I wish I had known about the reading “gap years” when our boys were in them. These are the ages from about 7 to 13 when kids can read by themselves but would benefit far more as readers if we parents continued to read to them. (Read Part 1 of this posting for some additional background.)
I so enjoyed our boys’ pajama-clad reading time when they were little and wish it had lasted longer. On the other hand, I also remember being dead tired myself at their bedtimes, and many a night struggling to stay awake in order to read to them.
I feel guilty admitting this, but I remember being a bit relieved when my sons took the books themselves. Am I alone?
The reading gap years for children happen during the mountain-climbing years for most parents. When children are between 7 and 13 years old, parents are often working their hardest and longest to advance in their careers, all the while rushing to soccer games, recitals, social obligations, and their own business obligations.
While most parents might understand and like the idea of continuing to read to their children, the good intentions may fall into the wish bucket with lots of other wishes.
Where, then, can parents turn for help?
Long-distance reading
Terry Flynn, a marketing professional I met at an industry conference, told me he records stories for his two young daughters to play when he’s out of town. “I started doing this a couple of years ago when I started traveling a bit more than I liked,” he said.
His CD is a lovely thing. It has Terry’s creditable narration of Score One for the Sloths by Helen Lester, and Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type by Doreen Cronin. These were spaced with beautiful music tracks, including "Baby" by Bobby McFerrin.
Now that his girls are 8 and 9 (solidly in the gap years), he finds reading is more give-and-take. “They now enjoy reading to me and showing off their own reading styles,” Terry says. But they still ask him to read to them. “I always record the books in private so that the first time they hear the story on the CD, it's a surprise,” he adds.
Hit play, hear book
When my own two sons were in their gap years, it happened to be when I got hooked listening to audiobooks in my car. Since I regularly drove the boys to school, they ended up hearing my books in haphazard fragments.
(Okay, just so you don’t think I’m a total selfish reptile of a parent, I would always listen and talk if they wanted, but sometimes they were just in some other place and I figured, “Well, it won’t hurt them to hear this for awhile.” I’d give them a little background and then hit the play button.)
The other day I asked our younger son, 18-year-old Corey, if he remembered any of this. He thought about it awhile.
Yes, he did remember a few things. He remembered Churchill’s “joke to that lady about being sober in the morning but her still being ugly” (Manchester’s biographies), and that sometimes it’s not medicine but laughter than can get you better when you’re sick (Norman Cousins’ Anatomy of an Illness). And he remembered Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, about the iconoclastic physicist.
Our older son, 20-year-old Cal, who’s studying in China, responded by email. “I think the books on tape were a big part of growing up and got me into reading. I am listening to Tim Weiner’s book on the CIA now, and it reminds me of all the ones I heard in the car on road trips and on the way to school each day.”
He remembers some of the books his brother mentioned and also Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men
and Travels with Charlie, as well as “Stanley shooting some native crossing a bridge” (The Autobiography of Sir Henry Morton Stanley).
So I guess by some sort of audio osmosis, our sons took in some adult books during their gap years. In retrospect, had I been more savvy about the comprehension gap, I might have had them choose some books and played them only when we were riding together—a kind of rolling story hour.
Today there are far more audiobooks available for every age to choose from. Teens are the fastest-growing segment of listeners, according to the Audio Publishers Association, with just over 50% of them reporting that they have heard an audiobook, compared with just over 25% of adults.
The human touch of togetherness
I don’t want to suggest that audiobooks or even your own voice recordings are better than physically sitting together and reading, but audio recordings are marvelous tools getting better all the time. Still, if you’re lucky enough to have family and friends close by, these can be the best substitute for frazzled parents during the gap years.
Rose K. Goldsen, one of my professors in grad school, lived in a communal home called Long House in Ithaca, New York. Rose had no family of her own and was near retirement, so having her own apartment connected with other families of all ages was perfect for her.
I remember how much pleasure she gained from reading to the little children of Long House. She explained that it didn’t much matter what she read—the children just loved the togetherness and the physical part of sitting with a book and hearing the sounds connected to the words Rose pointed to.
Being a sociologist, one day Rose tried an experiment. She picked up the phone book and began reading the first name her finger landed on. Then she paused. Almost immediately, the little girl in her lap piped up.
“You forgot to read the number.”
I’ll always remember Rose’s triumphant face as she told this story. “Even the phone book!” she said, with the wonder of a researcher in a new world of discovery.
Despite all the bells and whistles of our Gizmo’d Age, kids can still crave a good read. All we have to do is want the same thing—together.
What have been your experiences with keeping ‘tweens between the cover of books? I’d love to hear. Just click on the Comments link below. (If you’re reading this as an email, click here and you'll connect to Comments).
The "gap years" were the best for reading with my children! When the kids got home from school, I would have a snack ready, take the phone off of the hook, and read a few chapters aloud to them. The best compliment I ever got was from my third child, a daughter, now 24 and married: "Mom, my teacher is reading this same book to us, and it is not even fun to watch her face!"
The very sad end of an era was when my youngest and I went at midnight to pick up the 6th installment of the "Harry Potter" series, and we came home, I read about four chapters to him, then he said, "Mom, would it hurt your feelings if I just finish this one myself, I am pretty busy, and it will take us forever to get through this together!" (He was, after all, a busy High School Senior at the time!)
I have all of the books I have read to my kids listed on my Palm device, and even my 28-year-old daughter likes to scroll through them every once in a while and reminisce!
Posted by: Kimberly Reimann | October 01, 2008 at 01:35 AM
I have two young men (9 and 12) who are the grandsons of friends and "adopted" nephews. I may have to try this with them. They are very much into TV and video games, and I would love to rechannel some of that time into reading while they're with me. I am also going to pass this on to my nephew who has two small daughters. He can certainly maintain his connection with them by reading and also by recording stories for them. What great ideas - thank you!
Posted by: Claire | October 01, 2008 at 10:58 AM
I still read aloud to my husband, which started early in our marriage before the boys came along, partially because I can read aloud faster than he can read to himself...and because he needs to have me pay attention to him (an extrovert), while I need to get lost in a book to regain energy (an introvert)!
When the boys came along, we switched over to the Narnia Chronicles and the Little House books (I hadn't realized how funny they sometimes were from an adult perspective!) and the Lord in the Rings trilogy after reading The Hobbit (the whole thing takes a year if you're reading every night after supper...). Several comments during that period added to my enjoyment:
My oldest son, Paul, is learning-disabled and couldn't even read the comics to himself till he was 11. However, at about 13, he commented to me (the English major) that he'd noticed how to write a book like "The Lord of the Rings" - "You just set up one big problem and then bring up another smaller problem, and just as you're getting ready to solve the second problem, you add another one that has to be solved. That way, you don't get bored."
Once when we were reading a Tony Hillerman mystery aloud on our boat when the boys were in middle school, Paul's friend started talking to him about the fishing. Paul shushed him and the friend said, "I thought you hated books." My son's response: "I hate reading, but I love books!"
After our younger son, Kevin, learned to read well, he tended to disappear to play when we'd do an all-day reading marathon...and had an uncanny knack of reappearing just when things got exciting in the story, at which point he'd sit down and listen raptly till we got to another long descriptive section!
When he was much younger, Kevin came home from school and informed me that his teacher was also reading the Narnia Chronicle that we'd recently read. I asked how he liked it and he informed me that "teacher reads it like you're s'posed to...with 'spression...and different voices for each character." I asked how he liked this different way of reading (because I tend to read as fast as I can go to see what will happen next.) He responded, "I like your way better, because you read like you can see it happening!"
Finally...Paul noticed something else a number of years later. He commented that every book I read had a similarity, whether it was a Tony Hillerman mystery, a Madeline L'Engle story or series of essays, the Narnia Chronicles, Orson Scott Card's "Prentice Alvin" series...it didn't matter. Each one felt like it was being told by a storyteller, telling the group around the fire... Now, I had noticed that some books which I loved reading never made it into my pile of "need to read aloud to the family" and suddenly I understood that those books were not written with the storyteller's voice...and it is now very clear to me that this tradition needs to continue. Reading aloud to our families not only sustains our families...it continues to reward our storytellers...and that's super important.
(Note: I started learning about audiobooks when my sister became concerned about my aging and an increased danger of the results, if I were to fall while doing my favorite combined activity of walking while reading. For my 59th birthday, she gave me an IPOD and a subscription to Audible.com, and extracted a promise that I'd walk and listen, instead of walking and reading. I've learned again how much I value the storyteller's voice (both hearing it...and sensing it in the words and rhythm of the story as it develops).
Years later, Paul made a point of reading the Narnia Chronicles aloud to his daughter, who (even at 7) noticed that her dad's reading gradually got better as he progressed through the series. I asked him why he was working so hard and he said he wanted to give his children the same gift he had received as a boy, even though it was really hard to read (still).
Posted by: Barb Stephens | October 01, 2008 at 11:15 AM
I grew up with radio rather than television. My husband never quite believed that I had been enthralled as a young child by something called "Johnny Dollar and His Action-Packed Expense Account," so I was particularly triumphant when I found this series on tape in a small-town bookstore. That purchase led to others from radio -- many complete with the now-quaint commercials -- and these became part of our traveling tales when we took road trips with our son. (We also did a lot of reading aloud well past the age when our son was an avid reader on his own.) Imagine my delight when our newly married son asked if he could borrow those old radio tapes to share with his wife as they drove several hours from our house to their new home. Yes, sharing of stories is an important human activity!
Posted by: Jerri | October 02, 2008 at 07:56 PM
I count myself amongst some of the luckier parents who continued to read out loud to my children, even though I had no idea there are "gap" years when reading to your children slows down. When my children could read to themselves (my son began reading alone around the age of 5), we still enjoyed reading together at bedtime, well into their teenage years. I began reading out loud when my brother was ill and could no longer read for himself. He was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor that left him legally blind at the age of seventeen. He was a senior in high school and I was in my first year of junior high when I read to him and I was introduced to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. I fell in love with Middle Earth and have read these two classics out loud or to myself ever since. They are well loved and much appreciated friends in my library and I turn to them time and time again, to either share with my children (my youngest, 16, still laughs over my attempts to give each character a distinct "voice") or to soothe my soul.
Posted by: Lori Brown | October 05, 2008 at 03:04 PM