The Summer Skills List: 10 Things to Teach Before School Starts

School ends. The schedule opens up. For about ten weeks, your kid has something they almost never have: unstructured time.

Most parents fill it. Camps. Sports. Trips. Screens. By the time August arrives, the summer is gone and the only thing your kid learned was how to beat another level.

Here’s a different plan: use the summer to teach your kid things that actually matter. Not academic things — the school handles those. Life things. The skills they need to function as a human being that nobody is putting on a curriculum.

Summer is the only window where you have long days, low stakes, and no homework competing for attention. Ten weeks. Ten skills. One per week with room to breathe.

Why summer is the best time

During the school year, your kid’s time is spoken for. School from 8 to 3. Homework. Activities. By the time dinner’s over, there’s barely time to unwind, let alone learn a new skill.

That’s why the handoff never happens. It’s not that you don’t want to teach them — it’s that there’s no space in the routine. The urgent always crowds out the important.

Summer removes that excuse. The days are long. The pressure is off. If it takes your kid forty-five minutes to make a sandwich, nobody’s late for anything. If the laundry comes out wrinkled, there’s no school uniform to worry about.

Low stakes + lots of time = the best conditions for learning. Use them.

The 10 skills

1. Cook a real meal

Not microwave something. Not pour cereal. Cook an actual meal — with heat, ingredients, steps, and a result that feeds the family.

Start with breakfast. Scrambled eggs, toast, fruit. Three components, nothing complicated, minimal danger. Once they’ve got that, add a lunch (sandwich with sides they prepare themselves). Then a dinner: pasta with sauce, grilled cheese and soup, tacos.

By the end of summer, they should be able to plan, prepare, and serve a full meal without your help. Not a gourmet meal. An edible one.

The handoff: They cook dinner once a week for the rest of summer. You don’t supervise. You eat what they make.

2. Do laundry start to finish

Not just throw clothes in the machine. The full cycle: sort, wash, dry, fold, put away.

Most kids have never done this because it’s easier and faster for you to do it. That’s exactly the pattern that produces a college freshman who brings their laundry home on weekends.

The handoff: Their laundry is their responsibility for the entire summer. You don’t remind them. If they run out of clean clothes, they figure it out.

3. Manage their own morning

No alarms set by you. No reminders to brush teeth. No outfit selection. No “hurry up, we’re going to be late.”

Hand them an alarm clock (not their phone). Tell them what time they need to be ready. Walk away.

For the first week, it’ll be chaos. By week three, they’ll have a routine. Their routine — not yours.

The handoff: You stop managing anything between their alarm and the front door. Whatever happens in that window is theirs.

4. Handle money

Give them a fixed budget for something real — their entertainment for the summer, their spending money for a trip, their back-to-school supplies.

A fixed amount. No replenishment. They decide how to spend it. When it’s gone, it’s gone.

A kid who blows $50 in the first week and has nothing for the remaining nine weeks has just learned more about money management than a semester of financial literacy. The lesson isn’t in the budget. It’s in the consequences.

The handoff: They track their own spending. You don’t bail them out.

5. Navigate somewhere independently

Depending on their age, this could be walking to a friend’s house, biking to the store, or figuring out a bus route.

The point isn’t the destination. It’s the act of getting somewhere without you driving, directing, or GPS-ing them there. Reading a map (or signs). Making a wrong turn and figuring it out. Asking someone for directions.

The handoff: One errand per week that they handle — getting to and from a destination on their own.

6. Clean a space to a real standard

Not “I picked up the big stuff.” Not “I shoved everything in the closet.” Actually clean a room: surfaces wiped, floor vacuumed or swept, things in their place, bed made.

The standard matters. “Clean your room” without a clear standard produces a kid who thinks sliding toys under the bed is cleaning. Define what done looks like. Then hand it to them.

The handoff: They’re responsible for one shared space (not just their room) once a week. The kitchen after dinner. The bathroom. The living room. They own the standard.

7. Make a phone call

This sounds trivial. It isn’t. A generation of kids is growing up unable to talk on the phone because every interaction has been text, screen, or mediated by a parent.

Your kid should be able to: call a business and ask a question. Call a relative. Schedule their own appointment. Return something to a store (in person or by phone). Order food over the phone.

The handoff: Every time there’s a phone call to make that involves them — doctor’s appointment, questions about camp, ordering takeout — they make it. You’re nearby, but the words come from them.

8. Solve a problem without you

Something will go wrong this summer. A plan will fall through. A friend will cancel. Something will break. They’ll forget something important.

When it happens, don’t fix it. Ask: “What are you going to do about that?”

Then wait. Let them sit in the discomfort of not knowing. Let them generate a solution — even a bad one. Let them try it. If it doesn’t work, ask again: “What else could you try?”

The skill isn’t solving problems perfectly. It’s knowing they can attempt a solution without an adult engineering it for them.

The handoff: You identify one problem per week that you would normally fix. Let them handle it instead.

9. Plan and execute a project

Not a school project with rubrics and due dates. A self-directed project. Something they want to do that requires planning, effort, and follow-through.

It could be building something in the garage. Organizing a neighborhood event. Starting a small business (lemonade stand, lawn mowing, pet sitting). Learning a new skill from YouTube. Reading a book series. Whatever they’re interested in.

Your role: help them plan it (what do you need? what are the steps? what’s the timeline?). Then step back. They execute. They deal with setbacks. They finish — or they learn what it feels like to abandon something halfway through.

The handoff: One project, start to finish, entirely owned by them.

10. Have a hard conversation

Before school starts again, your kid should practice having at least one conversation they’re dreading.

Maybe they need to tell a friend something difficult. Apologize for something. Ask a coach for a different position. Tell you they don’t want to do an activity anymore.

Conflict is a skill. So is honesty. So is advocacy. All of them require practice in low-stakes settings before high-stakes ones arrive.

The handoff: Help them prepare what to say. Then let them say it. Not for them. Not with you standing there translating. Them.

How to make it work

You don’t do all ten at once. You don’t announce “The Summer Skills Program” and hand them a checklist. That turns it into school.

Pick one per week. Or pick three for the whole summer and go deep. Whatever fits your kid and your schedule.

The only rule: once you hand something over, it stays handed over. You don’t take it back because they’re doing it wrong. You don’t step in because it’s faster. The whole point is letting them struggle through it until they can do it on their own.

Will the meals be bad? Yes. Will the laundry be wrinkled? Yes. Will the room not meet your standard for the first three tries? Yes. Will the phone call be awkward and short? Yes.

That’s the cost of building capability. It’s temporary. The skill is permanent.

What happens in September

A kid who spent ten weeks cooking, cleaning, managing money, solving problems, and navigating independently walks back into school as a different person. Not because they mastered all ten skills — but because they practiced being someone who handles things.

That identity shift is the real product of the summer. Not the skills themselves, but the belief: “I can figure things out.”

A kid with that belief handles middle school. Handles high school. Handles life.

A kid who spent the summer being managed, driven, and entertained walks back into school as the same person who left. Waiting for instructions. Waiting for someone to handle it.

You get about thirteen summers with your kid before they leave home. Maybe fewer, depending on the age when summer stops being a family affair. Each one is a window.

This one is open right now.

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Summer is the window. The 936 weeks are ticking. If you want to see exactly which skills your kid needs at their age — and which ones are missing — start here.