HOW TO PREPARE CHILDREN FOR THE FUTURE

The world is growing rapidly, replacing everything that is less resourceful in its path to become more efficient. In the next ten to twenty years or so, much of what we understand about our world, might not stay the same, even experts can only guess what it will look like. As parents, we must take into account what this future holds for our children; a future where jobs requiring physical labor are replaced by machines, a future where artificial intelligence is creating music and literature.

Much of what our children learn is inherited from the parents from a young age. It is the actions that we do and the words that we say that pass on to our children; it is important that we take this role seriously. Learning the trends and how the world is changing is important so that each parent can nudge their children in the right direction. Making children future-ready, and equipping them with the necessary skills required, is an important duty of every parent.

We’ll discuss below some of the most effective practices to accomplish this goal.

Money and Financing

With the development of blockchain and cryptocurrency, the world of financing is moving towards a more decentralized and digital approach, and children should be informed about and how it functions. They Should be taught how a digital token like cryptocurrency works and how it permits individuals to make payments directly among one another through an online framework.

Money management is an ability that parents need to pass on to their kids from a young age. It must be handled as any other life skill since it is one of the most effective ways to make them future-ready. Financial literacy begins at home. It is a science just as it is a workmanship, and the earlier our children start, the better they understand it. Children need to develop the ability to start saving from a young age and take note that the pocket money that we give them is not simply for buying themselves toys and candy.

Social and Interpersonal Skill

Human skills are one of the most valued employment skills in the 21st century, what the future holds is people collaborating with other individuals to create work for machines. This signals a shift from the demand for cognitive skills to that of social skills. It is normal to have conflicting opinions and interests in a workplace, and it is through soft skills that the children be able to resolve them. Interpersonal skills help the children to interact with others dexterously, on the job, and in the larger world. Some people are born with such skills but everyone can improve with practice. Having a good command over Social Skills can benefit them greatly in life; critical problem-solving skills are unique to humans and they cannot be substituted by machines in the near future, because they lack the resonance to understand the surroundings holistically.

Children learn social and interpersonal skills based on their experiences, they judge whether their action was proper or not, based on the reaction of the people that surround them. Aside from this, manners and the ability to think critically can be taught from a young age through parent’s aid. One of the better ways to develop critical thinking in a child is to let them figure out solutions to their problems. As parents, our first response when our child is in conflict would be to immediately rescue them from it by ourselves; while this should be done in the case of violence or any other severe predicament. Most of the time your role when a child is in difficulty would be to simply hint them in the right direction, instead of involving yourself and fixing the issue for them. Allowing children to face their foes from a young age can develop into a mindset for critical thinking and conflict resolution.

Programming

Teaching your children to code will be one of the most useful hard skills that you can impart in them to make them future-ready. The future is looking towards automation and it is the job of coders to build the same. Programming is a process that is essentially telling a computer how to do certain tasks. We call these instructions programs and the people who write these programmers. Coding is defined as one of the most important skills of the century and learning to code from a young age can give them a huge head start in life.

Even though programming is a process that lets children build software and websites, there are other benefits to it, like being able to develop an ability to think logically; because coding is a process of writing commands for a computer, and there is only a small chance that the code will work flawlessly the first time. It is through trial and error and figuring out alternative ways to make their code work, will the child make the program function, this helps to improve their cognitive function and develops in them an ability to approach things in a systematic manner.

Concepts are understood better when we learn them through play. This is the same in the case of coding as well. There are platforms that teach children to code, through a gamified approach like CyberSquare. Learning a programming language is similar to how we learn a speaking language, it can be challenging at first, this is where a gamified approach comes into play, this approach essentially means to teach children coding through mini-games and puzzles; thus reducing the monotonic nature of learning.

Embrace Adaptability

The World Economic Forum estimates that 65% of children entering primary school today will ultimately end up working in completely new job types that don’t yet exist. This means that children should be brought into an environment of adaptability. Their growth shouldn’t be dimensional, children should be taught to be creative and think outside the box so that they will be able to adapt to new ideas and contribute effectively, whatever the environment would be. Exposing your child to reading, playing, giving them a space for creating, and giving time for leisure can all impact your child’s ability to be creative. When the role of artificial intelligence is increasing, Experts believe that jobs that entail a human element, creativity, and empathy will stretch in numbers. Help your children to illuminate, embrace their artistic side and let them sketch and scribble now so that they can plan and advance later.