There are numerous factors that act as pivotal contributors to the full-fledged development of children, including what hobbies they take up. When it comes to the effect of pastimes on children’s development, many people subscribe to the assertion that an active one could do wonders for children in improving their life skills rather than spending time reading. Personally, I partly concur with this statement since whereas active hobbies apparently help improve social skills, reading can also contribute to enhancing their soft skills.
First and foremost, active pastimes can advocate for enhancing their soft skills through the act of establishing new bonds. As can be seen, partaking in extracurricular activities as well as clubs can help them widen their social circles, which assist them in developing interpersonal skills. Moreover, children are also given unique opportunities to meet and cooperate with diverse types of people, even those who may not be harmonious with themselves. This can help prepare themselves to come to terms with the fact that they have to learn how to maintain healthy partnerships regardless of their own biased prejudices, thus providing them with necessary skills for life. Additionally, this kind of hobby also caters them for worthwhile real life experience. In other words, the enrollment in particular clubs and non-profit organizations can provide them with numerous technical knowledge as well as know-how skills. For example, should they join a media-related club that they can acquire a wealth of experience and knowledge about graphic design, marketing, and the other skills which are prerequisite to success in this field.
At the other end of the spectrum, reading, in fact, can contribute to their gaining essential technical skills. Some science-based fields such as biology or medicine obviously require technical knowledge to confront real life circumstances, which can mostly be obtained from related books. In other words, only when they possess sufficient technical knowledge from books can they acknowledge how to tackle real life problems. Likewise, reading can be synonymous with the preparedness for circumstances in reality. Since there is a high likelihood that humans may counteract the problems on the basis of human nature as opposed to methodological thinking, reading is capable of helping them gain a broad view of the issues beforehand so that even if they get into trouble, they can pull themselves together and thus address the problem calmly.
In conclusion, I partly agree with this statement as books offer foreknowledge about the real situations whereas active hobbies cater for life experience. Personally, I firmly believe that neither books nor active activities are better off since it mostly depends on their own abilities to apply what they learn into practice.