You guys, when I was a kid, I did not love reading. I am ashamed to tell you that I didn’t finish one of the assigned books for high school or college. Not one. Not even ones I liked. Worst student ever. I was a school failure. I didn’t start loving reading until I was about 25 and I started picking up books that appealed to me.
Authors like Jen Lancaster that made me laugh out loud in public. Authors like Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar that made me think I could do something more. I like authors that make me feel things.
I don’t want that for my kids though. I want them to pick up a love of reading earlier than 25. I wonder if loving reading is something innate or something they can learn? I wonder if I do better about reading in front of them, with them or basically making that a part of what we do, they’ll love it more?
I can already see a couple of my kids gravitate toward the discipline of reading more easily than one. Boston, my little love. She wants to draw and create and make things. She’d rather sit with a blank sheet of paper and I want to foster that, too. Momming is the WORST sometimes. What’s the right thing? The girls’ new school is really pushing hard on academics so she needs to read but is that more important than drawing and being creative? I don’t know.
Do you remember the BookIt program from when we were kids? You got futuristic glasses and free Personal Pan Pizzas from Pizza Hut for reading? You best believe I did that as a kid. This summer, the library here in Denver, did that kind of program and my girls all did it. One begrudgingly and the others happily.
Here’s Kennedy with a series she’s loving right now. If you have a little girl, Ivy + Bean and Bad Kitty are house favorites.
Do you have any tricks to helped your kids love reading? Do you think you can inspire your kids to want to read more? How about other books your little girls loved? There’s nothing I think can inspire and help us be better at this thing called life like a book can. They’re necessary. They’re like air and water. We need the mind’s of genius people who share their truth with us.
I know my daughters can do better than I did on the reading and I really want that for them. Maybe I’ll go read a book on how to make that happen.
