One of the best things about being a parent is that you get to watch your kids learn to do new things. When they are babies, the learning and the “firsts” come fast and furious. They roll over, and crawl, and eat real food, and clap, and walk. There is new stuff to celebrate all of the time.
As the kids get older, obviously, the fun of watching them conquer new things comes less frequently. (When it comes to learning to urinate into the toilet bowl, not around it, it actually seems that none of my boys will ever achieve mastery.) But there is still that jolt every once in a while, when they surprise you by doing something you didn’t know they could do. Today, Reid made his own peanut butter and jelly sandwich at lunch, from start to finish. I don’t know which of us was more tickled.
There are certain things that I always knew would be important for me to teach my kids, or have others teach them. It was imperative to me that my kids learn how to swim, and swim well, at an early age. They have all done that, and I love to watch them as they improve and learn new strokes. I wanted my kids to have an appreciation for United States history. Through our conditioning, they’ve all become little history buffs, who nerdily collect and display their National Parks Junior Ranger badges.
I also was adamant, before I ever had kids, that I wanted them to learn a second language while they were still young. On that one, sadly, I totally failed. Turns out it’s pretty hard to do if you, yourself, don’t speak another language.
One thing I was bound and determined to pass to my kids was my love for reading. I am a written-word junkie. I pretty much don’t go anywhere – even from room to room in my house – without a book in tow. I’ve been that way since I was a kid. I took a lot of grief from my peers for reading instead of playing at recess, but I think most of them were impressed by how I could ride my bike home from school while reading at the same time. Like Thomas Jefferson, I cannot live without books; I wanted to make sure I passed this love to my kids. Once I had all male children, I was even more determined, because I’ve known so many men who never read for pleasure.
So I made sure to expose my kids to books from an early age. I hit a hundred yard sales, and bought a thousand children’s books. I read to them, although never as much as I should have. (Evening reading time often dovetailed with “If I spend one more minute dealing with you, I’m going to jump out the bedroom window” time. Reading lost to wine many times.) I also read my own books in front of them, thinking that eventually they would realize, “If Mommy does this all day every day, there must be something to it.”
Frustratingly, however, my oldest son had no interest in books for years. When Mack was in preschool we did flashcards and learned sound blends. He learned to sight read the most common words, but he didn’t care to push it any farther. All through kindergarten, he was disinterested in really learning to put words together. In first grade he had a better teacher, and he began to read well. But he still never, ever, chose it as a leisure activity at home. He showed no interest in books. It made me so sad.
When he was in second grade, we found the key to unlocking the bibliophile within Mack. His class participated in Accelerated Reader (AR), a reading program where each child reads independently, then takes a test every time he finishes a book. They earn points and compete against their classmates. At the end of each quarter, the kids in each grade with the highest point totals were announced over the school loudspeaker, and they won prizes. Aha! Competition – the one thing that could make Mack pick up a book when he didn’t have to. Next thing we knew, Mack was going to the school library every day, sometimes more than once a day. He polished off the contents of the non-fiction shelves and then grudgingly tried some fiction. (Who knew? There was a whole world of books outside those about the greatest NFL quarterbacks in history and the coolest mammals of the sea.)
Funny thing, but the side effect of all that reading was that Mack got better and better at it. His books became increasingly advanced and eventually, without realizing how, he found that he loved to read. Now he reads – by choice – every night before he goes to bed. He’s devoured most of the series that his teacher Aunt Emily has recommended, and occasionally asks me to reserve new books for him at the public library.
His classes don’t do the AR program much anymore, but Mack did recently get the highest AR point total for the whole school, for the first quarter of this year. I asked how that was possible, and he reminded me that he read books one through five in the Harry Potter series this summer. I guess he took all those tests back-to-back, and they amassed a giant point total. Turns out one 800-page Harry Potter book is equal to around 40 little books about the animals of North America.
My second son, Aidan, originally seemed even less curious about reading than Mack. He wouldn’t even really learn the words on those flashcards that I dug out of a drawer, although we made a little headway when I gave him a Hershey’s kiss for every word he memorized. But Aidan was fortunate enough to have a wonderful kindergarten teacher, who gave him all the building blocks he needed to learn to read. And suddenly this summer…out of nowhere…he was reading. It literally seemed to happen overnight. He went from maybe knowing a few short words to reading whole sentences to me.
The first quarter of this school year has been even more remarkable. Every night when we sit down to read, I’m amazed at how he does. He’s gone from reading readiness to chapter books in two months. Aidan has always been a kid who just has to do things at his own pace, and who doesn’t want to be taught. He wants to get there on his own. But I didn’t think he’d be able to do that with reading! I don’t know if I have ever had as much fun, watching one of my kids learn something new, as I have had watching Aidan discover the world of words this fall. It makes me happy every day. And I’m starting to think that maybe I’ve succeeded, at least with the first two boys, in creating book lovers, after all.
Of course, by far the most important aspect of Aidan learning to read is that he is so much better at our Rock Band video game. When he used to sing, he didn’t know the words and he would just kind of scream and hum into the microphone. Now he can read the lyrics and we get such better scores on our performances. Priorities, folks.

