We are what we repeatedly do. Even if no thought is given to the art of parenting, children learn by experience a way of being in the world. Their experience of normal in the early years naturally and inevitably becomes the standard by which they judge all other experience. What parents present to them as good and bad, worthy and unworthy, likewise inevitably defines their norms.

Perhaps the most poignant example is the family meal. Does a family eat together on a regular basis? If so, what happens? Do they watch television together? Or do they have a conversation? Do they listen to one another, or is everyone talking at once? Around this table, or this television (as the case may be), children learn how to interact with other people through repeated experiences. If it is objected that watching television together isn’t interaction, and doesn’t teach interaction, they’ve missed the central point. Any repeated experience, whatever it is, establishes a child’s sense of norms and normal. For some, the focal point of that interaction may be a screen, instead of another person; and this will have significant repercussions.