To improve your work-life balance, read to your children

Former PIMCO chief executive Mohamed El Erian is making headlines around the world following his recent comments that he resigned from the trillion-dollar investment fund this year after his 10-year-old daughter gave him a list of 22 milestones he had missed as her Dad, including her first football matches and other key events she had in her life.

Mr El Erian’s move highlights the dilemma of working parents who would like to reach the pinnacle of corporate and financial success, but also realise that quality time spent with their children is wealth in itself.

At the same time, many of us spend a lot of time on our electronic gadgets, even while at home or during family gatherings.

One easy and inexpensive way for parents to spend quality time with their children is to revive the practice of telling stories to their children at bedtime. Most parents would be home from work anyway before their children’s bedtime. Telling stories will be appreciated and remembered by the young ones.

Contrary to what some may think, it is not always a trip to a theme park or the latest movie that they want. Sometimes, they just want to spend quality time with their parents.

Research by Boston University School of Medicine’s department of paediatrics found that reading to young children stimulates their development and gives them a head start in school. Sharing a bedtime story promotes a child’s motor skills through learning to turn the pages and also improves the child’s emotional and social development.

In a separate study of more than 4,000 children, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research also found that the more parents read to children from an early age, the greater the positive effect on their reading and thinking skills.

Researchers also found that children with poor backgrounds or parents of limited education or ability get the same benefit when read to frequently. Children will remember how you tell them bedtime stories and will also want to share this with their own young ones eventually, so it can become a family tradition.

A good example of this was related by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong over the weekend, when marking the 10th anniversary of the National Library Board’s kidsREAD programme, in which volunteers read to children from low-income families to help them cultivate a love for reading.

Mr Lee recounted how his mother, the late Kwa Geok Choo, used to read storybooks to him when he was young. Mr Lee then learnt to read on his own. When he had children of his own, he often read to them when they were young, he said.

“When a child is young, the best gift we can give the child is the gift of reading,” added Mr Lee, as he announced that the kidsREAD programme will be expanded next year to include more families and children.

The government’s move is laudable, but parents can do more in reading to their own children.

The choice of stories, which can be fairy tales from the Grimm Brothers or Hans Christian Andersen or local writers, is important.

Opt for stories appropriate for your children’s age and interest. Reading with a good voice with some gusto and emotion, even at the end of a long day, will make the difference between a story well appreciated and something that simply tries to pass the time. So take the effort to make it good, with as much effort as you would give to your daily work.

As social media and shorter economic cycles transform the way we work and interact with one another, some old-fashioned storytelling may be a good way to build good family ties.

It may not be the perfect solution for everyone, but for some it just might be one way to reach that elusive work-life balance we all strive for.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Dennis Posadas is a father who tries to read fairy tales to his three young daughters nightly, and the author of two business fables - Greenergized and Jump Start: A Technopreneurship Fable.