What's "good enough" when it comes to raising a reader?
Notes from the Reading Nook: June 29
Good morning! Happy Tuesday.
My children and I are currently on our annual four-generations girls’ vacation with my mother and grandmother, so “what we’re reading” is more like “what we packed to travel to Door County and mostly ignore while we swim and eat and hike and sleep and do nothing in the sunshine.” My kiddos will pore over these books in the car, and we’ll read when we’re there but pretty much only at bedtime, and only as long as we can keep our eyes open — the best part about having a routine (reading or any other kind) is stepping outside of it, right?
I hope you have a wonderful week.
What we’re reading
Summer Days and Nights by Wong Herbert Yee (I reviewed this in my special edition on summer in 2020)
Hair Love by Matthew A. Cherry
Amos & Boris by William Steig
Comet’s Nine Lives by Jan Brett (this is my least favorite Brett book but my eldest’s passion for JB remains deep, and anyway we always bring all our lighthouse books to Door County)
Tatterhood and Other Tales edited by Ethel Johnston Phelps (I cannot tell you how much I recommend this one)
This is what I’ve pulled from our shelves to take with us thus far (I’m writing this section five days before you’re reading it; after I took this we went to the library and brought home a full laundry basket, as is our custom, so this is just a glimpse). To put this in perspective, we’ll be away for seven days. Maybe this perspective makes me look unhinged re: books, but then, I’ve never claimed otherwise 😊
📫 Questions from you
Often one of you will ask me a question, usually privately but not always, that deserves to be answered in a way that benefits your fellow subscribers of this newsletter. From now on I’ll address these questions here in Notes from the Reading Nook as they come up.
Dear Sarah,
I’d like to hear more about your approach to the whole internal, self-criticism narrative that a lot of us parents tell ourselves. You know the one — we’re super hard on ourselves if we’re not always doing an A+ job of infusing every aspect of our children’s lives with books and reading. I try so hard to make it our family culture! But some days/weeks, I just really drop the damn ball. As a perfectionist, I’m constantly beating myself up for what I didn’t do, for what I’m not doing. And I compare myself to other mothers, certainly to you, and nearly always fall short. That sounds terribly depressing. It isn’t always like this, but sometimes I read a bit into what you write in your (How) Can we read? issues and wind up feeling judged? I'M NOT SAYING THAT YOU JUDGE, OR ARE JUDGMENTAL IN THE SLIGHTEST. I’m only saying that I judge myself pretty constantly, and as such, I look for (and find, because I’m looking) evidence EVERYWHERE that supports those rough judgments. Does this make sense? Anyway, I just think it’d be wonderful for you to share some of your philosophy around ‘good enough,’ or perfectionism, or rigidity as it pertains to raising a reader.
Anonymous
💌 Dear Anonymous,
Oh, sweetheart. Parenting is hard — full stop. And parenting is hard enough without the added weight of criticizing yourself. I know we all do it — I do it all the time — but I invite you to let yourself off the hook when it comes to “doing an A+ job of infusing every aspect of our children’s lives with books and reading.”
I know you well, so I am going to answer you with the full knowledge that though you may be dropping the ball some days and weeks — who isn’t? — you are not dropping the ball as often as you think, and certainly not entirely. You’re reading to your little one at breakfast. You’re storytelling before bed. You’re giving her piles of books to look at and she’s looking at them. You’re doing so many things right.
But for the sake of that inner voice of yours and for everyone else reading this who may be struggling with the same, I will offer a few thoughts and ideas:
Lower the bar. Aka Be Good Enough. What’s good enough, when it comes to raising a reader? More than nothing. That’s it. Are you reading 10 minutes a day? That’s fantastic. Five minutes? Awesome. Two minutes? Great. Any number of minutes beyond zero is Good Enough.
Because it’s rarely just zero, right? There will be days when that tiny chunk of time turns into a bigger chunk — say, 10 minutes, or 20 minutes straight one miraculous day when the busiest person nature ever created, the toddler, sits down and actually wants more than one book — which makes up for the days when the chunk truly is only five minutes. That’s okay. It all evens out.
Which is something to keep in mind: when I get stressed out about how much we’re reading (or not — and yes, it even happens to me), I use the strategy of looking at the whole week rather than each day. It’s a better measure of the average amount of time we’re really reading. There are many weeks, especially when I am busy in body and mind, when we don’t read much more than our usual books at breakfast and bedtime, and I feel bad about it — so I make it a point to sit and read as long as my children are interested on one weekend day. 60 straight minutes of reading on a Sunday afternoon does wonders for my worries if I am looking at the whole week. (And, total honesty here: sometimes even looking at the whole week is dismal. Okay. That’s good information to have. Make note of it and move forward. There is always next week, and the next, and the next.)
Sarah Mackenzie, she of Read-Aloud Revival fame, author of an entire book written on the topic called The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids (which I reviewed in issue No. 33, if you’re curious about it) writes,
“Reading aloud for just 10 minutes at a time every other day adds up to 30 hours over the course of a year. That’s a lot!”
And it is! All the minutes count, and you don’t need as many of them as you think you do.
There are a zillion ways to sneak in reading when you start looking for pockets of opportunity, which brings me to my next point: find lost time. That handful of minutes you’re staring out the window (or, let’s be real, scrolling your phone) while you’re waiting for something to cook for dinner? Pop your little one in a chair with a bowl of frozen peas and read her some poetry. Crouched in your bathroom in front of a potty-training toddler who is taking for-ev-er? Read and read and read some more (and do yourself a favor and get a little stool because you’re gonna be there for awhile). Trying to survive the witching hour without screaming and/or locking yourself in your bedroom for a grown-up timeout (uh, speaking from experience)? Sit down on the nearest surface — the couch, the bottom stair, wherever you’ve flung yourself face down on the floor and ask your extremely lovable and completely frustrating child to bring you three books, put her in your lap, take a deep breath, and read. (Even if it’s through clenched teeth for the first couple minutes. Surprisingly, this works on everyone — it calms my kids, sure, but something about reading in a pleasant voice actually changes my mood. Faking it til you make it is real.)
My point is: you already do read at breakfast, and you already know about reading in the bath — two of my best tips for creating a culture of reading in your home that have resulted in a ton more reading time for us over the years. Use that type of thinking to get creative — and flexible! — with other moments in your life. Is there a weird time of day where you have 5-10 minutes on a regular-ish basis that you could use for reading? Use it. It’s doesn’t have to be (and it’s not going to be) perfect: just keep trying to find chunks of time that you can both handle, as often as you can.
Last is an idea about habits that I learned from the writer, Gretchen Rubin, in her book Better Than Before, called the Strategy of Pairing. Rubin explains it so well: “With pairing, two things go together. They don’t ever go apart, they always come together. You’re not rewarding yourself, it’s just that if you want to do one thing you have to do the other.” Look at the things you do regularly — daily, every other day, twice a week, whatever the pattern is — and think about how you could possibly pair it with reading. For example, let’s say you take a walk with your little one at the same time every day: you could pair the habit of sitting down for a 10-minute reading session before you walk out the door. Ditto with an afternoon snack — read some books, eat a snack. Are you going to miss the pair some days? Yes, you are. It’s okay. I have paired reading with breakfast since my 7yo was able to sit up in a high chair and we still have days every single week — every single week, my dear Anonymous — where it doesn’t happen.
Building a culture of reading in your home is something that happens bit by tiny bit over a long time — it’s a marathon, not a sprint. To that end, I have homework for you, in two parts:
Get a piece of paper and write down all the things you are doing. If that feels overwhelming, just take a look at what you’ve done in the last two weeks: roughly how often did you read? Can you identify even one regular habit you’ve established in all of that? Write it all down. Everything counts. Post this piece of paper where you can see it when you’re about to hop on the Train of Self-Criticism, Comparison, and Judgment.
Alternate assignment, if thinking about the past doesn’t work (hey, I have mom brain too, I get it): get a calendar and mark off every day you read in July, even if it’s only for a minute, even if your kiddo gets up and walks away halfway through one Sandra Boynton book — count it. At the end of the month, look at how many days you’ve marked. Use that information to let yourself off the hook, or commit to forming a habit that will work for you. (You are NOT, under any circumstances, to use it to beat yourself up further).
Pick one thing you can take one step toward changing today. My dear friend (an amazing coach, writer, and artist) Helen McLaughlin talks about “additives,” the idea of which I love so very much, writing, “Where can you build, just a tiny bit, on what you're already doing? (And can you allow yourself to feel patient with and proud of your expanding capability, however slowly it may be expanding?)”
You are doing the most important work — parenting. And you’re doing a wonderful job of raising a reader. It is more than ‘good enough.’ Keep going.
Sarah
If you enjoyed this Q&A, you may be interested in the February edition of (How) Can we read?, which was about our reading routines and the book habits we maintain in our home. Ditto the March edition of (How) Can we read?, which was an Ask Me Anything where I delved into our top 10 most re-read books; all things audiobooks; living books; how I find books; and whether or not I own all the books I discuss here. It was fun and I will do it again when I have a pile of questions, so…
Have a question for me that you’d like to see featured in a future Note? Don’t be shy! Hit reply on this email, leave a comment below, or remain anonymous and fill out this form to ask me your children’s book and/or reading related-question. (I promise, if you are thinking it, someone else is, too.)