Reading With My Kids

hen my kids were little, I used to read out loud to them.  Once they got past picture books and easy chapter books, though, I didn't really enjoy it.  The last thing I remember reading to them was Harry Potter, although they would read to me almost as much as I read it to them.  Reading on paper is just a struggle for me. I much preferred to listen to someone else read to us. But one of the things that I started to do as they got older was to order the audio book of whatever they were reading in school and I would read it at the same time they were. Well, this is not entirely true. I often got the book list at the beginning of the year from the teacher and then read the books before they did.

For a long time, this caused them much grief and they, mostly my oldest, would complain that this was weird, that none of the other parents did this, and that it was somehow overbearing or obtrusive.  But, I loved reading what they were reading.  It meant we always had something to talk about, even when there was a lot of conflict and there weren't a lot of topics that brought us together.  And complaints aside, when there is a paper a write and a deadline, it is not uncommon for me to get a text or a call from college asking what I thought of a concept or passage from something I've read.  I loved the times we talked about books and often what I thought was important about a classic wasn't what was being talked about in school.  To me, teaching To Kill a Mockingbird without talking about rape and the intersection of rape and race is just a waste of a decent read. Teaching Of Mice and Men without talking about the myth of the false rape allegation just perpetuates rape culture.  

Even when they have read for fun on their own, I have usually read what they read.  From Hunger Games and Divergent to Twilight, not to mention Harry Potter, I read what they were reading and it opened so many conversations.  Team Edward or Team Jacob? Team Petra or Team Gale?  These conversations about what is healthy in a relationship were spurred by these books.  [Not to mention next level sex ed as the result of an unplanned pregnancy in Twilight when a much older man convinces his teenaged bride that he cannot get her pregnant.  Seriously, even if he is dead/undead, you still absolutely need to use a condom and a backup birth control method.]

This year, it was The Communist Manifesto and Gilgamesh that we talked about over the holidays. Really, what's not to love about that?