Everywhere you look, parents and children are busy with their smartphones and their laptops. The children are playing video games or using apps on their iPod. We are glued to the television set, We sleep with our phone on the nightstand. There is hardly a moment where some parents opt to put down our electronics or delay our chores with the intent to properly engage our kids. We assume that our children are learning from the television and from the gadgets that we give them, but we don't realize that there is a whole world of skills that they aren't learning while their eyes are glued to the screen.

The reality is that we are setting our children up for failure by not engaging them and teaching them the skills that they will need far into their adult lives. The bitter truth is that our lack of engagement with our children can actually cause them to form an eccentric personality, or even a personality disorder later in life. Some of the most difficult people are plagued with anti-social or conduct disorders, obsessive compulsive personality disorder ('perfectionism disease'), borderline personality disorder, and schizoid or avoidant personality disorders. Many of these personality disorders that cause a person to struggle through life have a 'learned' from childhood component to them. The children who grow into adults with these personality disorders may experience relationship and work problems, difficulty coping with stresses in life, parenting struggles, and depression. Some of these individuals go on to have significant addiction problems, or may even attempt or commit suicide.