Are your children future-ready yet?
Children are the future
Are your children future-ready yet?
The world as we know it today is different from the world that our parents knew. The constantly changing and evolving nature of our lives pushes new developments and innovations at a quicker pace, compared to 30 years ago. The trend of constant change continues, and the fact remains that our children are going to face a world that is broadly different from ours today.
The new world is going to need vital skills that are entirely different from what we are familiar with now. As parents, we need to help our children be future-ready by making the right decisions for their education, exposure to technology, and encourage them to learn skills that we do not currently have.
Our children will be swept up in a wave of constant change. At the same time, some factors remain certain: they are likely to face a working environment where knowing how to use technology and digital devices are part of the pre-requisites for employment. Jobs will be multi-disciplinary and involve new forms of collaboration never seen before now. International working environments will be formed using visual communications and future technology.
Therefore, it is crucial to prepare children for working in jobs and economies that do not entirely exist yet. The focus should be on both work and life skills that our children need in a future world that is uncertain. We believe that the eight skills below are a good foundation.
Love to Learn
Cultivating a love to learn new things gives our children the desire to continually upgrade themselves. In a world where the pace of innovation is fast, our children need to love learning new things. This ability to learn will give our children an advantage in the future. The easiest way to encourage the development of this skill is to present learning as a challenging, engaging, and rewarding experience during their childhood.
Learning how to Learn
Learning how to learn is a highly teachable skill, and it is employed in most international schools as a base for their teaching methodology. Instilling learning skills and habits helps children to understand the best way they learn, and in turn helps them to discover the fastest way for them to learn a new skill.
Effective Communication
Spoken, written, and visual communication will form the core of most workplace skills in the future and children must learn to communicate effectively. This capability is most useful in the collaborative workspace of the future.
Self-Awareness
Self-awareness is a vital skill to teach our children because it helps them to remain grounded; knowing their strengths and weaknesses will strengthen their self-confidence. As the children grow into confident adults, the reflective nature of a self-aware person will ensure humility and the desire to learn from people from all walks of life.
People Sense
Children can be naturally selfish, so we must teach them how to empathise. When we work with them to understand the situations that other people may be in and the different perspectives that others have, children learn that the world does not revolve around them. Children with healthy people sense will grow up to be active collaborators in the future.
Complexity 
The world is complex. Problems do not occur due to a simple cause and effect, while solutions are never black and white. Children need to learn the grey areas of life and understand that the world strives for complexity. Teaching our children to view the world through the lens of complexity is essential to prepare them for the future.
Worldliness
Our parents used to believe that traveling is not essential. However, it is different now. Children who travel at a young age appear to have a better advantage in understanding the complexity of life. It is helpful to take your children out of your native country and show them how things work in other parts of the world.
Open minds
As parents, we need to raise children who are adaptable, thoughtful, and open-minded. In a future world where change is constant, being versatile is a survival skill. The challenges of continual change require a person to be open-minded so that they can accept new ideas and adapt quickly to the changes taking place.
It is also crucial to remember that not all skills may be taught in schools or during formal education. As parents, we have the responsibility to teach our children vital skills for the future. Although we cannot predict how the future will be, we can create a generation that is ready to face challenges. Education is the most powerful tool that we can use to ensure a new generation of future-ready children.
