Children need to spend as much time as possible around the adults who love them. Ideally, this means parents and grandparents. It can also mean the right aunt or uncle.
This is because children need to be around adults who care about their long-term future. Not their behavior next week, or next season, but ten or fifteen years from now.
The alternatives are necessarily grim. Children become pawns in systems. They are used to meet contrived short-term goals. Teachers use them to get good test scores. Coaches use them to win games. They become the recipient of short cuts. And their time is auctioned off.
Thankfully, increasing the hours spent per week or per day with a loving adult can happen incrementally. Replace a baby sitter with a grandparent. Bring a child along on an errand.
It is not always fun. But the alternative of an unloving chaperone is almost always worse.
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