If you don't at least expose your children to adult life they will never be able to be very good at it. If you don't teach a child to talk by age six it will never be able to talk well. The brain "grows" in a way that is directed by what it is already doing. It rewires itself to be better at what it is doing. If you protect your children from exposure to the realities of adult life, they will never be able to reach their full potential as adults. Instead their brains will have been optimised to suit an artificial world created by their parents. Involve you children in your life. All of your life. They will have you as a role model. They can take that as a steping stone into their own adult life. Your children will benefit from your experience. Expose your childern to other adult role models. Let them experience the range of types of people. When their brain matures it will have grown to be better at being an adult. Einstein said that if he saw farther than others it was because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. Your children can stand on your shoulders. They eventually will see further than you. Their childern can then stand on their shouders. Each generation should not have to start from scratch. Expose children to child rearing, to love, to sex, and to the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Let them play with with these things in their own way. They will soak it up like sponges. You don't have to force it on them. Talk to your children about your own life as it is happening. Don't hide the fact that sometimes you mess up, or get hurt. Don't  hide your sexuality from your children. You are their role model more than their teacher. The difference between a role model and a teacher is that the student learns from both but is not obliged to necessarily follow a role model. It is best to have many role models to allow a child to choose which style of living to grow into. Children are adults reincarnated into a child's body and brain. Adults have the same basic motivations as children. They just get better at hiding or suppressing the negative ones.  Old people don't feel like old people inside. They just feel like people. Children don't feel like children inside, they too just feel like people. The body, mind and emotions are still under construction, but the underlying sense of self is always the same. Your sense of self is much the same as what it was as a child. Treat you children as special friends that need your help and love. Involve them in your life as special friends. There is no minimum age at which to start. If instead you chose to start late, your children will see the hypocracy of behaving one way towards them as children and then to abrubtly change to something quite different. Making the transition from authority figure to friend is too often just too big a step for both the child and the parent alike. Childhood is primarily preparation for adulthood. Let them find their own ways of playing. Play is primarily about finding enjoyable ways to develop adult skills and abilities. Treat you children as adult souls. It is just the body, intellect and emotions that are under construction. They are like adults with a handicap. Wonderfully it is a handicap that they grow out of. The aim is not to make them grow up quicker. The aim is to allow them to enjoyably build a foundation that won't get ripped out from under them when they go out into the world. Treat you children with the respect of a friend.