Today’s child is a rushed child with so much academic bifurcation and burden to deal with at school and tuitions at home leaves the child with little self time to explore ones inner self nor understand the dynamism of their immediate environment . Moreover nuclear families have become common and usually with both parents working to support towards family’s monetary expenses. Parents rarely have quality time to spend with their child / children – moreover the new found fad for latest gadgetry, games and applications has robbed families of real one to one togetherness learning time. Under such conditions a child’s socio psycho needs dont get addressed as they ought to be resulting in array of problems ranging from feeling depressed to angry to antisocial activities that may harm his/her mental growth and developmental . To counter act such a malady, the modern day school curriculum has taken the onus on it to impart need based value education Life skills to children at various levels.
Life skills have been defined by the World Health Organisation (WHO) as
Life skills approach is one ace-practice model for contributing to the healthy development of young children and adolescents. In Human development, the acquisition of socio-cognitive and emotional coping skills is as important to basic survival as intellect.
Although it is known fact school grades indicate predictive value of college placement success but success at workplace solely depends on your soft skills. Students need to have an innate aerial perspective about their problems to prevent them from giving up, quitting or losing hope and this forms the crux of any life skills programme. They need to develop a ‘growth mindset’ rather than perceive intelligence as fixed in order to be successful.
Life skills are the abilities that help to promote mental well being and competence in young people as they face the realities of life.

Core Skills:

The core set of life skills which help in promoting health and well being of children and adolescents are :
1. Decision making
2. Problem solving
3. Creative thinking
4. Critical thinking
5. Effective communication
6. Interpersonal relationship skills
7. Self-awareness
8. Empathy
9. Coping with- emotions
10. Coping with stress

Importance:

Imparting life skill education in children and adolescents will bring valuable benefits which include
a) Promotion of self awareness, self esteem, inner peace, education, self confidence, builds resilience, betters communication skills and interpersonal relations etc .
b) Life skills Helps in the promotion of general well being and primary prevention of antisocial activities and behaviour. Makes you pro society abled person.
c) Life skills enable individuals to translate knowledge, attitudes and values into actual abilities and enable individuals to behave in healthy ways in given situation .
d) Life skill education improves the academic performance of individuals and enhances teacher- student relation.

The life of any Life Skills model is to help students identify and build up on ones strengths rather than weaknesses to bring about greater self satisfaction and success in every phase of life – personal or professional.
Cheers to life !