Sometimes you have to undo what the school does...oops

Educators will tell you that your child needs to be a lifelong reader.  Actually everyone needs to be a lifelong learner.  Reading enables us to do that.  But teachers throw the term 'lifelong reader' around like it's easy to be one.  Sadly in schools we do a lot to make kids hate reading.  We have them dress up like a favorite character, make a diorama, create a book jacket, keep a journal. Honestly, when you finish a great book, do you dress up like the character and walk down the hall?  I don't.  I pick up the phone and call one of my sisters and tell them they HAVE to read the book.   I take the book to work and tell my friends to read it. I recommend it.

True confession, my daughter Emily, had to make a diorama in some grade after she read Charlotte's Web.  After investing the national debt and several trips to the local craft store, it was a beautiful representation of the book.  She got an A.  We really had no idea if she enjoyed the book, understood the book, but she created a beautiful diorama.  We, I mean she, had invested so much time and money that we saved it. A few years later, Amy is in the same grade.  SHE had to make a diorama on Charlotte's Web.  We still had the museum-ready diorama, so we dusted it off, touched up the paint and we had a beautiful diorama.  Skip ahead a few more years and Blake is in the same grade.  You guessed it, the dreaded diorama was due.   So we did what every stressed out over school parent did, we replaced the hay in the diorama, repainted it and we were set.

I am not proud of what we taught our kids.  But my children hated making dioramas.   After so many years of dressing up, creating a book jacket, keeping a journal on every thought they had as they read, drawing a picture after every paragraph, two of my kids swore they would never read again when they graduated.  In the school's attempt to create lifelong readers they had turned them off of reading.  They learned that reading meant doing a craft or something after they read.


Luckily, my husband and I are readers.  So while the school was unknowingly modeling one thing about reading, we were modeling the fun of reading, reading for a purpose, that we read even into adulthood.  We talked about what we were reading in front of them.   My husband would share something interesting he learned while reading his running magazine.  I would talk about how I had stayed up too late finishing my book.

My point is that if your children do not see you read for pleasure, for information, for whatever reason, they will never see or understand that we read as adults.  They might grow up thinking that reading is an exercise that they must endure until they graduate.  I don't care what you read, just read in front of your kids!

Proudly I can say that as adults, after a few years of not reading, all three of my kids enjoy reading.   They all read different things, but that's okay with me!  They are finally lifelong readers!