WHILE parents are busy preparing school supplies for their children who are heading off to college, some can easily forget to teach them some basic life skills.

“Most students come to college lacking skills in at least one area,” said Shannon Reed, a visiting lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh, noting that one student told her that her roommate didn’t know how to use a microwave.

Making sure your child understands how to do basic life skills tends to lower their anxiety and helps them to take better care of themselves, Reed says.

How to do laundry

This is more than just showing them how to load a washer and dryer, where to put the detergent and how to fold their own clothes, although that’s important, too. It also means covering how to treat stains and what not to do. Once you use hot water on a stain, it will set, which is why we recommend washing a stain with soap and cold water, pre-treating it with a stain stick, and then putting it in the wash. Also let them know that if they spill something oily, or wine, they need to pre-treat it right away.

Basic sewing skills

Clothes develop holes and buttons fall off — that’s just part of life. But throwing out a pair of jeans or a shirt after this happens is pricey and unnecessary.

The two biggest things they need to know are how to sew on a button and how to stitch up a rip. Get a basic sewing kit. You’ll need needles, pins, and thread — at least black and white.

Simple nutrition

You’ve probably been making your child most of their meals, but they may not fully grasp why you’ve been giving them the food that you’ve been serving. That’s why New York-based registered dietitian Jessica Cording says that it’s a good idea to go over some nutrition basics. “A good simple formula to teach is that you should always have some kind of protein, vegetable and complex carb,” Cording says.

How to cook basic foods

They should know how to feed themselves if they can’t make it to the cafeteria in time or if they’re stuck indoors due to bad weather, Cording says. “Stuff that’s microwaveable is great,” she shares. That can include organic soups and oatmeal, as well as nut butters for sandwiches and nut bars for snacks — all of which you can help your child stock up on before you drop them off.

That, coupled with encouraging your child to keep some easy-to-store produce on-hand, like apples and bananas, should have them covered.

How to make and stick with a budget

They need to be able to do record-keeping of their finances. It’s easy to just use a card and lose track of things. Encourage your child to keep an online log or notebook to note how much money they have in a savings or checking account and what they’re spending.

Basic first aid

Sending your child off to school with a first aid kit is great, but make sure they actually know how to use it, reminds David Cutler, a family medicine physician at Providence Saint John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, California.

He recommends at least making sure your child understands that, if they get a cut, they should wash it with soap and water before slapping on a bandage.

It’s also a good idea to make sure they know that if a cut continues to bleed for more than 10 minutes, go seek medical care,” Cutler says.

(SD-Agencies)