Developing children’s life skills is one of the crucial and controversial topics among both young and older parents. In fact, I agree that children’s life skills are better developed when they actively engage in various pastimes as it offers unique benefits such as fostering their creativity and improving social skills instead of spending time on reading.
Firstly, spending time on reading books in different genres may seem tedious and time consuming for most children. Thus, I think diverting children’s attention to engaging in different pastimes such as arts, sports, or crafts is a lot better than compelling them to read books passively for the sake of developing their active life skills. For example, engaging in the arts might help foster children’s creativity along with improving their cognitive development, which are considered to be the overarching life skills that children need to acquire so that to apply them in their later lives, to solve problems analytically and critically, for example. Therefore, even if reading sounds smarter and more efficient way of developing children’s life skills, i would say most active pastimes are interactive and children will not get bored.
Secondly, children who are involved in diverse leisure activities are assumed to be extroverts and open-minded. Although I acknowledge that youngsters who are avid readers also sociable, the way they spend time makes them less sociable and introvert from time to time. To be precise, reading is a skill that is likely to be enhanced and accomplished alone rather than communicating with their peers or seeking assistance from their facilitator that can be seen in activities like sports or crafts. For instance, children who are attending sport lessons for about 2 months reported an increase in their social abilities and showcased activeness in their everyday life including completing their daily household chores and school-related tasks.
In conclusion, while reading might be conceded as a perfect tool to develop childrens life skills, there are some negatives in applying this which range from being absolutely boring and not appealing. Therefore, I agree that engaging in some leisure activities are preferable in the development of children’s skills because it poses different aforementioned advantages such as improving creativity and socializing.