In this day and age, technological progress has brought many electronic devices to our daily lives. By spending time on these devices, family members forgo opportunities to come together in order to build relationships and strengthen family bonds. In my opinion, parents should spend more face-to-face time with their children, which includes reading or telling stories to their children, because such activities can enhance parent-children’s relationships as well as provide teaching moments that can transfer knowledge and wisdom to their children.
First, it is important to acknowledge that the building and strengthening of a relationship is best achieved through face-to-face interactions. While electronic devices, such as smartphones, TVs, and computers, can help deliver information and knowledge to a child, the development of that child is highly dependent on the connection that he or she is able to establish with their parents, with whom they highly respect. For example, by reading a fairytale story to 4-year child before bedtime on a regular basis, the parent has an opportunity to strengthen the bond with the child. Of course, the parent could easily flip on YouTube to let the child watch and listen to this fairytale on an iPad, but such impersonal treatment of the relationship could actually cause the parent and child to grow further apart over time.
Moreover, by reading or telling stories to their children in person, parents can have teaching moments, helping children to interpret certain concepts or moral codes that are often embedded in the stories. For example, in the story “The Rabbit and the Turtle,” where a rabbit and a turtle were running in a race, and the turtle won the race, the important teaching moment is the following: “Steady” wins the race. This is an important concept for any child to learn. While an explanation of this concept can easily be delivered over a video, that explanation could go in one ear and out the other, as the child has no one standing by to help him or her to understand the basis of this life’s lesson, which is reflected in the concept “steady.” Face-to-face interactions are needed in order to effectively development a human child.
In conclusion, while electronic devices are helping adults to gain knowledge about the world around them, children have not yet established a knowledge framework, fully adopted a set of values, or developed a repertoire of habits in order to teach themselves. Clearly, the development of children requires the supervision and involvement of adults, namely and preferably their parents.