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Reading To Your Kids By Holly Jahangiri, Sat Dec 10th
Even before she was born, I imagined snuggling close with mydaughter, Katie, and reading to her. I just knew that she wouldlove books, and she would become an avid reader like her dearol' Mom. Her bookshelves were stocked with the best of the best- from One Fish, Two Fish to The Chronicles ofNarnia and everything in between. But it was not to be.
Katie liked to snuggle, all right. Up to a point. But almostfrom the moment of birth, my girl was filled with a restlessenergy that made sitting still seem almost painful. She had tobe doing something. Even before she could talk, her eloquenteyes learned to say "I'm bored!" She would tolerate the firstfew pages of a story book, but after a few pages she would beginto wriggle and squirm. She would give me an apologetic look ("Ilove you, but this is boring me to tears!") and slip down ontothe floor in search of things to do.
The first word Katie learned to read was "exit." Not from thebright red lighted Exit signs at all our favorite restaurants,but from the Microsoft Windows menu options File > Exit. Yes, by the time she was a year old, Katie loved to play withour computers and we made sure she knew how to turn them offproperly. She learned the word "milk" from playing with herMagnadoodle. She learned "stop" from stop signs along the road.But I can't remember her learning many words from reading books,or from being read to, although I swear I tried.
When Katie got to Kindergarten, she knew her alphabet and couldform most of the letters competently. But curl up in theclassroom reading center with a good book? She'd rather not,thanks. I'm still not sure how the kid learned to read. Buthalfway through Kindergarten, a light went on and she was ableto read just about anything you put in front of her. One weekshe couldn't read the simplest primer, the next week she couldread passages from the newspaper. But don't get me wrong, Katiestill didn't like to read, or choose to sit quietly and immerseherself in a good story. I used to think you had to practice askill to develop it, but I'm convinced Katie just plucked"reading" out of thin air and added it to her arsenal, withoutever investing the time or effort to perfect it.
When Katie was in third grade, she was required to pick a bookfrom the library each week and read it. That was torture forher. She groaned over the silly fairy tales they studied, andhad trouble locating any book that could hold her interest longenough to complete the assignment. I took her to the bookstoreand encouraged her to choose a book she might enjoy. She wanteda book on Helen Keller. It was longer than most she'd read todate, and had no pictures. The vocabulary was challenging, butshe dove into it and asked questions when she needed help. Andsuddenly, a light went on in my head.
I'll just confess it straight out. I had always assumed thatlittle girls (I was one, after all) liked fairy tales and otherfiction. Men, on the other hand (at least my Dad, my husband,and most of the men I knew) preferred the "real world" stufflike Popular Mechanics or the newspaper. And thisrealization hit me like a two by four: Had anyone ever asked asmall child what subjects interested him or her? Or had we alljust assumed?
Turns out that Katie liked biographies and historical fiction.Or, as she put it, "stories about real people and realadventures, or things that might have really happened." So Isaid "Honey, ask the librarian to show you where the biographiesare." Katie's reply almost stopped my heart: "We don't havethose in our school."
Well of course not. "Katie, go ask the librarian to show youwhere they are. Trust me, you have them. They're probablystashed over in the sixth graders' section of the library,because
they think you guys wouldn't be interested." She camehome the next day, beaming from ear to ear and armed with a fewbooks that actually captivated her interest. Over the nextcouple of years, she has branched out and tried new things - sheeven read Jane Eyre twice. She has begged me to get her the nextcouple of books in the Left Behind series. But the reallife dramas, particularly the one she's living, not just readingabout, are what hold her interest best.
Katie is still not the avid reader I'd dreamed she would be. Butshe's darned good at it. In fifth grade, she tested two and ahalf grades higher in reading, and has made perfect readingscores on statewide tests. But she'd rather be playingbasketball.
My son, William, is all boy. He loves trucks, Hot Wheels cars,his Little Tikes workbench with its peg board full of realisticplastic tools - if it does something, makes a nice resoundingcrash, or can be dismantled for further study, he likes it evenbetter. He has developed a prodigious (if offbeat) vocabularyfrom watching a vast array of kids' movies on video. At four, heloves to play Diddy Kong Racing and Mario on Nintendo 64, andcan use a Mac or PC with amazing skill. He tried to sign himselfup for an account on a favorite Web site the other night, andwould have succeeded had he been able to repeat the passwordtwice - displayed only as a row of asterisks - to confirm it.
I used to think getting William to read would be a challenge, asit was with Katie. Don't most little boys hate to read? Istarted my campaign to instill a love of books in him frombirth, putting soft cloth-bound books in the crib with him. Iread to him often, but we never established a nightly ritual ofreading. It hadn't worked all that well with his big sister, soI suppose I assumed (again!) that it wouldn't work all that wellwith my little boy. Sometimes we sang and danced to his favoritelullabies, like "Waltzing with Bears." Sometimes we talkedsoftly, making lots of eye contact. Sometimes we just snuggled.But from the time he could reach for a toy, you could tell thatbooks were special to William. He reached out for the books Ileft in his crib, and I would often find him balancing them onhis feet or flipping pages to see the colorful pictures.
As time went by, William would drag a book downstairs to be readalmost as often as he brought his toys downstairs to play.Sometimes he brought two or three books at a time. He wouldclimb up in my lap, snuggle in, and insist that I read to him. Iwas surprised to see how well a good book could compete with abrightly-colored, hyperactive animated video for my son'sattention. (This is a kid who had all the lines from the movieToy Story memorized by the age of 2 and, casting all of us insupporting roles, acted them out with all the drama and emotionof a veteran Broadway star.) He'll climb up in my lap and beg meto read to him, even if Buzz Lightyear's pleading with him tohelp save the Galaxy!
Fantasy and fairy tales are fine by William. Imaginary worldsintermingle with the day-to-day reality, reminding those of usaround him what it means to be a child. It's too early to tellwhether William will be an excellent reader like his sister,Katie. But he enjoys it more. Maybe he'll spend a lifetimepracticing. He recognizes all his letters and numbers, can readhis name, and has started showing a real interest in the words(not just the stories). I wonder, when he gets to Kindergarten,will he search out Grimm's Fairy Tales or the biographyof Neil Armstrong? Or, maybe he'll prefer by then,too.
About the author:Holly Jahangiri is a professional writer who claims,tongue-in-cheek, to channel the spirits of Edgar Allan Poe, ErmaBombeck, and O'Henry. Holly is an author on Writing.Com (http://www.Writing.Com/ ), and you can buy her books at Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/hjahangiri ).
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