SIX TIPS FOR FUTUREPROOFING YOUR CHILD DURING THE EARLY YEARS

1 TRAITS NOT SUBJECTS

Coding? Mandarin? Latin? You can’t pick the right subject to learn for tomorrow’s world. Instead, make whatever learning is done rigorous and stringent, and focus hard on character qualities: optimism, resilience and adaptability.

2 LET THEM PLAY

Play means children working out answers for themselves, and learning to do so is the best way to prepare for the contingent world of tomorrow. Major studies even show that if you want a more academic child, it’s worth thinking about starting academic study later. In Denmark, school begins at age six.

3 DON’T HOVER Stamp on the temptation to solve your child’s problem for them. Able middle-class parents in particular suffer from this. 4 RISK-ON

Have you ever lost your child? Most of us have at one point. Ask yourself not how did you find them, but how did they get back to you? They need to be good judges of risk, and if you protect them from everything, they have no barometer of risk — crucial for the future.

5 CELEBRATE BOREDOM

Children today are constantly stimulated, never bored. They rarely engage in role play — but role play is crucial in working through situations, and so in problem solving. Also, if our children are never left to their own devices, they will always be lonely when they are alone.

6 MACHINES ARE NOT THE ENEMY

The smart money is on human-AI partnership, not a replacement of man by machine. So don’t demonise or promote a Luddite world of zero screen time. The screens are colleagues of the future. Active or passive use is the key.