Equipping your children for success in a disruptive world

IN A RAPIDLY evolving world, fostering entrepreneurial skills in our children is critical.

- ALEX ODENDAAL

Cultivating innovation, resilience, and a proactive mindset from an early age lays the foundation for future success ~ and parents play a pivotal role in nurturing these qualities. Here’s how parents can empower children to navigate an ever-changing landscape with an entrepreneurial spirit.

Model entrepreneurship at home: Entrepreneurship is an attitude, not just an occupation, making it easy to model at home. Encouraging curiosity, independence, and problem-solving is essential. Prosek and Rende’s book, ‘Raising can-do kids, identifies seven key entrepreneurial traits to nurture: exploration, innovation, optimism, risk-taking, industriousness, likeability, and serving others.

Importantly, parents don't need to be business magnates to set an entrepreneurial example. The family home is ideal for teaching soft skills such as collaboration, critical thinking, social skills, public speaking, and lateral thinking.

Expose your children to risk: Helicopter parenting, intended to shield children from risk, is counterproductive to entrepreneurial growth.

Awarding participation prizes might feel good, but it doesn't reflect real-world economics, where merely showing up is simply not enough.

Allowing children to experience risk teaches them the genuine emotions associated with uncertainty—fear, excitement, and anticipation—and reinforces the reality that success isn’t guaranteed.