Childhood is a time of rapid development — mentally and physically.
The experiences of childhood affect people for the rest of their lives. In fact, the skills you developed as a child contributed to who you are as an adult.
Here are four childhood skills you can credit for your successes.
Study habits
If you developed the ability to study while attending school as a child, you most likely have reaped the benefits as an adult. Study habits contribute to academic success, and researchers found students with poor study habits performed poorly on exams.
Unfortunately, “teachers and students seem not to take effort in developing good study habits,” according to the International Journal of Educational Administration and Policy Studies.
Fortunately, that means you’re ahead of the game if you did.
It’s still possible for both young people and adults to develop good study habits by working toward goals. For example, young people can plan to compete in the regional spelling bee at Oral Roberts University in March. Adults could put effort into learning a new language.
Language capabilities
Speaking of learning a new language, any love of language you have was probably ingrained in you as a child. Your language abilities started with auditory development before you were born and continued as you grew up.
Language abilities may display themselves in various ways in your life. Perhaps you enjoy relaxing with a book, completing a crossword puzzle or playing Scrabble. Maybe you let your creativity out by writing for yourself or to share with friends in social media missives. No matter how you use language in your life, research published in the Learning and Individual Differences journal shows people with verbal abilities are better at complex thinking.
You can encourage a love of language in young people and continue to stretch your abilities by signing up for a writing class.
Work ethic
Being able to focus on a task is essential throughout life. Learning to work hard when you were young, whether on a school project, a personal goal or a task at your afterschool job, likely helped you gain experiences that affect you today. In fact, employers consistently cite work ethic as one of the top skills they look for in potential employees, according to the CPA Journal.
“Work ethic can be described as a set of characteristics and attitudes in which an individual worker assigns importance and merit to work,” says the Journal of Industrial Education. “Those with a strong work ethic place a positive value on doing a good job and describe work as having an intrinsic value of its own. Employers seek employees who are dependable, have good interpersonal skills, and demonstrate initiative. Prior research has associated these characteristics with a high level of work ethic.”
Comfort with public speaking
While public speaking may not be Americans’ No. 1 fear, an annual survey shows it still ranks as scarier than extreme crimes. If you overcame the fear, you are in an elite group. Public speaking often comes in handy, from meeting new people in social situations to standing for justice at public meetings and in many other ways.
If you participated in an event like the spelling bee, you had the opportunity to speak in front of groups as small as your class and as large as a national audience. If you still need help with this skill, consider practicing with other adults who have the same goal.
Continue to hone your childhood skills with the help of Oral Roberts University. The school, which teaches students from around the country and world, encourages a love of reading and spelling and will host a regional competition for the Scripps National Spelling Bee in March.
