Model Reading

Please raise your hand if you have ever been frustrated with your kid for something they did or didn’t do!  If you aren’t raising your hand, you either don’t have kids, are lying to yourself, or have coffee in both hands and don’t want to risk the precious goods.  Now, raise your hand if you’ve ever been upset with your kid for doing something, or not doing something, that you do or don’t do.  Seriously, people, if you aren’t raising your hand, you must be very new to the parenting program.  We constantly harp on our kids about clean rooms, picking up dirty clothes, putting trash and dirty dishes where it belongs, and then sometimes I look around and realize we aren’t rockstar housekeepers either.  I think this next one goes hand in hand wonderfully with the point I want to get at today – have you ever been frustrated/worried/anxious about the amount of time your child spends in front of a screen, but oh wait, we spend a disturbing amount of time staring at the device and getting sucked in the vortex of social media.  Children model the behaviors they see in the people around them. 

According to an article from the American Academy of Children & Adolescent Psychiatry, children can be influenced by a wide array of individuals and sources, but their primary role model is parents and caregivers.  Our jobs as role models are to set the expectation for reading!

If all this chatter from the AACAP and other reputable agencies is true, it stands to reason that if I sit down in my favorite chair with a cozy blanket and warm drink because, hey North Dakota, it’s friggin cold here in the winter, my child will be more likely to sit in the chair next to me with a book instead of a tablet. 

What if you’re thinking “I’m not a reader, how do I model that?” Well, you don’t have to be a reader to know how important it is and to encourage the kids around you to read.  My parents are and never were readers, BUT they were supportive and encouraging of my brother and I who had a passion for books at a young age.  Even now, they cheer my entire family on from the sidelines as we fill our home with books and often ignore what’s happening around us to get caught up in a great story.  You can model reading without being a reader.  If you aren’t a reader, take your kid to the library, snag a couple books at the book fair, let them curl up in your lap or next to you on the couch for story time.  What you do and say matters, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if we made reading and books something that mattered to our children

I just want to end on this note – I love doing live events (vendor shows, books fairs, etc.) because I get to see kids come up and get excited about all the books, but very few things make me sadder when I hear kids get excited about books and then I see parents push their kids away from the books for a toy, usually one that will be in the garbage or giveaway pile next week.  As adults, let’s not diminish the value of reading and learning.  Books are timeless, toys are not!  Please embrace the child who wants to devour knowledge and have a bookshelf full of their favorite books, whatever they may be.  You are setting them up to model reading for the next generation. 

Take a little time today to think about how you model reading and learning now and where could you grow.