What are the MOST important skills for kids to learn?

What are the MOST important skills for kids to learn?

I’ve recently started a little fun project with a mate helping 12 young lads aged 9-12 in Gentofte.

They’re all aspiring football plays and keen to do what ever it takes to become professional footballers.

I’m not particularly concerned about whether they go pro or not obviously but I’m really enjoying the opportunity to impart some core skills.

• Autonomy and self trust
• Responsibility
• Self awareness

This week I taught them about nutrition.

Here’s the thing.

They are going to be told a lot of contradictory things about nutrition.

By convincing people, by people with an adjenda, by people who can point to studies, by people who passionately preach what works for them.

With that in mind I taught them 6 guiding principles but the first 3 I told them are by far the most important:

1. Be present with and enjoy what you are already eating.

Chew thoroughly
Savour
Relax
Be grateful

Do this and you will gain the maximum possible benefit from what you already eat via improved digestion and nutrient absorption.

2. Become aware of what you are consuming and how it makes you feel.

Writing or photograph for a week.

Did you feel cravings, energy slumps, bloating, diarrhoea, constipation?

Until you can objectively observe what you eat and how it’s working for you you can’t make informed changes.

3. Review and decide on what changes you could make, that you would make, decide how you could make it happen. Then once again, measure how the change makes you feel and perform.

I followed with three guiding areas namely:

• More real less fake
• Better journey to plate
• More necessary nutrients

But that’s less important.

What I believe is most important is that they own the process, they decide what good looks and feels like, they take responsibility for themselves.

If I can an some small way teach them those things then it will have been a year well spent.