The Disappearance of Childhood Reading

I was in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago with all three of my kids. We usually begin by getting a drink or treat, then heading back to the books/trains area and lounging and reading and playing for an hour or so. We shuffled around the edges of the coffee counter after ordering, each child anticipating the delivery of their chosen delicacy. As I poured cream into a steaming cup of joe, the man in line behind me said, "You sure are lucky your kids will come here with you." I half-heartedly mumbled, "Yeah, they love to read." With that he said in a state of semi-shock, "Boy you are lucky they love to read." I'd had enough of the 'luck' talk at this point. I felt like shouting but decide to just say louder and flatter than normal, "It's not luck." And what does he do? He says it again! "You sure are lucky." Oh no he didn't. You want to throw down the gauntlet with me? A primordial response took over: "IT'S NOT LUCK! I'VE WORKED HARD AT TEACHING THEM TO LOVE READING!"

I think it's the first time I've pseudo-shouted inside of Barnes and Noble, other than when Morris's final volume on Teddy Roosevelt came out, and who can blame me for that? ALL CAPS felt good to type - but it overstates my reaction. I know the guy at B&N didn't feel it. Nor did he understand to what I was really reacting.

Kids rarely "luck" into productive behavior. It has to be fostered. They need to be led to things that will make their life better. Leonard Sax, in his book The Collapse of Parenting, says it this way: "Part of the task of the parent is, and always has been, educating desire: teaching your child to desire and enjoy things that are higher and better than cotton candy."

Man we've worked hard to make reading something they have come to not just tolerate, but to desire, to love. And I've had three simple strategies toward this end:

1. Eliminate distractions.
2. Put good books in front of them.
3. Bribe them.

Yes, I used the word "bribe." And I'm still a Christian. Of these three, bribing is by far the easiest. I "bribe" them to go to a bookstore with me by buying drinks or a cookie. I bribe sometimes by paying to read a specific book. This summer I paid my oldest to read a book (I'll get into that later). Call it bribe, call it 'incentivize', 'motivate', or whatever makes you feel better. But the point is to use the means you have to make reading appealing. I don't pay often (I'd go broke!) but when I do, it works.

The hardest is definitely #1, Eliminating distractions. But here's how we do it. We don't allow video games in the house except on rare occasions. We don't own a video game system. There are no computers, TVs, iPads, or phones in anyone's room without permission. I don't play games. Not in front of the kids, and not by myself. I don't sit around fiddling with my phone when I should be hanging out with them. I turn it off and/or hide it till they are in bed. And honestly, even then, I wish I looked at it a whole lot less on my own. 

Why avoid video games with such rabid ferocity? I'll quote Sax's book again (emphasis mine):

If a boy starts playing video games when he was nine or 12 or 14 years old, those games may "imprint" on his brain in a way that they won't if he starts playing at 18. Before puberty is complete, the brain is a enormously plastic... That's both good and bad. The plasticity of the brain before and during puberty allows it to change in fundamental ways as circumstances require. But the areas of the brain responsible for judgment and perspective aren't mature.  Once the process of puberty is fully complete – once the boy becomes a man or the girl becomes a woman – the areas of the brain responsible for anticipating consequences and thinking ahead are stronger.

It's a long way of saying what he said before - train their appetites while they are in your home, and when they are old they might hang on to them. You don't serve a Cruller with Cauliflower. Because only one of those is getting eaten. You keep bad things away from them and put good things in front of them.

Some will say this is over the top. But I just feel like it's one of the wisest things we can do. It's hard work, not luck, but it is so worth it. All of this creates an environment where the kids must turn to other things to entertain themselves. And books are a great source of entertainment.

Sergeant Chowder Bringing the Powder

Which leads to #2 on our list of three strategies for helping our kids learn to love reading. What's one of the best ways to get good books in front of them and around the house? Read them yourself. Read good books and leave them lying around. What was your favorite book when you were a kid? Buy those and read them to your kids. The nostalgia will help you read Drummer Hoff Fired it Off for the 437th time this month. Your kids will inevitably pick them up if they are not distracted by other things and if they have some measure of leisure time.

Most summers I've done a "reading challenge" with my oldest son. This summer we didn't set it up, since we were traveling about a total of 8 weeks. Our schedule was fairly relaxed, but less conducive to a reading program. But I kept putting books in front of him to see if he'd read them or not. And here's what he ended up reading:

The Reason for God by Timothy Keller
Tribe by Sebastian Junger - A War corespondent's perspective on what draws people together into groups.
The Collapse of Parenting by Leonard Sax - parenting book addressing the issue of the transfer of authority from parents to children. Very compelling.
Hero of the Empire by Candice Millard - Story of a young Churchill's escape from a war prison in South Africa.
The Giver by Louis Lowry
Lillian Trasher - Biography of a woman missionary who established orphanages in Egypt in the 1920s.

This doesn't include a number of fiction books he read on his own like, the Blood of Olympus and a couple of Harry Potter books.

Upon reflection I realize this is a more challenging list than most adults will read this year, let alone this summer.

A couple of comments on this list: I did pay him to read The Reason for God - and he had been nibbling on it since before the summer. Also, we read about half of Lillian Trasher aloud in the car during our summer road trips - but he finished it off on his own with zero encouragement from us. The Giver was for school, though he had read it a few times prior to this summer. All the others he read because he was bored and came to me and asked, "Do you have anything good to read?" The Collapse of Parenting was the most surprising - as both he and Julie fought me for it once they read the first chapter. And it is definitely worth reading.

The fight is worth it. It's not easy, but it's worth it to be different. This summer I read the book The Disappearance of Childhood by Neal Postman. What a book. His final two paragraphs of the book are worth repeating here as an apologetic for why one should push kids to read and think and avoid excessive mind numbing media devices. Postman begins with the question, "Is the individual powerless to resist what is happening?" The bold sentence in the second paragraph (emphasis mine) is what really stood out to me.

The answer to this, in my opinion, is "no." But, as with all resistance, there is a price to pay. Specifically, resistance entails conceiving of parenting as an act of rebellion against American culture. For example, for parents merely to remain married is itself an act of disobedience and an insult to the spirit of a throw-away culture in which continuity has little value... Similarly, to insist that one's children learn the discipline of delayed gratification, or modesty in their sexuality, or self-restraint and manners, language, and style is to place oneself in opposition to almost every social trend. Even further, to ensure that one's children work hard at becoming literate is extraordinarily time-consuming and even expensive. But most rebellious of all is the attempt to control the media's access to one's children. There are, in fact, two ways to do this. The first is to limit the amount of exposure children have to media. The second is to monitor carefully what they are exposed to, and to provide them with a continuously running critique of the themes and values of the media content. Both are very difficult to do and require a level of attention that most parents are not prepared to give to child rearing.

Nonetheless, there are parents who are committed to doing all of these things, who are in effect defying the directives of their culture. Such parents are not only helping their children to have a childhood but are, at the same time, creating a sort of intellectual elite. Certainly in the short run the children who grow up in such homes will, as adults, be much favored by business, the professions, and the media themselves. What can we say in the long run? Only this: Those parents who resist the spirit of the age will contribute to what might be called the Monastery Effect, for they will help to keep alive a humane tradition. It is not conceivable that our culture will forget that it needs children. But it is halfway toward forgetting that children need childhood. Those who insist on remembering shall perform a noble service.

Keep in mind this was written in 1982.

Pushing your child toward more virtuous affections will not be popular. Not with your child, not with your friends, maybe not even with their teachers at school, but it is worth it. I'll end with this thought from The Collapse of Parenting:

If you are doing your job as a parent, then sometimes you will have to do things that will upset your child. If you are concerned that your child won't love you anymore, that concern may keep you from doing your job. 

Do your job.