I’m a parent. That means I have a responsibility to teach.

I’m a parent. That means I have a responsibility to teach.

Things I know, and…well, things I don’t.

But how do you teach people things you don’t know?

My instinct is to say, you don’t.

But first, let’s look at how the experts don’t teach.

Not even the best teachers in the world reach into your mind and place the knowledge there.

Knowledge can be shared, expressed, put out there for everyone to see, but the student has to choose to take it.

Think about when you’ve learnt something.

It will have been when you wanted to learn it. Or put another way, when you chose to learn it.

Understanding isn’t given; it’s drawn out.

Okay, nice philosophy I hear you saying but how do I help my kids learn stuff I really think they need to know but I don’t know myself?

Back before I had kids I was pretty blasé about having them. Always wanted to be a Dad because I’d been around kids most of my life. Was a God father to a couple by my early twenties, and a sister who was born when I was seventeen.

I knew my way round nappies, burping, feeds, and the fact that a pram can make brrm brrm noises if you push it fast enough.

I thought I had the right skills to be an awesome Dad.

First two weeks after my daughter was born I was utterly useless.

I got hit by a sudden wave of responsibility about all the things I could do wrong.

All the teaching I was going to screw up.

Wake her up too early and she’d never go to sleep again. Feed her too late and I’d cause eating issues when she was older. Not hug her tight when she cried and I’d teach her to shun affection. Hold her too tight and I’d teach her to be dependent upon others.

Luckily my amazing wife told me to get my act together (her exact words were a tad stronger than that), and I did.

I was paralysed by the fear of teaching my daughter something that wouldn’t be useful to her.

My wife created a space in which I could look at that fear, tell it to bugger off, and get on with just doing - and learn what I didn’t know or ask for help.

And that’s where the answer is.

It’s back to what the best teachers in the world do.

They create space. Space to help you be ready, willing, and inspired to learn.

If there are skills you don’t have but you’d love your kids to have, then all you need do is create an environment where they’re happy exploring. Where they feel safe to be curious.

Then you put the knowledge out there.

Ask them if they’re interested in learning a musical instruct even if you never were. Show them a list of after school clubs and ask if any grab their fancy.

The chances of them grabbing the knowledge will be so much higher if you’ve created an amazing space for that understanding to take root.

You need to put the knowledge out there and ten leave it up to them to grab it.

Your responsibility is on the classroom.

And here’s the fun part about teaching - you can do all that and they’ll still refuse to learn. That’s not a failure; that’s life.

Sometimes though it’s not a missing skill we want them to have. It’s simply that we don’t want them to do what we do.

This is a cracker, and one that’s been present in my parental career.

The good old “do as I say, not as I do”.

Especially where we see our weaknesses. We want our kids to be better versions of ourselves. But the issue with that statement is that it assumes we’re doing things wrong.

If we truly want kids (or anyone for that matter) to take inspiration from us, we have to stop saying we’re doing it wrong, and simply say I want to do it better.

This opens up new doors.

Doors you can walk through together.

Only cook ready meals? Work with your kids to improve your cooking skills. You can’t make them, but going back to drawing them out, you can make the kitchen fun. Put on music. Start with cakes. Have a laugh.

Don’t know how to switch off from work? Ask them to help you. Ask them to spend half an hour with you after school on ‘downtime’. Could be TV, a game, tell you jokes while you try and keep water in your mouth. What matters is you create a moment. A moment for understanding to be grabbed.

Don’t have the drive to do anything? Ask them to pick a project you can work on together. Set aside specific time to work on it. Do exactly what you’d do to learn the skill but cooperate on it.

I truly believe the best thing we can do as a parent, a partner, a friend, a human being, is get on with being the best version of ourself.

That’s the best way of sharing understanding whether we have it or not.