I spent the weekend in Ohio with my two little nieces and nephew. They are 13, 11 and 8 and they don't like to read. I was fascinated and disturbed by this information. Reading is so important to me and fills many of my blank and unallocated hours. What makes a person interested or disinterested in reading? Parenting, environment, learning ability? IDK.
What I found so disturbing wasn't that they didn't want to read but they were disdainful of reading and people who read. They made several derogatory comments about my interest in reading. For example, we were watching one of the Harry Potter movies and one of the children made a sneering comment that I must not be interested in the movie because "I read the book". Yes, I read the books and enjoyed them but that didn't stop me from liking the movie version.
I tried talking to the oldest child about this but I couldn't ever get a clear answer as to why she wasn't interested in reading. I gave them books as part of their Christmas presents several years in a row and I am pretty sure that they got tossed in the corner and eventually thrown away. What a waste. I tried to explain my experience with books and why it was important to me but it fell upon def ears. She just had her own ideas and she didn't want to listen.
I don't feel that anyone pushed me into reading. My mother didn't read books for enjoyment and I think her reading comprehension was very low but I know my dad LOVED to read and he always had books lying about the house. However, I don't remember him encouraging or discouraging me from reading. He was just a positive example.
There was one book that I read in the fourth grade that really piqued my interest in books. I don't remember the name of the book but it was about an overweight girl who gets stranded on an island several miles from the shore of her home and the adventure of her living on the island by herself and learning to survive. My imagination exploded and I had many fantasies about living on that same island and catching fish with spears. That book was pivotal point in my childhood as my book consumption exploded after that experience.
I wish I could find something like that for the children. I want them to be enthralled with books and used as a tool to expand their imaginations. I just don't know if that is possible without daily positive examples around them. Plus the thought of them never enjoying books makes me sad.
4 comments:
Now you know how I have felt for most of my career! :) I can tell you my theories and observations about this, but it would take awhile - maybe over dinner sometime.
I would love to hear what you think on this topic. We should talk soon.
You may be right - it may simply be that they don't have friends or family who read, so they don't either - but it may also be that they just don't want to read.
Children can be surprisingly unreceptive to "I like this, and you should too." Sometimes all you can do is to keep reading when you are around them. Maybe that will spark curiosity in one (or more) of them, or maybe they'll just not be readers.
When I was a child, the kids I knew who didn't read saw it as a sign of being smart or trying to be white, which I perceived as the main reasons they thought it wasn't cool. I would think it would be more difficult now to encourage a child (especially a teen) to read. The adjectives I mentioned above are still used by some kids to criticize reading, but now there are other things (video games, on-demand everything) competing for their attention. The only solution that might work would be if the child or teen found out their idol or an adult that they perceived as cool liked to read, then they might be persuaded to try it.
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