You begin to have aspirations for your child's future from the moment you learn you are going to start a family. You devote many hours to educating, molding, correcting, and instilling principles into the character of your children while they are still young. Some talents will be useful to them both in the classroom and outside of it as kids get older and start to form their identities. Here are 12 practical soft talents you may impact on your kids.

Communication Skills

Your child begins communicating as soon as they are born. Babies express themselves by cooing in praise when they are content or crying uncontrollably when they are hungry. As kids become older, they develop their vocabulary, voice variety, and nonverbal communication skills.

One of the best soft skills to teach your kids is how to communicate with different people. Your children must learn how to interact with individuals of all sizes, occupations, and degrees of experience in the workplace, on the playground, and in the classroom.

Building Rapport

Making friends and alliances is an important learning in life. Withthe adventnew gadgets and technology, we rely more on texting or chatting than in person communication, which is necessary to build good rapport with others, the online technology tools like Skype, Face time, WhatsApp, Google Meet, TalktoAngel Online Counselling Platform.

Critical Thinking

Children have an innate curiosity about the world. When your toddler or preschooler repeatedly asks you "why," a three-letter query, this manifests itself early in life.

Flipping that question right back to your child is a simple way to teach them critical thinking. Ask them where they think the mud comes from when they inquire as opposed to responding with an explanation. You're giving them the opportunity to reflect and come up with possible answers by returning the question to them. You can fill in the blanks and advance their learning when they express their opinions.

Helping older kids and teenagers develop their critical thinking skills encourages them to conduct independent research, come up with fresh solutions to problems, find new ways to do things, and learn how to troubleshoot issues with and for others.

Leadership

At home, leadership begins. Children observe you to learn how to take charge. Everything you do demonstrates leadership, including how you distribute tasks, oversee schedules, and clean your home. Another area where kids can gain leadership skills is in sports.

Give your youngster the chance to show leadership at home. You can do this by giving them a list of tasks to complete and asking them how they intend to do so by a certain time. Try having a role-reversal night where the parents follow and the kids take the lead. Give in to their requests to give you duties and tasks so you may see how they see your leadership. Another method to give them the chance to assist with siblings is to teach their younger siblings things you have learned firsthand.

Excellent leaders learn by being excellent followers, and for our children, it starts when they are young.

Positive Attitude

Positivity is more than just sending out "good vibes." Even when circumstances are not perfect, those with positive attitudes can see the best in other people and situations.

Positive attitudes spread easily, and individuals who possess them can give others the much-needed grace and inspiration they need. When it comes to your children, it can take the shape of comforting friends or loved ones, assisting someone in seeing the positive side of a challenging circumstance, or praising someone for their hard work on a school assignment or their attire.

Problem Solving

We learn to solve mathematical problems in school,however, there are lot of real life scenarios, which are not taught as kids in life – like what I need to  do when the power runs out or how to seek help from colleague on a difficult or complex task. Employers often look for independent problem solvers [1].

Teamwork

The adage that "teamwork makes the dream work" is well-known and accurate. Your child will be a valuable asset in the classroom, on their sports teams, and someday in the workplace if you can help them recognize the importance of working as a team.

Start demonstrating this idea by helping your child with their duties or your own while you accomplish your own, assigning them projects while you go grocery shopping, or teaming them up with a sibling to achieve bigger tasks.

Work Ethics

You begin teaching a work ethic in your child the moment you teach them the clean-up song. They are coming to understand that play isn't all there is to life and that cleanup comes after playtime.

Work ethic includes both the why and the how. Describe the benefits to your children of the duties you give them and the reasons behind them. They develop a higher feeling of pride and responsibility for what they have and in the amount of effort they put into caring for it when they understand how their job (taking care of the house, the car, and their things) contributes to the bigger purpose.

Creativity and Imagination

Steve Jobs deserves the credit for greatly increasing the value of creativity as a soft skill. He established creativity in the workplace as cool.

Children have an inborn sense of creativity and imagination, which shows through in the way they use play to learn. Encourage your kids to use their imagination in any situation rather than discourage them as they get older.

Time Management

Developing schedule organization and adherence in your kids is a soft skill that will benefit them throughout their lives and in every aspect of life. While their daily routines at school teach them to be away from home, at home, go over your child's evening and weekend activities. If they have access to mobile devices, show them how to use calendar and reminder apps. Use timers that clock down for smaller children and challenge them to be ready before the timer hits zero. Have a clear time-based itinerary where kids can see it on the weekends so they know when to start and finish tasks, when they have free time, when particular events take place, and when to start the nighttime routine.

Organizing

To be well-organized, your child need not be a tidy freak. This can be instilled in young children by demonstrating to them that their toys go in the toy box and not on the floor or in the living room. Bookshelves, desks, and dressers serve as additional classrooms for parents to teach organization as their children get older. Small things like color-coding folders by academic subject, designating folders for finished homework, and teaching students to keep their agendas up to date are strategies to assist reinforce this soft skill throughout the school year.

Adaptability

Things shift. The world as we know it can abruptly shift, as we've witnessed during the past few hours. The ability to adapt to change will help our kids succeed in a world where things change quickly, such as school, the workplace, and life.

Using examples from nature is one method to teach kids about change. Beautiful butterflies emerge from ugly caterpillars, trees change with the seasons, the sky changes, the moon changes, etc. All of these experience some degree of alteration while maintaining a consistent structural design. Because it isn't full, the moon continues to shine. Even if trees don't have leaves throughout the winter, they nevertheless offer shelter. People are the same way.

For further assistance connect with the Best Psychologist in India at TalktoAngel Asia's no.1 Online Counselling and mental health well-being platform. 

Contributed by: Dr (Prof) R K Suri & Aditi Bhardwaj

References:

Childtrends.org: 5 Soft Skills That Help Youth Succeed at Work

https://makerkids.com/four-important-soft-skills-teach-kids-become-leaders/