A number of years ago I interviewed a group of employers about the skills they wanted young people to have when they entered the workforce. The number one characteristic they nominated as desirable, and missing from many young workers was the ability to problem solve. They talked about the fact that years ago children worked side beside with the parents, learning how to cook, mend a puncture, change a tyre, service a car, make a table, sew a hem and so on. These skills they said, helped children to gain problem-solving skills. Now many of these skills have been taken over by technology. In addition to this parents, and schools, seem reluctant to allow students to fail so they stop trying to solve problems because others do it for them. In fact, there’s some fascinating research by Carol Dweck (Author of Mindset:How You Can Fulfill Your Potential) that I recommend reading to hear what she says about this subject.

When I wrote The Entwhistle Experiment series I deliberately chose very normal kids in happy families who simply wanted to be independent and have fun. I wanted them to be confident, adventurous, resilient, problem-solvers, who learned from their mistakes and understood the value of friendship. I say more about this in my video.