The Ability to Get from One Place to Another

One important life skill that teenagers need to learn in order to become independent, and to generally be able to operate without their parents is transportation, or “getting from Point A to Point B”. While it sounds simple, many teens do not have a good grasp of this simple skill. There is a bus to get to school and often, the family rely upon for transportation to go anywhere else.

Always leaving this important life skill to parents can lead a child to develop the bad habit of never taking the responsibility of being where they need to be and blaming others for being late or not showing up. That will hinder your teen's daily living and success.

Young adults have goals, dreams and responsibilities that will require them to know all they can about different modes of transportation.

Teens need to know “how to get there from here”. Therefore, parents need to give the responsibility of transporting themselves from one place to another to their teens as often as possible. When parents do this, teens learn valuable transportation lessons.

Transportation lessons and experiences are taught in high school and some can be taught by getting your teens involved with travel clubs or various youth events.

These life skills are learned best when taught by experience, but you can also use the Internet to help when the concept of using experience as a teacher is not readily applicable. Give these lessons your best efforts as teaching your teens how to go where they need to on their own will boost their confidence and add to their overall sense of independence.

Task 1. Decide whether the statements are true (T) or false (F).

1. The fact that children depend on their parents for transportation to go anywhere may have a negative impact on them.                                                                                        _____

2. Parents should take the responsibility of transporting their teens as often as possible.                _____

3. Transportation lessons can be taught at school or in community.                                _____

4. Experiences and the Internet play an important role in learning this life skill.                        _____

5. Adults need to give all the responsibility of learning how to go where teens need to the teens to boost their confidence and their sense of independence.                                                _____

8. UNIT 8. Becoming independent