16 Comments

Excellent advice. I particularly like your recommendation to keep the easy books lying around. Children like going back to the easier books, not just because they are familiar and beloved, but because the experience of reading an easy, familiar book is so smooth; they feel accomplished, they feel they are good readers. Parents who take away the easy books as soon as they have been mastered are forcing their kids to always read books that they find hard. It's often well-meaning ("They aren't learning anything, rereading that old thing!"), but the message the children get is that reading is hard, and, worse, that they are bad readers (because it never becomes easy). Of course, learning IS hard. But the real reading experience, the experience one hopes to transmit to one's children, is the experience of easy, pleasurable reading. Of mastery of something difficult. And leaving them the easy books, to return to whenever they wish, gifts them that.

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This is an excellent explanation. I have definitely had the ‘they aren’t learning anything’ experience but I try very hard to squash it before I say anything stupid! A point I didn’t make is that we should try not to belittle our children’s choices, even when they seem pointless to us.

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We don't have children, but our home is scattered with how-to guides and inspirational novels! Crafting our environment proactively is definitely a way to succeed...like having healthy snacks in the fridge vs nothing..going for candy instead.

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"...don’t worry about what your neighbour or friend recommends or rubbishes. The only judgement that matters is your child’s." Yes! Love this.

My 6 and 9yo still read their board books. I keep a small basket of the ones they treasured the most, and I'll find them reading them to each other, or to their dolls or stuffies, once in awhile. (And I've also noticed that my 6yo will grab one when she doesn't feel like slogging through her early readers or chapter books... it's almost as if she wants to read but her brain needs a break, so she chooses something below her level, that she basically has memorized, which of course serves it own purposes, too.) Thanks for making this point about easier books -- it's such a good one.

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Isn't it amazing how children just know what to go for, whether it's books or food, when we give them the chance?!

Like they say "You are your own best chef"...no 5 star restaurant will be as good as what you enjoy, goes for books, relationships, and life.

It also helps practicing "cooking" to become that chef, honing our intuition by exposing ourselves to many different books to know what we don't like.

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Love this analogy! Exposure to many different kinds of books breeds taste (and I wish more caregivers would chill out and trust that taste comes with exposure, time, experience, and patience.)

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Precisely! It's funny - we often see children as being impatient, but maybe we're the impatient ones?

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We are totally the impatient ones.

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Yes definitely. Always reminding myself to slow down and not rush the children. Love this conversation going on here!

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Reading creates a bond, and opens up our right brains to imagination!

Blue light from devices is digital heroin as it spikes dopamine, lowering other crucial hormones like DHEA, growth hormone, etc:

https://romanshapoval.substack.com/p/the-1-emf-youve-forgotten-about

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Interesting, I didn’t know that about blue light but it makes complete sense.

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Thanks Catherine. Blue light causes a master prohormone pregnenolone to be switched to cortisol, disrupting the production of other critical hormones.

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#5 is critical. If they see books wherever they go, they see it as part of the "essence" of the house. If they are all in a small corner, there's the implicit understanding they don't really matter.

It's also critical that if you want your kids to read, YOU must read also. If your kids just see you starting at a screen all day, you are transmitting what is important through your actions, regardless of the words you say.

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Great concrete guidance for raising readers! I can affirm all of the points you made from our experience (we read to them since they were born, have mountains of books everywhere and read about anything, no tv, and they still like pulling out their old children's books for fun. My recent post included reading lists for kids in case you were interested:)

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Jul 26, 2023
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Oh that’s such a good point about the heartbeat ❤️. Thank you for your kind comment, so glad you like the post.

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