Counselor's Corner: The Seven Essential Life Skills That Every Child Needs
Skill 1: Focus and Self Control
Children need this sill in order to achieve their goals, especially in a world that is filled with distractions and information overload. It involves pay-ing attention, remembering the rules, thinking flexibly, and exercising self-control.
Children need this sill in order to achieve their goals, especially in a world that is filled with distractions and information overload. It involves pay-ing attention, remembering the rules, thinking flexibly, and exercising self-control.
Skill 2: Perspective-Taking
Perspective taking goes far beyond empathy it involves figuring out what others think and feel, and forms the basis for children’s understanding of their parents’, teachers’, and friends’ intentions. Children who can take others’ perspectives are also much less likely to get involved in conflicts.
Skill 3: Communicating
Communicating is much more than understanding language, speaking, reading, and writing—it is the skill of determining what one wants to communicate and realizing how our communications will be understood by others. It is the skill that teachers and employers feel is most lacking to-day.
Skill 4: Making Connections
Making connections is at the heart of learning—figuring out what’s the same and what’s different, and sorting these things into categories. Making unusual connections is at the core of creativity. In a world where people can google for information, it is the people who can see connections who are able to go beyond knowing information to using this information well.
Skill 5: Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the ongoing search for valid and reliable knowledge to guide beliefs, decisions, and actions.
Skill 6: Taking on Challenges
Life is full of stresses and challenges. Children who are willing to take on challenges (instead of avoiding them or simply coping with them) do better in school and in life.
Skill 7: Self-Directed, Engaged Learning
It is through learning that we can realize our potential. As the world changes, so can we, for as long as we live—as long as we learn.
Mind in the Making, by Ellen Galinsky
Elementary School Counselor
Kim Brigham, LMFT
kbrigham@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1214
Middle School Counselor
Yeni Dumas, LMHC
ydumas@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1241
High School Counselor
Scarlett Saldaña, LCSW
ssaldana@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1247
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Perspective taking goes far beyond empathy it involves figuring out what others think and feel, and forms the basis for children’s understanding of their parents’, teachers’, and friends’ intentions. Children who can take others’ perspectives are also much less likely to get involved in conflicts.
Skill 3: Communicating
Communicating is much more than understanding language, speaking, reading, and writing—it is the skill of determining what one wants to communicate and realizing how our communications will be understood by others. It is the skill that teachers and employers feel is most lacking to-day.
Skill 4: Making Connections
Making connections is at the heart of learning—figuring out what’s the same and what’s different, and sorting these things into categories. Making unusual connections is at the core of creativity. In a world where people can google for information, it is the people who can see connections who are able to go beyond knowing information to using this information well.
Skill 5: Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the ongoing search for valid and reliable knowledge to guide beliefs, decisions, and actions.
Skill 6: Taking on Challenges
Life is full of stresses and challenges. Children who are willing to take on challenges (instead of avoiding them or simply coping with them) do better in school and in life.
Skill 7: Self-Directed, Engaged Learning
It is through learning that we can realize our potential. As the world changes, so can we, for as long as we live—as long as we learn.
Mind in the Making, by Ellen Galinsky
Elementary School Counselor
Kim Brigham, LMFT
kbrigham@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1214
Middle School Counselor
Yeni Dumas, LMHC
ydumas@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1241
High School Counselor
Scarlett Saldaña, LCSW
ssaldana@wcsmiami.org
305.233.2030, ext. 1247
Westminster Christian School, located in Palmetto Bay, Florida, is a private, college-preparatory school for children from preschool through twelfth grade.