I have children and I naturally want them to be happy and well adjusted and successful. But do I also harbour secret plans for them? Do I want them to be doctors? Lawyers? Diplomats? Scientists? Archaeologists? Palaeontologists? Writers? Entrepreneurs? The Pope (look, someone has to be the Pope and it may be some parent’s ambition somewhere to see their child as the Pope)? Astronauts?

No. I don’t think so. Hand on my heart, I can say I haven’t ever had such ambitions for them. I do hope they’re not listening but I can say that I’ve been disappointed on the odd occasion when their career choice has seemed a bit unusual – not their sort of thing at all. But you have to let them make mistakes. You can’t steer them right all the time or they’d never learn for themselves.

And this is what this Rule is all about – giving your kids the space to mess things up. We’ve all done it. I was given immense freedom to screw up and I did it big time, magnificently, spectacularly. Result? I learned pretty quickly what worked and what didn’t. I have a cousin who wasn’t given anything like the same freedom and was much more protected and he didn’t screw up anywhere nearly so badly. But later in life, and he’d be the first to agree with this, he managed his life in such an unfortunate way that his screw-up really was spectacular. We all have to make mistakes. Better to make them while we’re young and have the resilience to bounce back.

Being a parent is about 75 per cent making it up as you go along. You too have the freedom to make mistakes. Trouble is that if you get it wrong as a parent, your mistakes can really affect someone’s life adversely. That’s why it can be really hard to stand back and watch our children make bad choices. We want to run to them and protect them, nurture them a bit more and keep them from harm. But they have to learn by getting it wrong. If we think they’ll only learn by us telling them, then we are making a big mistake. They have to do life for themselves to really get to grips with it. It’s real and they can’t learn it from a book or from us or from the television. They can only learn it by getting their fingers burnt. Your job is to stand by with the elastoplast and the antiseptic and a kiss to make it better.

You are of course allowed to ask leading questions: Are you sure that’s a good idea? Have you thought this one through? And what happens after you’ve done that? Can you afford to take that much time off? Won’t it hurt a bit? Didn’t you try something like this before? You can also do this with friends when you can see they are about to make a big mistake but you don’t want to be the killjoy. Try not to make your questions sound too judgemental or moany or they’ll ignore you and go ahead just to be stubborn.