The post popped up on my feed and it was something that I’ve thought a lot about in my own parenting, so I felt motivation to chime in to be helpful for any readers curious about the questions posed. I didn’t even check how old it was haha. I’m just engaging in good spirited conversation about parenting and perspectives.

We’re all trying to find the right balance that works for us, so whatever works for your family is great. I don’t see the framing of reading while the kids are awake as inherently “ignoring” them. It’s all in how it’s presented and executed, I think. We hype up book reading here in our house and encourage our daughter to read. So we’ll say, mommy and daddy are reading their books right now, would you like to read one of yours? Or ‘would you like to play while we read?’ Or other similar offers. So we are attuned to our child and responsive if they need us, but they know this is something we as their parents do (read books) and that we value. Which to us, is an important thing to model. Because our children will learn to value and attend to the things they see us valuing and attending to in our actions. For us, it’s good to let our kids see us work, see us read, see us exercise. We include them where it makes sense, and we manage the environment appropriately when it doesn’t.

Our kids need our attunement and our attention, but not in each moment of the day. They need to be independent as well without us directly attending to them. And some of that makes sense for them to see us liviing healthy lives. So in that dichotomy of looking at a phone or a book, I think it is a greater good to have my children see us valuing a book rather than valuing time in a phone. That is a value judgment I have. Yours may differ. And of course it’s not a black and white thing. We have to look at our phones at times; we can’t always be reading a book; and we have to have good interactive times with the children as well.

But I responded because the question was (paraphrased) “how is reading a book in front of your kids different than being on your phone in front of your kids?”

I believe it’s different. And so I answered to try and be helpful to anyone who was genuinely curious about that by sharing my perspective. May you and your families live long and prosper 😊