School exams have always been set in such a way that there is one correct answer, and we survived on whether we knew the answer or not. But college presents you with scenarios where there is no single correct answer and you must figure out which answer makes sense and why.
A friend may give you advice that sounds convincing but isn’t actually good for you. Two websites may present completely different explanations of the same issue. You may have to choose between several opportunities without knowing exactly where each one leads. You may work hard for something and still not get the result you expected. More information to navigate, more decisions to make, and eventually fewer people standing nearby to tell you what to think or what to do.
This inherently makes thinking itself an important life skill. That is the importance of life skills for students in one line: they decide how well a young person copes once the answers stop being handed to them.
The World Health Organization identifies adolescence as a period of rapid cognitive and psychosocial development, affecting how young people think, make decisions and interact with the world around them. It also identifies opportunities to develop life skills as part of what adolescents need as they grow.
Knowing something is not the same as knowing what to do with it
We are in what can be called the golden age of information, where any piece of notes, calculation, research, or news is just a click away. With it comes a unique problem where students have gotten good at memorising competitive amounts of data without knowing what any of it means or knowing what to do with it.
They might know a particular source exists but not know whether it’s reliable. They might have several choices in front of them but struggle to compare them. They might receive criticism and immediately assume they’re not good enough, rather than asking whether there’s something useful buried in the feedback.
Making informed decisions goes beyond having the information. It involves questioning, comparing, reflecting, making the decision, learning from mistakes, and being willing to reconsider an idea when the evidence changes.
These abilities don’t suddenly appear when a student enters university. As with any acquired skill, they need to be practised.
1. Critical thinking
Critical thinking is occasionally reduced to the idea of questioning everything. That’s not quite right — if we questioned every single thing we encountered without considering evidence, we’d spend most of the day suspicious of the existence of chairs.
Critical thinking is entirely something else. It involves examining information carefully, considering where it came from, recognising assumptions, and asking whether the conclusion actually follows from the evidence.
For a teenager, this might mean asking: Where did this information come from? Is there evidence for it? Could there be another explanation? What information might be missing? Am I accepting this because it’s convincing, or simply because I already agree with it? Because critical thinking is not based on our views, emotions, or philosophy.
UNICEF’s adolescent life-skills resources specifically describe critical thinking and decision making in terms of questioning, analysing, testing information and considering multiple sources. These habits become valuable when students encounter information outside the classroom, where there’s no teacher standing beside every piece of content to tell them whether it deserves their attention.
Since much of that information reaches teenagers through a screen, families may also find our guide to healthy screen time for kids and teens useful when setting everyday digital habits.
2. Decision making
Critical thinking helps us examine our options; decision making is what happens next.
Teenagers make decisions every day, although the consequences aren’t always obvious at the time — how to spend their time, whether to accept an opportunity, which commitments to take on, when to ask for help, whether a particular influence is worth following.
Good decision making rarely produces the perfect choice and there’s seldom enough information to guarantee one. What it actually involves is weighing the available information, the possible consequences, the risks and the alternatives before acting.
One useful question in such situations is: “If I choose this, what happens next?” Then ask it again. A decision that looks attractive in the immediate moment tends to be the least practical choice. Give it time and it can look very different once its consequences are considered a week, a month or a year later.
UNICEF similarly identifies balancing different courses of action and considering information when making decisions as part of adolescent competency development.
3. Learning how to learn
At school, students will have someone explaining what they need to understand, which chapters to study, and when an assessment will take place. Higher education requires considerably more independence.
A student may read a chapter three times and still not understand it. They may study for hours without remembering much the next day. They may discover that the method that worked in one subject is completely ineffective in another.
At that point, the question that comes to mind is “Why can’t I learn this?” instead of “What could I change about the way I’m learning?”
Learning to learn involves recognising what you understand, identifying what you don’t, asking useful questions, seeking help, and experimenting with different approaches. It turns a difficult subject from a verdict on ability into a problem that can be investigated. Because there’s a difference between being taught something and actually learning it.
For practical study habits during demanding periods, see our article on exam stress in teenagers and how parents can help.
4. Confidence and self-esteem
Confidence and self-esteem are like those kids who look alike and people assume they are twins, but rather they are just two children from the same house.
Confidence can be tied to believing you can attempt a task and develop your ability through effort and experience. Self-esteem concerns the broader sense of worth and value a person has in themselves. Both matter, particularly when teenagers begin encountering situations in which they’re no longer among the strongest students in the community.
A student who has always performed well may eventually encounter a subject that doesn’t come easily. Another may compare themselves with classmates who seem more talented, confident or experienced. Without a healthy sense of self, struggling can quickly become “I am bad at this.” Perhaps a more useful response would be “I am struggling with this. What do I need to improve?”
UNICEF includes personal awareness, confidence and self-worth among the competencies that life-skills education can help adolescents develop. Instead of trying to convince teenagers that they can do anything and everything, it’s more practical to teach the difference between difficulty and inability.
5. Self-motivation
When talking about life skills, we always talk about self-discipline, which helps a student follow through on a commitment even when motivation disappears. Self-motivation asks a slightly different question: why am I willing to put in the effort in the first place?
External motivation can only take a student so far. Parents may remind them. Teachers may set deadlines. Examinations may create pressure. Eventually, though, a young person has to develop reasons of their own for learning, improving and continuing. For example, I always say that my motivation comes from a deep-seated passion for what I do. Nobody has to come and encourage me about something I already love. I do it simply for the love of the game.
Self-motivation can come from curiosity, personal goals, a desired career, pride in developing a skill, or simply wanting to get better at something. Nobody wakes up every day excited to revise difficult material, and self-motivation was never about that kind of daily enthusiasm. It’s about having enough internal direction to keep working toward something even when the immediate reward isn’t particularly exciting.
6. Open-mindedness
Agreeing with everyone who walks by will make you a very confused person. But sticking to one mindset won’t take you anywhere either. Rather, critical thinking and open-mindedness work better together.
A critical thinker asks, “Is this actually supported by evidence?” An open-minded person is willing to consider that their current understanding may not be complete. That distinction matters.
A teenager who hears an unfamiliar opinion can immediately dismiss it because it conflicts with what they already believe. Or they can listen, ask questions, and examine the argument before deciding what they think. The second approach doesn’t require accepting the argument — it essentially allows the possibility of learning something from it without fully compromising moral integrity.
This becomes increasingly important in college, where students encounter people from different backgrounds, disciplines, cultures and ways of thinking. Intellectual flexibility allows a person to reconsider an assumption without feeling that changing their mind is a defeat or a let-down. Sometimes changing your mind is simply what happens when you learn something new.
7. Resiliency
Eventually, even the best thinkers have had things go wrong; that’s pretty much life at work. But what actually made the world call them great thinkers was their relentless pursuit of their goals.
An examination can still be failed. An application can still be rejected. A carefully considered decision can still produce an unexpected result. A project can still collapse despite everyone’s best effort.
Resiliency doesn’t pretend these experiences don’t hurt. What it actually offers is the ability to respond to difficulty, recover, and keep moving forward anyway.
UNICEF’s life-skills framework identifies resilience alongside coping with stress and emotions and perseverance. For a student, resilience can mean moving from “I failed, so I am not capable” to “I failed. What happened, what can I learn from it, and what should I change?” This gives the disappointment somewhere useful to go.
When setbacks involve marks and expectations, our guide to academic pressure and exam stress looks more closely at how parents can support a teenager without making results a measure of self-worth.
So how do you practise thinking?
These skills can’t be developed simply by giving teenagers definitions and asking them to memorise them, because that was the problem to begin with. They need situations in which the skills actually matter — simple life skills for students activities that fit into an ordinary week.
A student can compare two sources that make different claims and explain which evidence seems stronger. They can make a decision, write down why they made it, and later consider whether the outcome matched their expectations. They can try a different study method when their usual approach isn’t working. They can receive constructive criticism and separate useful information from their emotional reaction to hearing it. They can discuss an idea they disagree with and try to explain the strongest argument from the other side. They can reflect on a setback and identify what was within their control.
These exercises look ordinary, and that’s precisely the point. UNICEF’s approach to adolescent life-skills education emphasises participation, real-life experience, practice and reflection rather than simply lecturing young people about what they should know. Thinking is a skill, and skills improve through use. If you are looking for life skills topics for students to work through as a family or a class, these seven are a reasonable place to start.
A note for parents
Parents naturally want their children to make good decisions. But there is a limit to how much you can actually control. Maybe instead of forcing a good decision (which is theoretical) try asking a suggestive question.
“What do you think?” “What options do you have?” “What could happen if you choose each one?” “What would you do differently next time?”
Of course parental guidance is a fundamental part of growing up, and maybe that means gradually letting them participate in the thinking process instead of making every decision on their behalf. A young person who’s never allowed to make manageable decisions may eventually reach a point where independence arrives before decision-making skills have caught up.
For related reading on resilience, emotional regulation and support at school, explore our teen mental health and life-skills resources.
Seeing the bigger picture
The transition to college isn’t simply a transition to a heavier workload. It’s also a transition into situations where students have to think more independently.
They’ll encounter information they need to evaluate, decisions whose outcomes are uncertain, subjects that challenge them, and setbacks that can’t always be solved by someone else. The life skills examples for students in this guide — critical thinking, decision making, learning how to learn, confidence, self-esteem, self-motivation, open-mindedness and resiliency — can’t guarantee those situations will be easy. They can, however, change how a young person approaches them.
We asked whether a teenager can learn to manage themselves; we also asked whether they can think for themselves, learn from what happens, and keep going when the answer isn’t obvious. Perhaps we can also ask whether they possess the ability to exist in an unfamiliar space, away from the place they grew up.
For schools and colleges looking to develop these skills through structured sessions, our Igniting Minds program builds life skills for students through socio-emotional learning in the classroom.
References
- United Nations Children’s Fund. (2025). Guide: Adolescents and life skills education. UNICEF
- United Nations Children’s Fund. (2025). Tool: Setting goals for adolescents’ development and use of competencies. UNICEF Adolescent Kit for Expression and Innovation. UNICEF
- United Nations Children’s Fund India. (2019). Comprehensive life skills framework: Rights based and life cycle approach to building skills for empowerment. UNICEF India
- World Health Organization. (n.d.). Adolescent health. WHO
- MHITR®. (n.d.). Igniting Minds: Socio-emotional learning program for students
