Reading📚To Your Children Isn't Enough
Few things do more good than reading to your children.
Imagination, creativity, academics, cognition.
But a lot of these skills don’t come from the reading but the discussion that happens around reading.
I could give you snappy list telling you why but today I’d rather tell you a story.
Last year we read A Wrinkle in Time and Farmer Boy. On first glance these books have nothing in common Wrinkle is about fighting dark forces across time & space. Farmer boy is about a boy growing up on a farm in the 1800's.
Both have important messages about freedom & individuality.
In Farmer boy, the boy is asked if he would rather go live in the city. He would have a boss but he wouldn't have to get up early or take care of animals when there was frost. In other words, do you choose freedom or ease?
I spent time discussing with my children. What would they choose and why? This is an easy scenario for kids to think about. My kids ultimately said they would rather work hard & be free than have an easy life but be chained down.
With this foundation, we set out to read A Wrinkle in Time. Wrinkle grapples with individuality too but it's more complex. The characters are fighting a force that wants everyone to be the same. Think the same, Dress the same. Be the same. This force, IT, also promises an easier life to those who join. IT promises them, they will never be unhappy but in return would never experience joy.
Would you say yes? This is the question I asked my children. Like Farmer Boy, it comes down to do you want? Freedom or ease.
These types of questions ask children to look at books as not just stories to entertain but as lessons to be learned. Ideas to be pondered.
One of my favorite authors, Abraham Verghese, writes in his novel Covenant of Water about how fiction makes us better people.
"Characters die on the page so that we might live better lives"
Stories are about so much more than what happens to characters on the page.
Guide your children to see the lessons behind the stories. Help them become the people they were meant to be.
If you’d like to hear an example of discussions like this, click HERE to hear a conversation between myself and my kids (9 & 7yo) about Rikki Tikki Tavi.
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