Dear Precious and Much Adored Parent,
Some of you have wildly ravenous readers on your hands -- note-jotters, tall-tale-tellers, writers extraordinaire -- AND some of you have reluctant readers of the I-don’t-wanna variety. I’d like to talk about both, and I’ll start with the reluctant readers – because they are close to my heart. I once was one.
In defense of the reluctant reader:
1) Maybe they have vivid imaginations – I assume that most kids have vivid imaginations which only get beaten out of them later. Maybe they’re imaginations are better than the imaginations of many grown-up writers. This is easily possible. It is therefore possible that the reluctant reader MAY JUST BE the discerning, picky, excellent, refined reader in disguise!
If so, your job is tricky. You’ve got to get books of all sorts. Try anything and everything. Don’t be afraid of BIG SILLY. Don’t be afraid of comic books even. Here is a quote:
“I got to loving to read, because .. [my father] allowed me to read comics, which most people said you shouldn't let your child read because they will spoil him. But that gave me an extraordinary hunger for reading.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Or maybe ...
2) Maybe your child is a realist in disguise. I met a child once who had me stumped. She didn’t like any of the juicy, wildly imaginative books I could find. It turns out that she was really a scientist/historian/civil rights leader/anthropologist. She wanted Harriet Tubman and Helen Keller and animal anatomy books ... Once I figured this out, we just headed for nonfiction.
In case 1) and 2), what you want to do is find a way for the kid to keep turning pages. There’s great power in turning pages, in finishing a whole book – even if it’s a comic book. Your job is to offer and keep offering until they get the confidence and then their tastes will open up.
Or maybe ...
3) Maybe your kid isn’t enjoying reading because your kid is really very social. This is a great thing – being social. People are endlessly fascinating, and real life is mysterious. (This actually might be a sign of a writerly type ... we writers love real people and action.) In this case, make sure reading IS social. Read together. Share books with friends. Start a reading group. Talk about books, characters, strange plot twists. Use the books as springboards to write stories, and share them. Reading and writing don’t have to be so solitary.
For the readerly-writerly type:
I was also a child who wrote stories, plays, poems, diary entries all the time. From a young age, it was how I processed the world. I’m often approached by these great parents who want to make sure they’re doing the right things to encourage this streak in their kids. Here are some thoughts:
1) It doesn’t matter if they aren’t finishing things. (In high school, they should, but not necessarily yet.) Let them start and start and start.
2) Revision is important for school work, but not at this point in their creative lives at home. Don’t push any kind of perfection or even grammar or spelling in their writing for pleasure.
3) Don’t put much stock in publication. Don’t make that the big end goal, the prize. The prize for the kids is usually the craft itself, the process of creation. That’s where the focus should remain – for their entire lives. If the kids are really interested in sharing their work, that’s great. Print the stories up and circulate them to friends and family. But make sure that the kids know that you’re happy because they enjoyed the writing itself. (In the long run, this is hugely important.)
