Preparing your child to lead in AI

 

BY DONALD PATRICK L. LIM

JULY 6, 2026

Barely a week goes by without someone asking me how to prepare their children for an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven world.

Just recently, a friend with a seven-year-old told me he was genuinely anxious, not the vague background kind of anxiety, but the sharp keeps-you-up-at-night kind.

What school should his child attend? If Philippine schools don’t teach AI competently, should the family consider migrating? Is it already too late to start?

I understand the fear. But I think the fear is aimed at the wrong target.

Schools teach information. But information is now ubiquitous, freely available, instantly searchable, endlessly generated.

What made education valuable in the past was access to knowledge that was scarce. That scarcity no longer exists.

What remains scarce, dangerously and increasingly scarce, is the human capacity to think, feel and lead.

Look at history. Humans have proven to be remarkably adaptive creatures.

We navigated the Renaissance, which upended how we understood art, science and the self.

We survived the Industrial Revolution, which replaced muscle with machine and reorganized entire civilizations around factories.

We are still navigating the Digital Age, which rewired how we communicate, consume and connect. Every era brought disruption. Every era produced humans who adapted and led.

But here is where I diverge from the optimists.

The threat of the AI Age is not that machines will replace us. It is that we will allow ourselves to become dependent on them before we have fully developed ourselves.

I am not afraid of AI. I am afraid of a generation that outsources its thinking to AI, its creativity to AI, its judgment to AI, and arrives at adulthood having never built the inner architecture that leadership requires.

Imagine a world where the most powerful tool ever built is operated by people who have forgotten how to be human.

That is the real risk.

So when my friend asked me what he could do, I gave him five concrete answers. Not app subscriptions. Not coding camps. Five fundamentals, executable at home, starting tonight.

• First: Read with your child every night, with a book. Not a tablet. A physical book.

The ritual of a parent reading aloud builds vocabulary, comprehension, attention span and the experience of sustained, linear narrative. Children who are read to learn to follow an argument, absorb a story arc and sit with ideas long enough to understand them. That is the foundation of critical thinking.

• Second: Have your child read aloud. Loud. With confidence.

Reading aloud builds fluency, diction and the courage to occupy space with one’s voice. Communication is not a soft skill. It is the primary skill of leadership.

Every great leader, in every field, has been able to articulate a vision, move a room, and persuade another human being.

That begins with a child learning to project their voice across the living room.

• Third: Learn a musical instrument, any instrument. Even cymbals. Or a guitar.

Music is not about performance. It is about activating the creative hemisphere of the brain that logical training tends to neglect.

Playing an instrument builds pattern recognition, discipline, and the ability to translate abstract feeling into structured expression.

These are exactly the capacities that AI cannot replicate.

• Fourth: Learn a second language, any language. A regional dialect. Spanish. Even Latin, though it has been dead for centuries.

Acquiring a second language opens neural pathways that a single-language existence leaves dormant.

It builds cognitive flexibility, the ability to hold two conceptual frameworks in the mind simultaneously and move between them.

That is precisely what you need in an AI world, where the ability to reframe a problem and think in multiple registers will separate leaders from followers.

• Fifth: Play a sport, any sport. Chess counts. Swimming counts. Even a backyard game counts.

Sport builds the inner competitive spirit, the will to improve, to persist through failure, to measure oneself honestly.

It teaches a child that outcomes are not guaranteed, that effort matters, that losing is survivable and instructive.

In a world increasingly optimized for frictionless experience, children need the friction of competition to develop resilience.

These five things develop what matters most in an AI world: critical thinking, emotional intelligence and adaptability.

SEE ALSO

BUSINESS

BSP sets AI governance framework for banks

These are not supplementary virtues. They are the core operating system for human leadership in any era, and they are built at home, not in a classroom.

Many parents today are waiting. Waiting for schools to teach AI. Waiting for the right curriculum, the right program, the right government policy. That wait may never end.

Schools are still figuring it out, and the curricula being written today will be obsolete before your 7-year-old finishes high school.

But here is what I know for certain.

AI learning, real AI readiness, begins long before your child ever sits in a tech classroom.

It begins at home, in the early years, through the fundamentals. And it does not begin with a screen. It begins with a parent.

We are also seeing the consequences of neglecting these fundamentals in real time.

Student suicides are rising. Young people are struggling to manage pressure, failure and uncertainty in ways that previous generations, for all their disadvantages, seemed better equipped to handle.

This is not a school problem. It is a foundation problem.

Children who read develop inner worlds rich enough to process difficulty. Children who play sports learn that losing does not end you. Children who make music find an outlet for what they cannot yet put into words. These are not academic exercises. They are mental health interventions, preparing them for life’s battle ahead.

Your presence in these activities is not optional. It is the variable that makes the difference. A teacher can introduce a concept. Only a parent can build a foundation.

The most advanced school in the world will always be secondary to a parent who shows up, consistently and intentionally, in the small daily moments that shape a child’s character.

So read the book. Not the tablet. The book.

That is where AI readiness begins.

The author is president of the Management Association of the Philippines (MAP). He is also president and COO of DITO CME Holdings Corporation. Feedback at map@map.org.ph and donaldpatricklim@gmail.com.

Arresting social media

 

BY FATIMA GIMENEZ

JUNE 29, 2026

How can I help you? A mother of four complained that her 16-year-old son was having trouble sleeping.

To create a more relaxed interchange, I started by asking what her typical day was like. She shared that, as a single parent and with children to provide for, she always has to leave early for work. Her son has chosen to live with a sibling and attends school from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m., but reportedly only gets to sleep by 12:30 a.m. He then volunteered the reason himself: he has become so attached to his cell phone. This eventually led into a discussion on his school performance. His grade in Math was in the line of eight, but he struggles with his English comprehension because he felt he was “mahina” and forgets things easily. When asked where this forgetfulness was coming from, he quickly replied that it was probably from watching too much TikTok. While I was dismayed, at least there was some degree of self-awareness.

From his story, one doesn’t have to do an in-depth analysis to connect the dots. From constant and prolonged social media use, there is sleep disruption, translating into a decrease in concentration and lack of focus, leading to a decline in academic performance.

The price of belonging

 Severina Ongpin 

The first thing I noticed on my first trip to New York was how people stayed in the middle of a city that was constantly moving. Strangers lingered on public benches, children chased each other through parks, senior citizens played chess beneath trees, and students read nearby with coffee in hand.

A year later in Singapore, I observed the same quiet rhythm in their own spaces, such as hawker centers and waterfront promenades, where people from different backgrounds and generations gathered freely. What struck me most was that Singapore’s climate was the same, if not much worse than Manila’s humid and tropical heat.

In a world increasingly dominated by short-form content and constant technology, these third spaces offer something the internet cannot: genuine human presence.

Yet in Manila, where many social spaces are hidden behind entrance fees, commercial expectations, or concerns over safety and cleanliness, opportunities for connection often feel conditional.

These cities understood the value of what sociologists call third spaces: places outside of home and work where people can gather, linger, and interact freely.

Parks, libraries, plazas, community centers, and public benches allow connections to form naturally without the expectation of spending money.

In increasingly isolating urban environments, these spaces offer relief from the rigid routines of school, work, and crowded homes. This is especially important in the Philippines, where many young people live in densely populated areas with limited privacy or recreational spaces. While such spaces should be common in a city of millions, Manila tells a different story.

Here, social life is often confined to privately owned establishments, where staying requires spending money. Although the city has public areas such as Luneta Park, Arroceros Forest Park, and several plazas, their condition and accessibility often limit how people use them, as they lack security, cleanliness, and basic amenities.

As a result, many students buy drinks simply to secure a place to study, while groups of friends gather in shopping centers because few alternatives exist.

Although these places appear public, they remain shaped by commercial expectations. Malls have become the default gathering spaces for many Filipinos; they only fill a gap left by the absence of accessible parks, libraries, plazas, and pedestrian-friendly environments. In this context, the community itself can begin to feel transactional.

Even when public spaces are available, accessibility alone is not enough. A park may be open to everyone, but if it feels unsafe, unclean, or unbearably hot, it cannot function as a meaningful third space. The challenge is creating public spaces while designing them with comfort, safety, and dignity in mind.

By contrast, cities like Singapore demonstrate how thoughtful urban planning, through providing shade, greenery, cleanliness, and efficient public infrastructure, can transform even a humid tropical environment into one that encourages community interaction rather than isolation.

In Singapore, it was common to see people sitting along sidewalks, waterfront steps, or public walkways despite the heat because these spaces were intentionally designed for comfort. In Manila, however, sidewalks are often uneven, poorly maintained, or treated as extensions of the road rather than spaces for people. This suggests that the primary issue is not the climate but rather the condition of the environment.

When cities fail to create spaces where people feel safe and comfortable enough to gather, the consequences extend far beyond urban design. The absence of meaningful third spaces slowly reshapes the way communities interact, limiting opportunities for connection, affecting mental health, social trust, community, and relationships.

My experiences in New York and Singapore showed how public spaces can shape daily life. They allow strangers to interact, elderly residents to remain socially active, and young people to gather without the pressure of spending money.

If Manila hopes to foster stronger communities rather than deeper isolation, conversations about third spaces can no longer remain a secondary priority. When every social interaction is tied to spending money, community becomes increasingly exclusive and transactional. But when people are given safe and welcoming spaces to gather freely, connection emerges naturally.

Yet third spaces are sustained not only by urban planning but also by the people who use them. Respect, cleanliness, and consideration help to keep these environments safe and welcoming.

In the end, belonging is built by the shared decision to protect and preserve our spaces.

The music guy

BY SANJ LICAROS

MAY 6, 2026

Toti Dalmacion | Photos by Mikey Yabut

Read Next

‘Bookless bookstore’: Audio-only book shop opens in New York

Music is one of the most underestimated layers of hospitality. It is the first thing a guest feels when they walk into a room and often the last thing they remember when they leave. It sets the mood before a word is spoken, fills the silences that conversation cannot, and tells people—without ever announcing itself—that someone thought about them before they arrived.

A well-chosen playlist is an act of care. When picked with intention, music becomes its own language of welcome—not decorative, not incidental, but deeply felt. In the hands of someone who truly understands it, it is one of the most elegant ways of drawing people together. That is hospitality in its most overlooked form.

This is where Toti Dalmacion lives. Record collector, label head, shop owner, promoter—each title describes a function, but not the essence. His collection is the truest portrait of him: built through decades of pure pursuit, each record a decision, a moment, a door that opened into another. All together, they point to the same thing: the music guy. The one who listens first, who gathers, who shares. The one who has always known that music is never just about sound.

What sets the best apart

 

Jea Perez

I’ve always wondered about the following: Mindset-wise, what sets me—an ordinary athlete—apart from an Olympic champion?

Or, if comparing myself to an Olympian is like comparing apples and oranges, then let’s ask a different question: What separates a 10th placer in the Olympics from the gold medalist?

At that level, the differences can’t simply be talent. Everyone competing at the Olympics is already among the best in the world. Yet there is room for only one gold medalist.

Two people can train the same number of hours, follow the same program, and eat the same food—yet their outcomes will still vary.

The same principle applies to elite athletes. Everyone trains hard physically. So what actually sets the very best apart?

I got a glimpse of the answer when a journalist asked freestyle skier Eileen Gu to “take us into her brain.” She mentioned that she journals a lot and emphasized something simple but powerful: we can control our thoughts and our emotions. Neuroplasticity, she said, is on our side.

The brain is trainable in the same way the body is. The narratives we rehearse internally—about who we are, what we’re capable of, and how we respond to setbacks—eventually become mental habits. And those habits shape how we perform when the pressure is at its highest.

Elite athletes don’t just train their bodies; they train their minds. They rehearse confidence, learn to regulate their emotions, and become comfortable performing under pressure. These patterns of thinking eventually become part of their identity, and identity has a powerful influence over performance.

Another athlete who made me reflect on this is figure skater Alysa Liu. What struck me most about her gold medal performance wasn’t just the technical excellence. It was the visible joy. You could see it in the way she glided across the ice. There was a lightness to her skating.

After years in the spotlight as a teenage prodigy, Alysa stepped away from competition to rediscover why she loved skating in the first place. When she eventually returned, she made sure she was skating on her own terms. She wasn’t chasing validation. She wasn’t trying to prove anything. It was as if she simply wanted to skate, and the gold medal was just a bonus. That detachment from the outcome seemed to unlock her best performance. The joy was palpable—not just to the judges, but to everyone watching.

It’s one of those paradoxes we see not only in sports, but in life: when you stop gripping so tightly to the result, you finally perform freely enough to achieve it. When joy and presence replace pressure and fear, amazing results follow.

Even if you have no desire to become an Olympian, the mindset behind elite performance applies to almost every aspiration in life.

Most people assume success is primarily about external factors—talent, opportunity, circumstances. But we see that the internal landscape matters just as much: Your ability to regulate your thoughts, your ability to reframe setbacks, your ability to detach from outcomes while still giving your full effort. These are trainable skills.

Neuroplasticity means your brain is constantly rewiring itself based on what you practice. If you repeatedly practice doubt, comparison, and fear, those neural pathways grow stronger. But if you practice presence, confidence, and emotional regulation, those pathways strengthen instead. The brain adapts to the stories you rehearse. And maybe that’s the real difference between good and world-class.

Not just how hard someone trains physically—but how intentionally they train mentally. Because when the defining moment arrives—the Olympic final, the championship game, or the opportunity that could change your life—your body can only perform as well as the mind guiding it.

And the beautiful part is this: You don’t have to be an Olympian to apply that lesson.

The outcomes we want in life rarely come from focusing only on what we want to have. Instead, they begin with who we choose to be.

When someone becomes mentally resilient, disciplined, and grounded, their actions naturally follow from that identity. They show up consistently. They practice the habits that reinforce that identity. Over time, those actions accumulate into results.

Elite athletes understand this intuitively. They become the kind of person who can handle pressure, do the daily practices that reinforce that mindset—whether it’s journaling, visualizing, or training with focus—and eventually have the performances that the world celebrates.

But many people try to reverse the order. They believe that once they have success, they will finally be confident or disciplined. In reality, the process usually works the other way around. The work begins internally.

So maybe the real question isn’t what separates Olympians from the rest of us.

Maybe the more interesting question is this: Who are you becoming while you pursue what you want?

Artificial goodbyes

 

BY ELEANOR PINUGU

APRIL 27, 2026

Read Next

Lifeline

An 80-year-old woman speaks with her son for a few minutes each day through video calls. She has not seen him in some time, so she keeps asking when he will visit. He always replies that he relocated to another province to save money before returning home to care for her. What she does not know is that her son died in a car accident a year ago.

Rather than tell her the truth, the family members hired an artificial intelligence (AI) company to create a digital twin so she would believe that he was still alive. According to the family, she has a weak heart, and they were worried that the news might harm her health. This incident, reported by the South China Morning Post last week, has since sparked an online debate regarding the ethical use of AI, especially in cases where it can impact human emotions.

As generative AI matures, the world is also seeing the emergence of “grief tech,” also known as the digital afterlife industry. These technologies enable users to interact with simulated versions of their deceased loved ones in intimate ways. Conversational AI products like Project December and You, Only Virtual (YOV) simulate a person’s conversational style by training the model on the deceased person’s text, email, and social media content. Startups like Eternal and Here After AI are offering interactive, voice-enabled avatars of people’s loved ones.

Ferocious Lady Bulldogs

 

BY LANCE AGCAOILI

APRIL 23, 2026

NU’s Arah Panique (right) attacks the UST defense on her way to a career-high night. —MARLO CUETO

Read Next

Filipino women volley pairs in tough brackets

National University clinched the No. 2 seed and a crucial bye in the first round of the step-ladder after rallying past University of Santo Tomas, 19-25, 23-25, 25-18, 25-18, 15-13, in the final elimination round playdate of UAAP Season 88 women’s volleyball tournament on Wednesday at Smart Araneta Coliseum.

In finishing second behind outright finalist La Salle, the defending champions also gained a prolonged break as the Golden Tigresses dropped into a tie for fourth spot with Far Eastern at 8-6 and both will figure in a KO duel for the right to play third-ranked Adamson in another you-or-me match.

That means more than a week of rest and recalibration—with the battle for the second title series slot slated for May 2—for the Lady Bulldogs, who are coming off two five-set games, the other a heartbreaking setback to the Lady Spikers over the weekend.