project.

5. A Sense of Accomplishment – My children are so proud when they are able to finish a project, whether it be to dust the living room or to sew a pillow for a doll.

However, times when they want to do those types of projects but I take over and finish them quickly, rather than teaching them how to do something, it steals that sense of accomplishment from them.  If I teach them the skills, however, then they not only get to take pride in a job done, but they learn how to do it either on their own (or more independently, at least) next time.

6. Learning Where Their Interests Lie – Just like many other things that your children will come across in life, learning how to do Home Ec skills may help them to find out something that makes their heart sing.  You just won’t know until you work on these skills with them that something like gardening or cooking or baking or sewing or any number of other skills that you teach them is where their passion lies.

7. Save Them Money – When you teach your children a variety of skills around the home when they are growing up, they will be less likely to have to pay someone to do them later in life.

I still remember sitting with a group of friends when someone said that they couldn’t sew at all.  (I totally get this – I can’t sew either, other than some pretty simple things.)  The friend told us all that when she has buttons come off clothes, she pays $10/button at the dry cleaner to have them put back on.  That really adds up over time, and isn’t a difficult skill to learn.

8. They Can Teach You – When my middle son showed an interest in sewing, I did some simple projects with him that were within skill set.  Then, we were blessed to have the option for him to take a sewing class at our co-op.  Now, because it’s something he loves to do, he can help me with something that I don’t really do.

The moral of that story, of course, is that you shouldn’t be intimidated to teach some Home Ec/Life Skills that you are just barely familiar with.  Give them some basics, even if it means that you have to learn it to teach them.  You never know where they may surpass later.

9. Take Advantage of the Age When Kids Love to Help – There may come a time when your children have zero desire to help you with household tasks.  Take advantage of that golden age when they are raving about how much fun doing the dishes is.

Yes, my seven year old daughter really was singing the praises of dish washing just yesterday.  She washed (as I gave her tips on how to wash different things) and I dried.  Many times throughout the experience, she told me how much she was enjoying it.

At the end, she told me she couldn’t wait until we would do dishes together again.  (She probably won’t be talking about washing dishes the same way a few years from now, so this is the time to enjoy it.)

10. It Encourages Family Time and Relationships – The very nature of teaching any kind of skills (and especially teaching home ec skills) is to closely spend time together in a purposeful way.

I tend to keep myself very busy, so when we work on these life skills together, I find that the speed at which I’m living life suddenly slows down.  I see the little joys in life come into focus.  For me, it’s hard not to be struck by the beauty in parenthood while watching my children learn how to become more self sufficient.

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