To Today's School-Age Parent: Reading--A Tired, Old Idea?
Entire series: {PART 1} {PART 2} {PART 3} {PART 4} {PART 5} {PART 6} {PART 7}
I’m a school guy so I had to get around to it sometime, didn’t I? Reading. Tried and true good advice from one generation to another? But isn’t that a rather tired, and quite old idea?
It’s really a trending idea these days, but the problem is that it’s trending down. Not by research results. Not by experience. Not even by considered lifestyle choice. But in practice.
In practice, intentionally concentrated upon, well-imagined, deeply comprehended reading is in a daily battle with the luxuriously visual, intensely but often passively interactive, hyper-connected, ‘microshortly’ extended content glimpses of today’s media channels. No one has to be against reading to have a hard time reading in our culture.
As parents, we have to choose, plan, prepare and commit to reading if our children are going to get to do it, learn to enjoy it, and be blessed to love it.
If not, if they don’t read deeply, long and often, what do they miss? Ironically perhaps, pre-literate, oral tradition societies knew acutely the value to them of their stories for making them what they were and wanted to be. Ours may be headed toward being something of a post-literate culture. Let’s think in simple terms which make the importance very clear. What might our children miss?
1) Good students are readers. 2) Good thinkers are readers. 3) Good empathizers are readers. 4) Good adventurers are readers. 5) Good leaders are readers. 6) Good believers are readers.
1) Students - From reading, students get: Early, broad, rich vocabulary; Connective reasoning; Understanding of setting, character, action, voice, flavor, perspective, point of view, place, tenacity, challenge, temptation, good, evil, choice, LIFE; Tools for learning in all other subjects.
2) Thinkers - From reading, thinkers get: Consideration of alternatives; Reasoning, both inductive and deductive, toward conclusions; Hard logic; Consequences; Rocks and hard spots.
3) Empathizers - From reading, empathizers get: Self-awareness; Helpful distance; Compassionate identification; Deep feelings; Human connection; Painful circumstances; Joyful victories; Revulsion at cruelty; Exaltation with mercy; Considered costs; Chosen sacrifice.
4) Adventurers - Some might counterpose reading as a sedentary and vicarious perspective with enveloping adventure as a firsthand experience. But think of how the two support and extend one another. From reading, adventurers get: early taste of the far-flung and exciting; ability to venture where one physically cannot go or cannot go yet; loosing of the bonds given by particularity and limitation; fuel to imagination; expanded scope of possibility; and encouragement for firsthand experience through the first taste of thrills.
5) Leaders - From reading, leaders get: awareness of self and others; understanding of motivation; perspective on interpersonal and group dynamics; sensitivity to differences of people and points of view; appreciation of commitment and character and courage; consideration of personal readiness to step out upfront; breadboard training in the actions and reactions it takes to lead well.
6) Believers – Of course, God is not limited in how He gets His message to people not in how He grows them in maturity. The fact, though, is that He chooses to reveal by His living Word and by His written Word. From reading, believers get: God’s in-breaking and world-transforming Good News; His self-revelation of His will and His character; Our Lord’s guidance in the way He wants us to live: the very words of Jesus (and the Father at times, as well); the story of YHWH’s saving history with His chosen people, both Israel and the Church; History from the Creator God in the beginning to Redeemer God bringing the new heavens and the new earth.
So, if you want to and you’re really committed, how do you? How do you start the ball rolling and keep it going strong along the way for your child’s reading?
Read to your kids, read with your kids, and read alongside your kids.
Read to your children as young as they are. The time with you, attentive, accompanied by your voice, and held by the joy of learning and stories is a great time for any child. If started well, there’s almost no reason to stop because of age since they keep loving it. They may hit a teen age when they don’t want anyone to know, but still can’t help but love it for themselves.
Read with your children. As they are learning to read, rejoice and redouble your commitment to be with them. You may be teaching them or school may do it, but don’t miss the joy as their parent to see them unlocking the code and delighting in the power and opportunity of reading.
Read alongside your children, reading your books as they are reading theirs. Share your excitement and imagination. Seek to touch and join theirs.
Can any of this be hard? You bet it can. My wife and I were blessed to start young with each of our four children, thus reveling in that innocent joy and togetherness. But starting to read with them, we came to see that two of our four had the challenge of dyslexia. It was hard, for them and for us, but those two became our most tenacious readers. By some measures, they became our most voracious, too, though the other two loved it and journeyed fast and far in their reading.
As an educator, I’ve worked with 1000’s of students, K to 12, over the last 25 years. I’ve met many reading disabilities with them and rejoiced in many ways I’ve seen students overcome the hurdles and enjoy the victories.
Simple but hard. How to make reading a part of your children’s lives? Love it. Share it. Protect it.
I don’t do much with big promising. But for this, I promise, you will not regret it!
DR. BOYD CHITWOOD IS THE SUPERINTENDENT OF MINGO VALLEY CHRISTIAN IN TULSA, OKLAHOMA. FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT MINGO VALLEY, CLICK HERE.