This week’s “Daily Journal” guest columnist is Dr. Karen Palasek, Director of Educational and Academic Programs for the John Locke Foundation.
Under my Christmas tree this year sit some of our favorite Christmas picture books, placed there when the (artificial) tree first went up, around Thanksgiving weekend. The Night Before Christmas and How the Grinch Stole Christmas decorated the empty space nicely before the holiday gifts and packages began to appear. I haven’t had a chance yet this year to read them aloud with my kid — but still hope to. The fact that my kid is 20, has a car, and can drive to visit with friends during Christmas break is almost certainly a minor holdup on that plan, but only a minor one. The fact is, we would still really both enjoy it.
“Read to your kids.” A Google search of that phrase gets you page after page of good advice about how, when, and what to read (aloud) to your children. Even if you don’t add a search request for “why,” hundreds of sites will appear that offer plenty of good reasons to read, and they seem obvious: your kids will learn to love books, they will be better readers, they will become better writers, or maybe decent spellers, get better grades in school; your reading will acquaint them with great literature or world events and culture; and perhaps the most significant reason noted, they will want to read books for themselves.
Well, OK. These are all good arguments. Whether informally at home, or in organized programs, to create self-motivated, literate learners is the whole point of read-aloud sessions, is it not?
In retrospect, I think not. I wasn’t aware of all of the how-to advice at the time I was doing this, nor trying for a better, smarter kid. After 10 years or so of reading aloud to the one particular kid I have in mind, I am convinced that the unintended consequences of reading to your kid (in our case, before bedtime) outweigh by far its practical, operational value. Yes, we want to expose kids to good literature, to improve their pronunciation and vocabulary, to stimulate their imaginations, promote creativity, improve cultural and civic literacy, and generally help them become “lifelong learners.” But the volumes of online and in-print read-aloud advice, from content to technique, seem to suggest that reading to your kids is a technical solution to a technical set of issues, e.g., the need to learn writing and spelling. School reading curricula weigh and decide the marginal value of the Berenstain Bears vs. Dr. Seuss, of William Steig vs. Maurice Sendak, or of Tolkien vs. Dickens or Alcott or Defoe. And that may be fine for forming a sort of worldview of the available written word, where content, and eventually analysis, matter.
I would like to make a different observation. In my experience, the technical goals we cite have lots to do with being a literate individual, but little to do with the point of reading to your kids. Especially if your kids do what mine did — kick me out of the job at around 10 years old (“Mom, I can do this myself”). Cool.
My point is that the hundreds and hundreds of hours that kids get to spend with their reading parents have an entirely different, and perhaps unexpected, consequence. It is this. It puts your voice, the voice of the parent, in the child’s ear and in her head. Your kid may never be able to write a stylistically accurate, annotated parody of Jabberwocky, but after hours and literally years of parental attention, how could they not have that inner-voice connection, with all the rest that goes along? This has nothing to do with spelling proficiency. This is very sticky stuff.
“Read to your kids” is a statement in the imperative voice. The subject of the sentence, “You,” is implied in the command “read to your kids.” In this sense, who is doing the reading matters. This is not to deny the technical value or good intent of literacy projects, schools, community volunteers, organizations, and tutorial assistance for kids (and adults alike) who want and need to gain reading skills. All fine, all good.
Here’s why I am convinced that while learning reading per se is hugely valuable, you reading to your kids has an entirely different value. You are teaching them that they are worth your time —and they are learning this tremendously important fact. Say what you will, they are figuring out whether that’s true, every day, anyway. When they are old enough to confront situations on their own that require judgments and decisions, you want your voice to be inside your kid’s head. That’s long past the bedtime story age. Since somebody’s voice is going to be in her head at that point, it may as well be the voice of somebody who has demonstrated that she cares.
So — if your kid comes back to you from high school or college, and reports that you have spoiled an opportunity to watch an inappropriate movie, or attend a party she really shouldn’t attend because she heard a message of conscience in your voice — celebrate. You will never have prepared your kids for situations that neither you nor they can anticipate, anyway. But if you’ve already been speaking to them for hundreds of hours (and not just nagging on the fly), they are going to be stuck with you in their heads for a very long time.
Cool.