Reading Ages

[pameladlloyd]

I've just discovered a cool website on education, The Daily Riff, and I couldn't be more thrilled. I love the way it's organized into topics like, "People, Politics, & Business," "Global," "Learning, Innovation, & Tech," etc.

I've barely had a chance to explore it, but here's one article that caught my eye: Three Great Books to Read Aloud to Your Tweens & Teens (Yes, you heard right). The author tells us that she reads aloud for about fifteen minutes a day to her daughter (who presumably falls within the specified age range). It's one of her daughter's favorite activities.

This afternoon, while driving around town, when I saw a billboard admonishing parents to read aloud for fifteen minutes to their children (illustrated by a photo of a man reading to a cute little girl of about five or six), my reaction was to think to myself that fifteen minutes was way too short. (But, then, I'm a mom who started reading to her children before they could walk or talk. By the time my first son was a year old, I could read to him for an hour and he'd cry when I stopped.) Then I reflected that if the goal was to get parents who weren't already reading to their kids to start, it was better not to overwhelm them with a more extensive time span.

But, to get back to the article, and the idea of reading to tweens and teens, how many of you do, or did, this? How many of you had parents that did this? If so, did a specific time limit apply? Were you consistent, trying to read every night, or for a certain number of nights a week? Was this a one parent-one child phenomenon, or did the whole family participate? Do you think the way you were read to contributed to your current attitudes about books? Do you think the way you're reading to your child(ren) has contributed to their attitudes about books? Does reading books together help to form a bond between parents and their children?

Here are my answers:

I don't really have many memories of being read to as a child, but I think that's because I started reading fairly early and my parents didn't do much reading aloud to me after that point. (What I do remember is my mother singing to me every night as she tucked me in bed, something she did for each of us.) However, we had frequent library trips to borrow books; my mother would carry a large rectangular basket into which we would all pile our books. There were also annual expeditions to the rodeo stadium where the Jewish Women's Club had a massive book sale you had to experience to believe. (A quarter for a paper grocery sack full of books; with shopping carts for families like ours, who descended with unrestrained glee upon the tables piled high with books.) Even though my memories of being read to are few, I do remember at least one time when we were older, at least I was in my tweens and I might have been in my teens, when my brothers and I all snuggled with my mom on our parents' bed and my mom read to us. It's one of those warm, snuggly memories I treasure, even though it's become as faded as Linus' blanket—I no longer with great certainty remember what the book was, although some part of me wants to say that it was The Hobbit—and it helped to forge my determination to read to my children well past the age at which they were reading.

I read to my boys just as much as I could while they were growing up. It was a particular delight for my oldest and he never seemed to lose that enjoyment, although the time he spent reading on his own soon far outstripped what we did together. My younger son, much more physically active, had trouble sitting still for long readings when he was small; his enjoyment for being read to grew, rather than diminished, as he got older. My boys and I usually snuggled on the couch, where we had good lighting to read, and depending upon the book's reading level, I may have done the bulk of the reading or we may have taken turns. But, by the time they were in their tweens and teens, our reading sessions were not particularly regular. Sometimes we might read a chapter or two, or three, in an evening, until the book was finished. At other times we read in fits and starts, our reading times interrupted or bumped by other events; maybe this was because we knew that once we started, we were likely to read for far longer than fifteen minutes. As my boys got older and their interests started to diverge (my oldest, like me, enjoyed science fiction and fantasy, my youngest preferred books about events that had actually happened, or could have happened), our readings together grew fewer and farther apart.

At about the time my boys were moving out of the house, I started my relationship with my husband, whose boys were then in their tweens and teens. One of the things that drew us together was our love for reading to our boys and so family readings continued to be a tradition in our household. Since then, the frequency has dropped off, in large part because we've got to many young men heading in different directions, and with different interests to make reading an easy activity for the whole family to enjoy. But, you never know, we may find just the right book and start up again at any moment.

Comments

[pdlloyd.livejournal.com]

How wonderful that your son continues to value and share his reading with you, even from college. What a precious gift your family shares.