“My Wish is to Become a Smartphone”, This Child’s Letter is an Eye Opener!

If somebody asks you to imagine a fond childhood memory you spent with your parents, what would you come up with?

Is it your dad teaching you how to play sports? Your mom going through your homeworks with you, and then serving snacks afterwards as reward? Is it a family picnic, or just a lazy day spent on the sofa watching TV together? Do you remember spending lots of bonding moments with your family, and actually feeling loved, happy and contented?

Now let’s go back to our modern, technologically-advanced present day. If our children will be asked to think of a fond memory with us, what would they have come up with? Is it the time we allowed them to touch our phones so they can play games?

What does “family time” looks like nowadays, in the eyes of a child?

Read on this heartbreaking story below:

After dinner, a teacher started checking on the homework done by her students. Her husband is strolling around with a smart phone playing his favorite game. Upon checking the last homework, tears welled up in the wife’s eyes.

Her husband noticed her weeping and asked, “Why are you crying, my dear? What happened?”

“Yesterday I gave a homework to my 1st Grade students, to write something on this topic – My Wish.” The wife said.

“OK, but why are you crying?” The husband asked without taking off his eyes from his phone.

“Reading the last note made me cry,”

The husband became curious and asked, “What’s written in the note, that makes you cry?”

“Listen…” The wife tearfully began to read the letter.

‘My wish is to become a smartphone. My parents love their smartphones very much. They care about the smart phone so much that sometimes they forget to care about me. When my father comes home from work tired, he has time for his smart phone but not for me. When my parents are doing some important work and the smartphone rings, they will attend to the phone within a single ring, but not me… even when I am crying. They play games on their smartphones, not with me. When they are talking to someone on their phone, they never listen to me even if I am telling them something important. So, my wish is to become a smartphone.’

After listening to the note, the husband got emotional and asked his wife, “Who wrote this?”.

She looked up at him and said. “Our son.”

Let us not take priority over material things in exchange of our family and relationships. Smartphones are there to make our lives easier and not to rule us over. It is not yet too late to start going back to how family time is supposed to be, back in the old days where there is still no internet and games to keep us fixated on the screens of our phones.

Put down that phone for a while. Talk to your children, or your spouse or your friends. Talk to the people you love and make them feel loved. And you can receive love from them too. Can your phone give you love?

Share this story to your loved ones and may this be an eye opener for all of us.