Getting kids to pay attention to politics might seem like a tough sell.
'Hey, forget Brooklyn Nine-Nine, check this out: 650 uptight-looking people are barking at each other angrily in archaic language!'
But above party politics, and the impenetrable goings-on in Westminster, there are big and pressing questions about how the world works and how it could work better which matter to all of us - including children.
Children want in on these conversations. They know that the consequences of decisions made - or not made - now will play out in their futures. (Climate change has brought that home to them.)
They know that decisions made by politicians can change their lives abruptly. (The pandemic has taught them that.)
And they know - because it's blindingly obvious - that adults don't have all the answers.
Children may not have the vote, but they still deserve to be heard. And we should help them.
That's why I wrote If I Ran the Country - a slim book with half-decent gags and even better illustrations (thanks to Allan Sanders) which treats the reader as leader of a new, imagined country.
Readers have to choose what kind of country it will be and how they will run it. They have to figure out what they believe in and how to lead.
As I wrote the book, however, mid-lockdown, I began to wonder whether this whole business of teaching political literacy might be more important than I'd realised.
Perhaps this one little book (which is unlikely to be a bestseller, let's not kid ourselves) is a single and near-futile shot in a much larger battle that should involve all of us.
I began to wonder all this as I noticed, more and more, how many seemingly sane and plausible adults are capable of believing almost anything.
There's a guy I know (you almost certainly know someone like this too) who is highly educated and not - on the face of it, at least - an idiot but who, nonetheless, sends wild and unsubstantiated conspiracist nonsense to me over WhatApp most weeks.
This guy is almost clueless about politics and completely unable to distinguish between real journalism and made-up tosh presented as real journalism.
It is easy (for a real journalist like me) to feel some anger towards people like this who breezily push dangerous misinformation around their social media bubbles.
But they are victims. People my age were taught almost nothing about politics or media literacy. We are seriously under-educated on these issues. That makes us easy prey for people sowing misinformation not because they are stupid but because it is in their interests to do so.
Are our kids being vaccinated against all this through better political teaching? Possibly not. An All Party Parliamentary Group was set up this year to look into what they regard as the problem of inadequate political literacy teaching in our schools.
An organisation called Shout Out UK, which provides resources to schools for teaching political literacy, says provision is lacking and that "until young people are given the tools to identity disinformation for themselves, extreme views will thrive and democracy will suffer."
So: talk to your kids about politics. Help them to look up and outwards and to feel a part of something bigger. Because they are. The five tips below will, I hope, help you get conversations started and heading in the right direction. (The book might help too but I have probably plugged it hard enough already.)
1. Give them space
Your job is to provide knowledge that your children do not have. It isn't to go further and tell your children what to think. If you impose your own opinion you will make the conversation far less interesting, remove an opportunity for your child to apply their own critical thinking and - importantly - you will make it virtually impossible for your child to offer a point of view you had not considered (and - who knows? - maybe they're right and you missed the point, old timer).
2. Take time
We all know it's easy to dismiss our children's questions because they can be so exhausting. It's even easier to dismiss them when they are hard to answer or risk exposing our own ignorance. If you want your children to be interested in how the world works, however, you're going to have to find time for some long conversations - and, perhaps, for some self-education too.
3. Don't freak them out
Although I think a news habit is a healthy thing for older children, it will inevitably expose them to some upsetting stories. I don't think we should bring our children up in a make-believe world where there is no climate crisis, war or crime. But I don't think it's helpful to terrify them either. Newsrooms are bound to focus on the sudden and the dramatic. That means they routinely miss some of the big underlying themes which are quietly shaping the future. In lots of very important ways the world is getting better. Show your kids gapminder.org if you don't believe me.
4. Start small
Although I think it is great to engage children in the big questions, and for them to know how to be heard (and feel empowered to express their view), it might also be important to encourage children to think critically about decisions made much closer to home. Encourage them to consider how things could work better at school, in their town - or even in your household. Encouraging children to interrogate their immediate world will introduce them to some of the real-world constraints which complicate political choices at every level: the fact that most decisions are trade-offs (choosing the least bad option); the need to balance the interests of different groups which may be at odds with each other; and the inevitable limits imposed by unglamourous things like budgets.
5. Teach children to listen
I know I'm not alone in feeling depressed by the tone of much of our political argument, particularly on social media. We have become too quick to see people who disagree with us as the enemy. None of us can improve the political culture on our own. But in talking about politics with the children in our lives we should, perhaps, teach them to listen to - and try to understand - the views and experiences of others. That might, at least, be a start.
Rich Knight is author of If I Ran the Country**** which is out now.