Model these skills and have youth practice them on a regular basis.
1. Help kids learn to express their feelings.
2. Does the youth know how to convey respect, caring, honesty and trustworthiness (e.g. saying thank you, not being rude, tone of voice, valuing others’ opinions, not keeping people waiting, being inclusive, accepting responsibility for a mistake)?
3. Does the youth know how to greet someone and introduce himself?
4. Help young people learn social skills and develop at least one friendship.
5. Can the youth carry on a conversation and maintain comfortable eye contact?
6. Teach youth ways to have fun without spending lots of money.
7. Connect youth with a religious organization.
8. Start a Lifebook that tells the child’s story and contains important papers, pictures of family and other mementos.
9. Teach kids how often household chores need to be done to keep a house reasonably clean.
10. Show youth how to properly dispose of garbage, including recycling.
11. Teach youth what cleaning products and equipment to use for different jobs and how to use them, including how to change a vacuum cleaner bag.
12. Show youth the best places to shop for food, clothing and furniture.
13. Teach good kitchen hygiene, such as washing hands before preparing food and using safe practices to defrost and prepare food.
14. Teach youth how to read food labels for nutritional values and expiration dates.
15. Show youth how to tell if fruits and vegetables are fresh when shopping.
16. Teach kids how to use the store flyers and coupons and how to comparison shop.
17. Have youth plan and shop for one week’s worth of meals within a budget.
18. Teach youth how to use utensils, an oven and a microwave.
19. Have the youth cook a meal using a recipe and be able to adjust it to feed more or fewer people.
20. Teach the youth to prepare at least five different meals.