What Now?

Do you ever feel like there are a zillion skills that your child needs to learn to become an independent adult? How do you decide what to teach them?

First, I’d say take a day or two and observe.  You’ll need to do this in addition to all your usual duties, but it’s worth it in the end…I promise.  Note what challenges them.  What do they need help to do? Are there behaviors they are exhibiting that are making their life harder than it needs to be?  If anything jumps out, that might be a good place to start.

AFLS

If you want a more comprehensive set of options, you might ask your child’s school to administer the Assessment of Functional Living Skills (the AFLS: if you hear it at a meeting, it will sound like ‘af-uhls’). It is a questionnaire filled out by you and school staff. It assesses current skill levels, but in the process, it shows you what your child does not know how to do yet.  Categories include basic living skills, home skills, community participation skills, school skills, vocational skills and independent living skills.

Preference

Consider your child’s preferences as you choose skills to tackle.  You know them so well! When you look at the list of skills, if one jumps out as something your child would be proud to know, choose that one!  Let them choose the adventure of their own life.  Even if they can’t tell you with words, you might know that they love clothes and would think it was great fun to be able to dress themselves.  Maybe they light up in the kitchen and you could work on some food prep skills. You get the idea.

Safety

When Mikey first took the AFLS, he was in elementary school.  One of the questions was something like, ‘does your child administer his own medicine?’ Although my answer was no, it wouldn’t be safe or appropriate for Mikey to be administering his own medicine.  Even now, Michael is twenty and I still sort his medications each week and I dispense the appropriate dose at the appropriate time.  He may need this assistance for life.

That said, many of the skills do not present safety concerns and provide great ideas for parents to tackle at home or bring up as possible goals and objectives for the next IEP. You can google ‘assessment of functional living skills’ and it will provide you many great examples.

Quick Reminder

Pick one or two skills at a time.  This keeps stress levels low while building your confidence as a parent.

For other options on skills to teach your children or work on yourself to facilitate their learning, click the link below.