The most awarded book is not needed if there is no one to read it to you

BarcelonaWe have become extraordinarily skilled at choosing, practically in everything. We choose the best school, the best extracurricular activity, the most ergonomic backpack, the BPA-free lunchbox, and the flat-soled sneakers. We choose sugar-free, we choose to restrict mobile phones, we choose respectful clothing as if clothing could behave disrespectfully, and we choose toys with a Montessori label.

And, amidst this display of impeccable intentions, there is a choice that often eludes us or demands an excessive effort: choosing time. Time, pure and simple. Time without a goal. Time without explicit educational intentionality. Unoptimized time. Time to sit next to a child and read.

We are governed by the attention economy, in a world where everything competes for a few seconds of our eyes. Short, accelerated content, designed to capture us and immediately give way to the next. A diet of micro-content that, like fast food, fills but does not nourish.

Faced with this, shared reading (yes, shared, side by side) becomes almost a subversive act. An adult, a child, a book (yes, made of paper, with pages that are turned slowly) and a moment without interruptions. A slow simmer in a world of l'Ametller salads.

And no, it's not naive nostalgia nor a hippie resistance to technology. It's a matter of well-being, health, and life purpose. Because when we read with a child, we are not just fostering reading comprehension (though that too). We are doing something essential and much more radical: we are practicing one of the purest expressions of love. We are giving time.

Because we can get all the parenting decisions right, but if there are no shared moments, if there is no one sitting beside them, reading, listening, looking, the formula falters.

Lowering excellence

Therefore, in this era of hyper-parents, it would be advisable to lower the anxiety about excellence, accept the necessary imperfection that being a mother or father implies, and bet on what, despite the diversity of styles, usually works. The most respectful toy is not needed if there is no one to play with it. The most awarded book is not needed if there is no one to read it to you. Instead, what is needed, what is indeed essential, is the adult's time.

Because children probably won't remember the grams of sugar they didn't eat each week, or if their toys were made of certified wood, but it will remain in their memory, with surprising accuracy, who told them stories before going to sleep.

They will remember Little Red Riding Hood. And the wolf. And the fear they felt thinking that the grandmother ended up inside the belly. And also how, in a way, that fear was a desired fear, because they lived it next to someone they loved. Or perhaps they will remember Aladdin and the magic lamp, from the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, and the desire to fly on a carpet, accompanied by the gaze of those eyes that narrated them to them.

That's why, this Sant Jordi, from Lecxit we propose something very simple: recommend time. With the #YoRecomiendo campaign, we invite families, teachers, and volunteers to share lived reading experiences with children. Not just to recommend books, but to make visible what makes them truly go from being pages to memorable experiences: shared time. Because behind every reader who grows, there is someone who has dedicated time. And perhaps, among so much well-informed decision-making and so much conscious parenting, this is the most important. And also, coincidentally, one of the most economical.