Today’s fast-paced world can be quite overwhelming. Sometimes It can be so overwhelming that it may be easy to miss learning some of the basics of life. At Clearview Girls Academy, we believe that learning a variety of life skills can be an important factor in your daughter’s ability to lead a healthy and balanced life.
There are many tools in the world today that may seem to make life easier. These tools include the devices in our pockets that can eliminate the need to learn how to spell a word. They include the “fast fashion” that makes mending clothing obsolete. Another example is processed foods, which take no preparation and can be microwaved in an instant. Although they seem to make life easier, these quick-fix tools aren’t a substitute for the skills that are important for living an independent life.
Here’s the truth behind those quick-fix examples: letting your phone do all of the work stops you from learning basic academic skills. Buying fast fashion could be considered unethical, a waste of money, and environmentally harmful. Also, those processed foods are almost always bad for your health. These are just a few of the small reasons why learning life skills is so important.
Clearview Girls Academy has always been clear in its belief in the importance of life skills. Our founder, Dr. Mary Thielbahr, says that if a student leaves knowing how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner, her time at Clearview Girls Academy will have been a success.
The Importance of Life Skills
Many of the young women who come to Clearview Girls Academy are at a point in their lives where they feel lost. They may be struggling with mental health issues that they can’t yet understand or want to ignore. Some of them may even be coping with these issues in harmful ways. For example, they may be engaging in social media, and violence or self-harm. This is not their fault; they just need to be given a better solution.
Here at Clearview Girls Academy, we aim to give our students the kind of solution that will help them recover and get them on track to long-term recovery. We want them to leave us with their heads held high, ready to confidently tackle the world.
Instilling these life skills will help to bring some structure into our students’ lives. This structure then becomes a foundation that can be built upon throughout your daughter’s recovery journey.
What Life Skills Do We Aim to Teach?
As parents or guardians in today’s distracting world, it may not come as a surprise that many kids today don’t know how to do many “basic” tasks. They might not know how to clean a pan, do a load of laundry, or even cook a simple plate of spaghetti. Let’s say that home economics is no longer at the top of the high school priority list anymore.
But these are important skills to have as these young women move out on their own. We believe in self-reliance. Not just because it is practical, but because we have found that learning life skills increase our students’ self-confidence and self-worth.
One of our primary purposes is to help our students learn to love themselves again. While skeptical at first, learning some simple life skills can help these young women find some of that lost self-love.
Learning life skills helps our students to feel accomplished. Life skills help our students feel independent. They help our students communicate with others. Finally, they help our students learn to “live life on life’s terms.” That is why these seemingly simple life skills can be so invaluable.
How Can a Strong Foundation of Life Skills Help My Daughter Succeed?
The famous 20th Century poet, e.e. cummings, once said “It takes courage to grow up and become who you really are.” That’s how we want these young women to feel. We want them to feel courageous and strong. Our goal is to help them feel enthusiastic about life again. Many of our students had lost that enthusiasm before coming to see us.
Here at Clearview Girls Academy, we believe in a three-part approach to recovery. Those parts are academic, behavioral, and spiritual. We have found that important life skills can be learned within each of those branches.
By focusing on their academic achievements, our students learn how to create a balanced schedule. They learn basic academic tools, independent of technology, and time management skills.
By focusing on their emotional lives, our students learn how to better communicate their feelings. They learn how to better express their needs. They also learn how to empathize with the rest of the world.
By finding a spiritual practice our students learn how to lead a life that is free of self-doubt. Our students learn how to live a life free of self-pity. They also gain the freedom to live a life that is full of grace and love.
Building a foundation with the bricks of life skills can be a monumental step toward a long and lasting recovery. That is why we stand by the importance of teaching our students how to cook a Thanksgiving dinner.
Establishing life skills can be vital to achieving and sustaining a long and healthy recovery. Here at Clearview Girls Academy, we believe it’s important to instill in our students with the life skills they need for the future. This will prevent them from experiencing relapse or regression in their mental health issues. These life skills include being able to confidently communicate with others around them, being self-reliant in performing everyday tasks, and understanding the importance of time management. If you feel that your daughter is struggling with her mental health, Clearview Girls Academy can help her attain the life skills she needs to become a healthy and well-rounded young woman. For more information, please contact us at (888) 796-5484.
