Self Care Skills for Kids: Tips, Resources, & Printables

Resources to help you teach self care skills to kids. Below you'll find social stories, visual supports, tips, fun activities, and more.

Self care. Self help. Activities for daily living. Whatever you want to call them, it's important that children learn certain self care skills as they grow.

These skills are the ones that you as a parent are responsible for at first. At least until the child is old enough and is developmentally ready to do the task themselves. Learning these skills helps children become independent.

From dressing skills to toileting, sleep to personal hygiene, chores to eating, and everything in between, you'll find lots of tips, resources, and printables below to help.

You won't find milestones or developmental charts here because I know that your kids might be on a different developmental path like mine are. They're simply developing on a path that's right for them.

So if you're looking for tools and resources to teach self care skills to kids, then you're in the right spot.

This post contains affiliate links. Basically, I make a small commission when you use these links, at no additional cost to you.

What are Self Care Skills?

Self care skills are the everyday tasks we do such as dressing, eating, drinking, personal hygiene, sleeping, setting the table, cleaning up, and helping with chores. They can also be called self help skills or activities for daily living. Basically, they're the skills one needs to learn in order to look after oneself (aka be independent).

Skills that are Necessary for Completing Self Care Tasks

There are a lot of skills that need to be in place before a child can master some of these self care tasks, including:

Good fine motor skills, including hand and finger strength, hand control, coordination, and object manipulation

Sensory processing including interpreting and responding to input from the environment and awareness of one's body and its internal signals

Planning and sequencing skills

Able to communicate wants and needs

Receptive language skills

Can follow simple directions and routines

Dressing Skills for Kids

Learning to dress and undress is an important self care skill. These resources, tips, and printables can help build your child's confidence in this area. You may also need to work on developing fine motor skills, which you can find lots of fine motor activities to help here.

Personal Hygiene: Showering, Bathing, Dental Care, Toileting, Etc.

When it comes to personal hygiene self care skills, there are a lot of different areas to consider. It includes grooming, showering, bathing, dental care, toileting, washing hands, and taking care of the body in general. Below you will find social stories, tips, and printable resources to help with personal hygiene.

Eating, Drinking, Kitchen Skills, & Nutrition Related Self Care Skills

From eating and drinking to setting the table and learning to prepare food on their own, there are a lot of skills to work on. These resources will help build self care skills related to kitchen skills, eating, and nutrition.