LIFE
My Kid Doesn’t Like Reading and I Don’t Even Know What To Do With That
Mother Nature is a mad scientist
I wouldn’t say I picked my spouse primarily because he was a reader, but it certainly didn’t hurt his case.
Right. Who am I kidding? I totally picked my spouse because he’s a reader. Twenty-seven years after I first met him, I’m still not always sure it’s going to work out, but then I remember all over again that the first thing I noticed about him was that he was reading a Norton Anthology of English Literature, and one of our first flirty conversations mostly focused on Mark Helprin’s beautiful but surreal novel/love letter to NYC, Winter’s Tale.
So here we are, married with two kids. It’s going all right, except…
My eldest son does not enjoy reading books.
He’s in middle school, and I recently attended his Parent/Teacher school conferences. He’s doing just fine; we have no complaints. In fact, his teachers seem to enthusiastically like him, which I can’t say any teacher ever reported about me to my parents. (I tested well, but my people don’t have a lot of respect for academic authority, which contributed to me being a somewhat obnoxious middle-schooler.)
But his standardized testing scores for Literacy? Not good. I mean, okay, average, but considering that his father and I live for reading and words, and most of my careers have centered on words and reading, this seems odd to us.
I very much believe in the adage that kids do what they see you doing, not what you tell them to do. In my childhood I was absolutely starved for books and read anything I could get my hands on; now that I am an adult, my spouse jokes that anywhere I go, messy piles of papers, notebooks, and books invariably follow. There are library books on literally every surface in my home. There are two stacks of books on my night table. There are currently two books sitting on the tank of our toilet. There are books in my car and in my bag. I often burn supper because I’ve usually got a book on the go in the kitchen while I cook. If I have to go more than four hours or so without touching a book I start to get very, very twitchy.
I honestly don’t know how I could model any more reading, or the love of reading, to my boys.
But a book is not what my eldest son wants. He wants Minecraft, and he wants a Nintendo Switch. He wants to play four hours of soccer in the front yard with his brother after school. He wants to watch football and baseball and the NBA. Of course he wants to hang out with his friends and he wants a phone that he can stare at while his friends stare at theirs.
I get it. I don’t understand it, but I also know, he is not me, and he’s got different interests. I may not be great at accepting it, but I do get it.
He does read sometimes; don’t get me wrong. I used to be a librarian, so I am very familiar with the librarian/readers’ advisory school that states you should just “be happy if they are reading anything!”. He reads Pokemon handbooks, and he reads Calvin & Hobbes comic books. He has read most of the Wimpy Kid books. I read a lot to him when he was smaller, and during the pandemic.
But now, every conference I go to, the teachers say the same thing. He really needs to be reading some books at home. He needs to be reading books that are a bit more complex, some chapter or YA books that tell a story over the course of 100 to 200 pages. Have I tried offering him some “high action” books?
This is always the part of these conferences that gives me a chuckle. For years I worked in a public library and I listened to multitudes of parents tell me, “My son [sometimes daughter, but not as often] just won’t read anything. What books do you suggest?” I have printed out “high action” reading lists for parents; I have given them Jon Scieszka’s “Guys Read” books; I have encouraged them to let their kids see them reading; I have told them, “let them read whatever they want! Encourage them to re-read their favorites!”
And time after time I watched parents drag their uninterested kids off to the bookshelves. I watched the parents get excited about the book suggestions, glad that somebody had some ideas, while we all stood around and pretended not to notice that the kid was slouched off to the side, not engaging with the books at all. If the kid was there at all. Mostly these encounters were just between me and parents who had just come from conferences like the ones I’m now having.
Of course there are bigger problems to have.
And most of the time I think, what do I care? Loving words and reading and writing has led to a life of poorly paid and low-status freelance work for me and a dependence on my spouse and his math-type job for health insurance. What I should be asking, I think, is how are my kid’s math scores?
And I do. I try to do all those parenting things you’re supposed to do, even though I don’t actually believe making a lot of money will save you (although, wow, it’s becoming pretty damn necessary, isn’t it?) and I really, if I’m being honest, don’t believe school is teaching my son most of what he needs to know.
When you come right down to it, here’s why my son not loving books and not loving reading makes me sad. It’s because books are my friends. Books have always been my friends. Books and stories made it possible for me, in eighth grade, to say to myself, yeah, I don’t care if I don’t fit in.
Because you know where I always fit in?
With my books.
Books are easy, and cheap, and they can often be enjoyed at home. As companions they have been a good influence on me, and they have made me happy.
Who wouldn’t want their child to experience those feelings and have such friends?
Genetically, I thought my sons would be primed to love books. That may turn out not to be the case. And it’s okay.
He may never feel the way I do about books and reading. But that’s when I have to take a deep breath, step back a little bit, and realize that it’s not really about the books, or the reading. It’s about not knowing yet what it is that will give my son comfort, what will always be a hobby or a career or a knowledge or an activity for him that he will throw himself into, that will always feel right, that will always make him feel good.
It doesn’t have to be books. And I can choose to see this not as something to worry about, but as an adventure yet to come. What will his true interest be? What activity will make him come alive? What love will make him more himself than he’s ever been?
I can’t wait to see.