Feb 18 2009
It’s the little things that count
I had the cutest thing happen to me tonight, and I wanted to share it with you. My youngest son, came into my room tonight, and asked if the man was around. I told him no, and asked why. He told me he had a book he wanted to read to us, that was all. I looked at him, and I thought to myself “where does the time go“? So I told him I would love to hear his story and he climbed up on my bed, settled in, and we read books together. Listening to him read out loud, stopping every now and then to ask me if that was the correct word was an awesome experience. I had forgotten how much fun it was to have my children read to me. Looks like all those years of reading to them has paid off.
I am an avid reader, one who goes through phases. There are times that for weeks I will speed read on an average of ten to twelve books every four days. It was always a problem for me in school, when teachers wouldn’t believe me that I had finished reading books so fast. Looks like I have passed my love of books and my speed reading on to my children, and I couldn’t be happier. It about broke my heart when my daughter told me about two years ago at 9 that she couldn’t stand reading. I tried everything to get her back into it, and nothing worked. It became a fight to get her to read for her school work even. Then a few months ago, she started back into reading again. She loves it again, and with no push from me. I do ask her questions about her books, simply to refresh her mind on what she just read, helping her to keep the information better.
My middle son is my main speed reader, he’s getting almost as fast as me. His problem is that even though he is in the honors classes, they still don’t believe him when he tells them he is done reading. Good thing is, he has one teacher who knows me well, as she taught me in the 6th grade and dealt with my speed reading. He still has a problem comprehending some of what he reads when he goes too fast, so we are working on slowing him down some. I blame part of that on a testing they did in the schools awhile back. Every day for two months his class had to read a paragraph as fast as they could, and then answer five questions about it. It became a competition, with little understanding of what they had read.
Now it looks as if my youngest not only loves being read to, but is turning to reading himself as well. I couldn’t be happier about it. So much for his teachers latest comments about him not reading well. This boy was reading words like sedimentary, stalagmite, and stalactite tonight. The only problem I see him having is his excessive drool factor still. He literally has to stop talking, swallow, and then begin again. I’m going to have to ask the doctor about this next visit, as it really does bother my son, and makes it hard to understand him sometimes.
It was a joy to listen to him read, to make the voices, and to share with me the pictures as well. We have decided that as long as it’s not a night I work later, we will do this every night. I have enough books to be able to do this, and theres also a library less than ten minutes away. It was cute, at one point I peeked up into my doorway and saw both my older two standing there listening as well, both with smiles on their faces. I wonder if they were remembering the first time each of them read out loud to me.
Yeah, I had the same problem with the teachers. Until they saw me read. And listened to me rattle off things that had happened a few pages before on first try. Then they were just surprised. It helped that I’d been raised reading and being read to; my mother has one of the best collections of voices of anyone I know (I think she’s got something like ten different accents from the British Isles alone, and you can tell them apart).
Though it led to interesting results the one time in middle school–there was a competition between three of the classes, with whichever class read a certain number of pages the fastest getting an ice cream party. (There was a cap on how many pages each of us could contribute to the total, which was probably just as well; I think I earned the ice cream party around the same time the class did.)
I think a lot of people lose interest in reading because of how much of a chore the schools turn it into. Particularly these timed reads; the speedreaders get turned off because they run out of book, the ones who just don’t have the attention span are too busy seeing if they’ve read long enough yet…. it’s counterproductive.
It’s really awesome that your children are reading back to you. Keep that up; the world needs more families like that.
Thank you for writing this post. I must say my oldest daughter has been asking to read to me and we’ve really been bonding over the books. She chose to read one of my adult self-help type books, which talks about improving your life. I wasn’t sure if it would be too boring for her. But we talk about everything. I think today I’ll have my younger daughter sit with me and read me one of her books, just to see if she’d like it.