Let them read

When we first pulled our oldest out of the public school system, we found that he HATED “school”. He was convinced that he was bad at learning. He was adamant that he hated reading and just wouldn’t do it. When asked how he planned on getting through life with a (weak) kindergarten reading level, he said “I’ll use pictures and my phone”.. “Great”, I thought to myself “he’s thought this through”.. How was I going to get my kid to realize that learning could be fun? That he was smart? That he would enjoy reading if he just practiced?

Whatever you want

I decided after reading book after book to him with little to no “spark” of interest after. I didn’t care at this point WHAT he was reading. He just needed to read. His lack of interest had led to a lack of practice. And his reading skills were becoming dull and slipping. Reading was already a struggle… How would I ever get him into it if it got WORSE?

Desperate, I took him to the library. I walked up and down the aisle with him. Pulling out chapter books, picture books, non-fiction books about animals… nothing sparked… THEN HE SAW THEM… Dog Man, Captain Underpants, and Cat Kid… His eyes got big, he flipped through the colorful pages of what I grumpily used to call “brain rot”… He was HOOKED. We checked out 3 books that day, one of each.. Soon Dav Pilkey became the household’s favorite author. I was amazon overnighting every book that man ever wrote (not literally but pretty close lol). And my oldest was READING!!!! 2 weeks later and his father was having to tell him “no reading at the dinner table” and “go to bed, you can’t stay up all night reading”.. talk about a dream come true!

All’s well…

2 years later.. He’s in the second half of his second-grade year. He can’t get enough. Not only is my son reading everything he can get his hands on, but he’s reading 3 years above grade level. He’s not just reading and getting the general plot points of the story. He’s understanding literary devices and feeling deep emotional connections to the characters. I’ve sat and watched him writing comics and stories of his own in his journals; making worlds of his own. He reads picture books and chapter books to his brothers, silly voices and everything! He is soaring just like I always dreamed he would.

For him to get to this point though, I had to just let him read. I had to stop worrying about the books he was reading being “good enough” and just let them be good enough. Taking away all the pressure and just let it be fun to learn again. I had to let the boy read some bathroom jokes. Dav Pilkey helped my son learn to love reading, helped me judge a little less, and helped us all have a little more fun.

That all being said, the easiest way to get past a hard point, is straight through it. If your kid is struggling to read or just not finding the joy in it anymore, just let them read. I don’t care what it is, video game dialog, Dav Pilkey, the newspaper comics. Let them read.