Your Parents Didn’t Do A Very Good Job Raising You If You Weren’t Taught These 11 Small Skills
Learning how to be a self-sufficient adult isn't easy.
Natalia Deriabina | Shutterstock Part of parenting involves preparing children to enter adulthood with confidence and grace. Parents have responsibilities beyond providing food, shelter, and emotional support. Even with the best intentions, no parent can be perfect, but they can fit their children's needs.
A successful parent provides their kids with a solid understanding of how to make their way in the world so they can build a life of their own. Becoming a self-sufficient adult isn’t easy, but it’s a little easier when your parents guide you, offering foundational information on how to care for yourself. If you weren’t taught these small skills, your parents didn’t raise you well.
Your parents didn’t do a very good job raising you if you weren’t taught these 11 small skills:
1. How to make appointments.
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In theory, making calls to set up appointments is simple, but many young adults never learned how to handle that part of their lives. When phone anxiety is combined with the complexity of the healthcare system, scheduling doctor’s visits can feel more complicated than it really is.
Managing your schedule and following through on the more administrative aspects of adulthood is a learned skill. If your parents made all your appointments for you, they didn’t do a good job imparting that small yet crucial life skill.
Your lack of proficiency in that arena can make you avoidant, so you don’t visit the doctor regularly. Ignoring minor health issues can be detrimental further down the road. Avoiding appointments highlights a lack of self-sufficiency, inevitably making you feel like you don’t have agency over your health.
2. How to listen to others.
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Your parents didn’t raise you well if you weren’t taught to listen when others speak. It might seem like a small skill, but being a good listener is essential for effective communication. Listening involves much more than just sitting quietly and nodding along. It’s more than just waiting for your turn to talk. You can’t fully know another person without hearing what they say.
“Truly great listeners are selfless in conversation,” psychologist Nick Wignall shared. “But the only way to resist the pull of your own emotions and stay focused on the other person is self-awareness.”
To be a good listener, Wignall recommended asking yourself one simple question before entering a conversation: “Is this conversation about being helpful and supportive or making myself feel good?”
“Focus your attention on the person sitting next to you — how they feel and what the world must look like through their eyes right now,” he advised. “By resisting the urge to give advice and solve problems, you give the other person a far more valuable gift — the gift of validation.”
3. How to use proper table manners.
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If you weren’t taught table manners, your parents didn’t raise you very well. Everyone has their own measure of what they deem polite, yet knowing basic etiquette lets you share a meal without turning other people’s stomachs.
The world has changed drastically since Emily Post, the queen of manners, wrote her book “Etiquette” in 1922. While the details of proper etiquette have evolved, the core elements of consideration, respect, and honesty remain the same.
Some table manners are more intuitive than others, like chewing with your mouth closed, using a napkin, and asking for out-of-reach items to be passed to you. Regarding more modern dilemmas, like phone etiquette, Post recommends turning your phone off, storing it away, and waiting until you’ve left the table to check it.
“Bring your best self to the meal,” Post concluded.
4. How to shake hands properly.
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You can’t make a second first impression. It sounds like a cliche, but a solid handshake sends a powerful message about your personality upon meeting someone new. Shaking hands properly is a more delicate situation that many people realize, and if you weren’t taught that small skill, your parents didn’t do a perfect job raising you.
According to a study from the American Psychological Association, a handshake provides valuable information that can benefit people professionally. Researchers measured various aspects of handshakes among men and women, assessing strength, vigor, duration, eye contact, and completeness of grip.
The study concluded that a firm handshake is directly correlated with a favorable first impression, noting that “those with a firm handshake were more extraverted and open to experience and less neurotic and shy than those with a less firm or limp handshake.”
We have little control over how others perceive us, but putting your best handshake forward can sway some initial opinions in your favor.
5. How to cook basic meals.
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If you don’t know your way around a kitchen, your parents didn’t raise you very well. Being able to feed yourself well is part of being an adult. Knowing basic kitchen skills shows that you can take care of yourself. It shows you’re an independent, self-sustaining person who doesn’t survive on peanut butter sandwiches.
You don’t have to be a Michelin-star chef, but you do need to master a few recipes. Food does more than just nourish our bodies; it also nourishes our souls. Sharing meals with other people is a love language, so knowing your way around the kitchen is essential.
6. How to do laundry.
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Doing laundry is one of those tasks that seems more straightforward than it is, but if you weren’t taught this small skill, your parents didn’t do a very good job raising you. All too often, parents take on continued responsibility for washing their kids’ clothes, even when their kids have become competent teenagers who can clean up after themselves.
For every young adult who was never made to do their laundry, there’s a load of lights with one bright red sock mixed in. You're a step ahead if your parents showed you the difference between stain remover and regular detergent.
Pitching in around the house is a valuable way for parents to teach their kids to be responsible for themselves. Learning to do laundry is an especially valuable skill, as it demonstrates that you care about your clothes and how you present yourself to the rest of the world.
7. How to save money.
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Talking about money is still considered a taboo subject, which is why so many people struggle to gain a sense of financial literacy. If your parents didn’t teach you how to budget and save money, they didn’t do a good job raising you.
According to the Financial Education Evaluation Toolkit, young adults between 19 and 29 face major financial decisions despite lacking experience and financial knowledge. This transitional period puts them at risk of making ill-informed decisions that can negatively impact their future economic stability.
One financial study found that people who take a personal finance course in college increase their investment knowledge, which makes them more likely to increase their savings. Education creates access, and finances are no different.
8. How to tip service workers.
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If your parents didn’t teach you the importance of tipping, they didn’t do a good job raising you. Behind every hot take on how out of control tipping culture has become, a service worker is trying to support themselves from whatever chunk of change strangers feel generous enough to give them.
Part of adulthood is recognizing that we’re all connected and that our actions impact us. You might save a few dollars by not leaving a tip, but you also have to consider what message you're sending to the person bringing you food, so you don’t have to cook. Entitlement doesn’t look good on anyone, but moving through the world with a generous mindset will open doors you didn’t even know were closed.
9. How to own your mistakes.
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We live in a world where perfection is prioritized, even though it’s impossible to achieve. This societally held perfectionist mindset is detrimental, preventing people from trying new things and accepting their fallibility.
According to the Institute of Child Psychology, “children receive minimal exposure to the stress of making mistakes,” putting them in the category of being “failure deprived.” When kids don’t learn to handle mistakes, they feel extreme duress when facing simple challenges.
It might be painful for parents to stand by and witness their kids making mistakes, but “pain is where children and adults experience growth and is the catalyst for molding integrity and character. “
“One of the most empowering gifts we can give our children is to actively talk about how important making a mistake is,” the Institute of Child Psychology explained. “When we talk about the power of making mistakes, it stops mistakes from becoming a shameful experience and instead shines the light on the potential embedded in a mistake.”
10. How to care for shared spaces.
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Your parents didn’t raise you well if you weren’t taught to contribute and care for communal space. Going to college is a significant rite of passage, yet kids often leave home without knowing how to be good roommates.
Parents do their kids a major disservice when they neglect to teach them to be responsible for their belongings. Of all the challenges kids face when they head out into the world, they should know how important it is to leave places better off than they found them.
11. How to show gratitude.
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Most parents teach their kids to say “please” and “thank you,” but their education in expressing gratitude often stops there. If you weren’t trained to appreciate and acknowledge what you’ve been given, your parents didn’t raise you well.
For children to express gratitude, they must develop skills like perspective-taking and emotional knowledge.
Researchers from UNC-Chapel Hill have determined that the experience of gratitude has four distinct parts: “What we notice in our lives for which we can be grateful, how we think about why we have been given those things, how we feel about the things we have been given, and what we do to express appreciation.”
Expressing gratitude requires us to step out of our own experience and reach across the divide to connect with others on a deeper level.
Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a staff writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.