Parenting and education

Oh, Meatball, Meatball, Meatball. Go paint your face. It appears as if the grown-ups are talking here.

 

C'mon, counselor. Cut me some slack!

 

Neutral Corner was right about reading to your kids. When my boys were little, I started by telling them stories as infants, reading to them as toddlers and then reading with them when they were a little older.

Both kids read books through elementary school at least and loved to read (it slows during high school). My youngest read Huck Finn in second grade for fun.

If you can read and like it, that's half the battle in school.

The other half is bribing the math teachers.

 

I'd prefer doing the math.

 

My kids love to read and we really didn't push them too much toward this other than reading to them regularly. My 9-year-old is reading the Narnia books and my 7-year-old is reading the Wimpy Kid books and I couldn't be happier because I've never had to "make" them read, which is the polar opposite of the way it was for me as a kid where if I wanted anything, it was, "Well, if you read these two books, we'll talk about it." and the books were usually something that most kids my age would have no interest in. I remember having to read The Jungle at age 10. It was just idiotic. I get it in some situations, but it got so old so quickly and I'm thrilled I don't have to resort to the tactics that my parents (mostly my dad) went to.

 

Come on, what 10-year-old wouldn't love an expose on the meat-packing industry?

 

I have a 5-year-old, like the OP. Right now, all he wants me to read to him is the "Bad Kitty" series and three "Minecraft" player guides. I don't think he's ever actually played "Minecraft."

Before that it was "Junie B. Jones."

 

I so wish I was exaggerating. If my father had walked into a bookstore and said, "I need four books that my 10-year-old will hate." would not have gotten worse books.

Reading Andersonville at age 11 was fun.

 

My kids went nuts for the Magic Treehouse books at that age. I think I read more than 40 of them to them.

 

He likes those, too. He gets them from the school library.

 

Junie B Jones is the Caillou of books, hate them with a burning passion but my daughter liked them.

Have done the Bad Kitty series and now on to the Thea sisters for my 7 year old. Love reading to my kids.

 

Miss reading to my kids. The oldest told me the other day she'd had lunch with some fellow English majors and one of them (not her) had droned on and on and on and on about Nabokov. I told her Nabokov couldn't hit left-handers and his defensive range was mediocre at best.