“The best thing you can do to deepen your relationship with your children is individual solo time with each child, time as a collective of siblings and time as a whole family,” says Marvyn Harrison, the founder of the consultancy BELOVD and the support network Dope Black Dads. “It can be demanding, but the value is the depth of relationship you get when they reach their preteen and teenage years.”

And this should be on their terms. “When you are spending time with them, go into their world rather than bringing them into yours. Be part of the fun, not just a facilitator of it. They want to be in life with you. There will be plenty of time to parent them at a distance, but this is not that time.”

Putting the phone down is not just about giving your child your complete attention – and setting a good example in the process. A 2022 report suggests that your use of a phone can impact your child’s emotional development, too. Children typically learn facial expressions from their parents by copying them. The “still face” associated with prolonged phone use is not a good look and can have a knock-on effect on your child’s understanding of your feelings as well as their own.

“In the modern world, screen time is increasingly just… time,” says Keza MacDonald, video games editor at The Guardian and the author of Super Nintendo. “If you’re producing your own song in GarageBand, is that screen time? What about if you’re drawing with an Apple Pencil rather than pen and paper?”

The key, she says, is that not all uses are equal (and YouTube is banned in her house). “For me, the metric is the quality of what they’re engaging with, rather than the overall time – 300 calories’ worth of doughnut is less nutritious than 300 calories’ worth of fruit and yoghurt.”

“Give children projects,” Harrison says. “Give them things to research online and ask them to come back and present what they found. Even if they are playing Fifa, ask them to do a presentation on how their season has gone, break it down. That way you know what they are doing, you understand it, you become part of it and you can give feedback. It no longer feels like lost time once they intellectualise how they spent it.”

“In my day, there were only five TV channels. You had to make your own entertainment.” As a child, you were probably told some variation of this. And now as an adult, you’ve probably heard yourself saying it. The genie of the attention economy, however, isn’t going back in the bottle. You have to fight fire with fire.

“Modern video games, video streaming and social media apps offer an endless and rapid-fire supply of surprising, edgy, and evocative content,” writes Michaeleen Doucleff, author of Dopamine Kids. “If we suddenly switch to a void of nothingness – or what feels really boring by comparison – we create a horrible discomfort in our brains and bodies.”

Her answer? “Replacing screen time with something that’s (almost) just as exciting and (almost) just as interesting to your child.”

“Young people have amazing IT skills that we’ll never have because they understand that world better than us,” says Nigel Bromage, the founder of the support group Exit Hate. “What they don’t understand is the danger.” Rather than monitor their internet use, he suggests getting them to show us the apps they use and how they work. Build on this trust by offering advice and encouraging them to ask why people say certain things on social media or if their sources are credible. “That critical thinking from Dad sinks in,” he says. “It’s a mutual journey.”

The problem with a digital detox – for you and your child – is the same as when you first turn on your work laptop after a vacation. “The real world comes back and crashes in,” Dr Larry Rosen, a psychology professor at California State University, has said of kids whose parents separate them from their devices. “And then they realise they have 400 emails, they have 30 text messages and they’ve got 100 posts… that they have to go back and like and comment on. So, taking the phone away or restricting them is only going to create more anxiety and not really solve the problem.”

In Australia and soon the UK, restrictions on children’s access to social media will hopefully remove some of the problem here. As for parents, Dr Rosen suggests reducing usage rather than stripping it out all at once. One strategy toward this is to vocalise your intention to look at your phone less often, thereby making the task feel more real. “You announce to the world that you’re only going to check your phone once a half hour, and then you allow yourself a minute or two every half hour to check in, return a call, text back, and then turn it off and put it away,” he says.

Maybe not in terms of content, more the way you talk to your friends. Typically, much communication between men takes place as part of side-by-side interaction. Where women might meet up primarily to chat, men often talk to each other while also doing something else, like watching football, playing golf or riding bikes. And a similar approach can work with your kids.

“Direct eye-to-eye contact in mammals is primarily a threat,” Dr Blair says. “The feeling is ‘What do you want from me?’”

She suggests that your children are more likely to open up to you if you’re not looking at them while you talk. For example, you’re in the car listening to the radio or you’re walking somewhere, pointing out things along the way. Whatever feels more natural.

“Those are the times when kids are most likely to feel they want to talk back to you. Because they don’t feel like you’re trying to get something. They’re just free to say what they want. And this becomes especially true with teenagers.”

When most of us are unsure about what shape our own jobs will take in the near future, the task of setting your children up for life can seem impossible. Stop pointing them towards a particular career and help build a well-rounded person instead.

“Parents who treat their kids’ careers as an iterative process rather than a destination tend to raise kids who handle the inevitable surprises of the job market better,” says Alex McCann, founder of the career coaching platform Rumbo. “Pushing a kid into law or medicine because it feels like a safe bet, when those professions are themselves being reshaped by AI, is a fragile strategy. The job market in five years is going to look quite different to today, but the underlying skill of knowing yourself well enough to navigate change won’t. Start there.”

A sweeping generalisation, but while women tend to talk about their issues, many men often don’t. “They think they just need to never complain and shoulder it all by themselves, because men have unfortunately been taught that that’s what masculinity is,” says the therapist Jeremy Mohler, who runs the Make Men Emotional Again Substack. “We ‘auto-regulate’ or try to care for our nervous system ourselves through isolating habits… None of that stuff is bad in itself, but when it’s our only way of dealing with stress and negative emotions, it takes us away from the relationships we really need.”

“Surround yourself with other dads,” Harrison says. “Deep personal relationships with real challenges and real honesty in that group of men, it matters enormously.”

“It’s important for men to regularly be gathering with their friends and going deeper than just watching sports or playing golf,” Mohler says. “We need to build the muscles for intimate relationships outside of our romantic relationship. That way, when the shit hits the fan, like having a kid while working full time, we have other people to lean on.”

“Take time for yourself,” Harrison says. “Contrary to what many believe, parents facilitating time for themselves is fundamental, it is how you stay you within the family unit and avoid burning out trying to be perfect.”

“Squeezing in daily meditation or some practice to care for your nervous system,” Mohler says. “Going to therapy to work on your reactions to your kids, or couples therapy to work on the relationship.”

“Be honest with [your children] about your own life, including the parts that haven’t gone how you expected,” McCann says. “The reason social media is so toxic for young people is that it presents a curated highlight reel as if it were the full picture and they have no counter evidence to weigh it against. If the most senior adults they know also pretend everything is fine all the time, they have no model for what an actual life looks like. The most useful thing I think a parent can do is be transparent about uncertainty, setbacks and the bits they’re still figuring out, even at 50. It teaches kids that the polished version they’re seeing online isn’t the full story.”

“The advice I used to always give to parents of children who are struggling with ADHD was two things,” the psychologist and neuroscientist Dr Michael Keane recently said. “If you can find their passion, look for that. And try to get to 18 with your confidence intact. You’ll figure it out from there.” Keep things simple, play to their strengths – and don’t lose hope.

“What you say is a hell of a lot less important than what you do as a parent,” Dr Blair says. “You can tell little boys in particular till you’re blue in the face, ‘You should do your part’. But if you’re gone at work all day, every day, why should they? You don’t.” Be present and lead by example.