Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of My Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and Shonda land Audio. Welcome back to Katie's Crib, you guys.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lows, and today we are tackling a topic
Speaker 1: at the forefront of my mind with a mother who
Speaker 1: wrote the book on it, author of How to Raise
Speaker 1: a Reader. She's the editor of the New York Times
Speaker 1: Book Review and the host of their book review weekly podcast.
Speaker 1: Please welcome the one and only Pamela Paul Pamela. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for going. I like, wait first, do
Speaker 1: you go by pam or Pamela Pamela. I'm a Pamela Great.
Speaker 1: I love that. Okay, so Pamela, A little bit of backstory. UM,
Speaker 1: my mother in law, who I'm very close with, came
Speaker 1: to visit and she had cut out a New York
Speaker 1: Times article and placed it on my desk should I
Speaker 1: so happen to see it? And the article was how
Speaker 1: to Raise a Reader, which became your book. My mother
Speaker 1: in law is an avid reader. I am as well.
Speaker 1: My husband, who's her son, is not. I think we've
Speaker 1: been together thirteen years and I I think I've maybe
Speaker 1: seen him read one or two books maybe and probably Um,
Speaker 1: I think one was on back pain because he has
Speaker 1: a bad back, and then um one was I think
Speaker 1: Headache of the pelvis because he was also having pelvic
Speaker 1: floor problems. So, um, those are the only two books
Speaker 1: I've seen him read. He's an avid reader of his
Speaker 1: phone and the news and things like that, but he
Speaker 1: has never read a book for enjoyment. And um, we
Speaker 1: have a two and a half year old son, and
Speaker 1: I I just your article really really spoke to me,
Speaker 1: and your work really speaks to me. And I I'm
Speaker 1: a New Yorker, so I'm a warrior, and I am
Speaker 1: already worried about how to raise a reader. And I
Speaker 1: was like, well, I gotta have Pamela on this podcast
Speaker 1: because I got some questions for her. Um, So first,
Speaker 1: why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself
Speaker 1: and how many words per minute you read? All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's start off with the fact that I am also
Speaker 1: a warrior. Um. The book that I wrote immediately before this,
Speaker 1: My Life with Bob Flawed Heroin Seeks Book of Books.
Speaker 1: Plot ensues. The first paragraph is actually about everything that
Speaker 1: I worry about at night, and that if I can't
Speaker 1: find something, you know, if I don't have something sort
Speaker 1: of in the queue to worry about, I will find it.
Speaker 1: So we are on the same page there um and
Speaker 1: on the same page in terms of being readers. But
Speaker 1: maybe you will be also like me, a slow reader,
Speaker 1: so words per minute like that kind of thing terrifies me,
Speaker 1: or pages per minute. I'm actually hugely slow and distractable reader.
Speaker 1: So I know, I know it's a huge defect in
Speaker 1: my line of work. And I also forget everything that
Speaker 1: I read. Um, So you know I said, I don't forget,
Speaker 1: for example, when I meet someone, I Joe that I
Speaker 1: should have worked at like E Entertainment Television, because I
Speaker 1: remember exactly when I meet someone in the circumstances, but
Speaker 1: I do not remember what I read. The nice part
Speaker 1: of that is that rereading is like when I do
Speaker 1: it a total pleasure because it's like I'm enjoying it
Speaker 1: for the first time. Does it seem at all? I
Speaker 1: have that too, where i'll read a book, I'll start
Speaker 1: something and I'll be like, I've been here before and
Speaker 1: I've been like, oh my god, i feel like I've
Speaker 1: totally read this, but I'm not one percent sure, so
Speaker 1: I'll just keep going. Yes, I you know, it's funny.
Speaker 1: I the same thing happens with movies. And I remember
Speaker 1: once being at Lincoln Plaza cinema now closed, but you'll remember,
Speaker 1: as a fellow New Yorker, um the Great Upper West
Speaker 1: Side Our Pass Cinema and sitting there and watching a
Speaker 1: French movie and thinking, why does every French movie about
Speaker 1: the French Resistance have to start Julie Epinosh and Daniel
Speaker 1: O'ti And why must it always start with a nighttime
Speaker 1: scene of them bombing a train track? And it only
Speaker 1: you know. I was about thirty minutes into the movie
Speaker 1: before I realized I saw this movie. I saw this
Speaker 1: movie when it first came out in France like three
Speaker 1: years earlier. UM, but I stayed so I can. I
Speaker 1: can enjoy it for the for the second time. It
Speaker 1: does become vaguely um familiar. But one interesting thing I
Speaker 1: think about reading is that every time you reread a book,
Speaker 1: you're at a different place in your own life, and
Speaker 1: your perspective has changed and what's going on around you
Speaker 1: has changed, and so every reading experience is different from
Speaker 1: the previous one. And I bear that in mind, especially
Speaker 1: when you think about raising children who are readers, and
Speaker 1: if your son alb is um. We're about three years old.
Speaker 1: He's probably asking again again again for the same I
Speaker 1: hide them and is that bad? I literally can't today
Speaker 1: Thomas and friends. I was like, I was honest. I said,
Speaker 1: you know what, I'll be mommy's board of this book.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to give it a rest for today.
Speaker 1: We can come back to it tomorrow. But I can't
Speaker 1: do this again. Well, it's it's interesting. So there are
Speaker 1: a couple of things that kids get from rereading. One
Speaker 1: is if you think about yourself and if you read
Speaker 1: a book, like let's say you read a book in
Speaker 1: your twenties, and I'm going to give it an example
Speaker 1: that maybe not everyone has read, but it's a good example.
Speaker 1: Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. That's a book that we I
Speaker 1: think we all know about an adulterous woman. If you
Speaker 1: read that in your twenties, right, and you're single, you
Speaker 1: think this is so romantic. Anna has met the love
Speaker 1: of her life. This is amazing, I mean until we
Speaker 1: get to the sorry spoiler alert, but suicide at the end.
Speaker 1: And it's a love story. But if you read it
Speaker 1: when you're in your thirties, say, and you are newly
Speaker 1: married and you're very happy and maybe you have a child.
Speaker 1: You think she's terrible. Yeah, what a nightmare, Like a nightmare.
Speaker 1: She has abandoned her child and her husband. What kind
Speaker 1: of mother? What kind of woman? And then though, if
Speaker 1: you read it again and like your forties or your
Speaker 1: fifties or your sixties, you're like, nah, I kind of
Speaker 1: get it, like she needed to. You know, she was
Speaker 1: having like life is long, and she was having a
Speaker 1: different experience. I guess I can sort of relate because
Speaker 1: we do as actors, like I like to see the
Speaker 1: same plays over and over again, you know, like I'll
Speaker 1: run to see Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? You know
Speaker 1: X amount of times, although I guess it's to see
Speaker 1: somebody perform it. But I'm also always in a different
Speaker 1: place in my life, and I pick up new and
Speaker 1: different things and understand them differently. And so with kids,
Speaker 1: they're changing and developing so quickly that if a four
Speaker 1: year old reads a book and then even two months
Speaker 1: later once it read again, they're a different person by
Speaker 1: that time. They're different interesting, and as they get older
Speaker 1: this is even more the case because like let's use
Speaker 1: Harry Potter as an example that everyone is familiar with
Speaker 1: if you read Harry Potter as some kids you know,
Speaker 1: do sort of precociously or have it read to them
Speaker 1: when they're in third or fourth grade, all that stuff
Speaker 1: about Cedric dying. Again, Sorry if I'm giving away plot
Speaker 1: points here, Come on, people, get with it. Read all
Speaker 1: the freaking Harry Potters it was. That was a decade
Speaker 1: or more than that. Oh my god, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: No spoilers, go for it, all right. So at the
Speaker 1: end of book, for um Cedric who is a lovable character,
Speaker 1: um side character, but nonetheless he did nothing wrong. He's
Speaker 1: a good kid, and he dies. So for a lot
Speaker 1: of kids, at a certain point, they're too young, and
Speaker 1: they might not process it. Um. At a slightly older age,
Speaker 1: they might be like that's terrible, and like that's not
Speaker 1: you know, kids often see things in very black and
Speaker 1: white terms. They be like, how can a good person die?
Speaker 1: That's not okay. And then as they get even older,
Speaker 1: they might be genuinely upset by it at an emotional
Speaker 1: level because maybe they're that age. And then when they
Speaker 1: get even older, they might appreciate it as a reader,
Speaker 1: as a literary device, they might be like Oh, that's
Speaker 1: so interesting. So he dies and that's when the novels
Speaker 1: J K. Rowling's seven Harry Potter novels shift from being
Speaker 1: books for children into being books for teenagers, which is
Speaker 1: what happens in books five, six, and seven. They become
Speaker 1: books for teenagers. Um, and of course grown up like
Speaker 1: them too, but little kids. A lot of this stuff
Speaker 1: that happens in those later books, it's teenage stuff because J. K.
Speaker 1: Rolling had the book's age and the character's age along
Speaker 1: with her readers, so that the people who originally joined
Speaker 1: in would sort of constantly feel like it was about
Speaker 1: them and like a little kid, you know, they're not
Speaker 1: gonna the love story and like the kind of middle
Speaker 1: school antics that happened between the characters where people aren't
Speaker 1: talking to one another, like that's kind of just kind
Speaker 1: of glide over them. But for the reader who's eleven,
Speaker 1: twelve years old, that completely hits them where they're. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's right where they are. What about when we're at
Speaker 1: this new phase right now where um, he just learned
Speaker 1: that things scare him. Um, it's like new in the
Speaker 1: past couple of weeks. So now there's just a lot
Speaker 1: of requests to skip certain pages or you know, like, oh,
Speaker 1: just make sure you don't do the rocket thing. That's
Speaker 1: too even though the page just has rockets on it,
Speaker 1: He's like, no, that's too loud. I don't want to
Speaker 1: read that page. And like, I got it. We're not
Speaker 1: going to read that page. Was giving it, you know,
Speaker 1: or he'll he'll wake up. Sometimes there's a kid's book
Speaker 1: called the Gruffalo or oh things that have monsters or
Speaker 1: dinosaurs me to love. But like he was so into
Speaker 1: it for a week and then the next week he
Speaker 1: was like, it's too scary, and I said, okay, it's
Speaker 1: too scary. You know. He had a night where he
Speaker 1: went to sleep in. An hour later he woke up
Speaker 1: and he said, Mom, I'm scared of the Gruffalo. Um.
Speaker 1: And I feel like these are all new emotions. Similarly,
Speaker 1: I was in nanny Forum like ten years before I
Speaker 1: was able to just be an actor, and I remember
Speaker 1: kind of on the flip side, I remember some of
Speaker 1: my older kids really getting obsessed with like very dark,
Speaker 1: dark books, um, things about death and and things that
Speaker 1: and really leaning into that. Is there ever a time
Speaker 1: where you like, kids shouldn't be reading stuff like shouldn't
Speaker 1: be I don't know. I mean, I guess it's the
Speaker 1: same with movies, or maybe it's not. I don't know.
Speaker 1: This is your imagination, which is awesome. But um, I
Speaker 1: was reading something from your book My Life with Bob,
Speaker 1: which you brought up, and it said, like many other
Speaker 1: morbid kids with Jewish ancestry, I was drawn to Holocaust
Speaker 1: reading from the moment I asked the lessons seeking out
Speaker 1: death and torture and deprivation and evil, which I totally get. Um, Now,
Speaker 1: my kid's not there, he's afraid and just doesn't want
Speaker 1: to process it. But is there is that right to
Speaker 1: to just follow his rules? A And then the second
Speaker 1: question in that is is there things that kids shouldn't
Speaker 1: be reading? Oh? These are two really great questions and
Speaker 1: big questions. Um. And I want to say that it
Speaker 1: obviously had training as a nanny in parenthood, which is
Speaker 1: very good because you know, it sounds like you should
Speaker 1: what you're doing, what you should be doing, which is
Speaker 1: let your child take the lead. And that applies to
Speaker 1: you know, skipping over pages, slowing down, sadly often reading
Speaker 1: a book for the twenty time. And I'm going to
Speaker 1: note that and tell my husband that today that Thomas
Speaker 1: and Friends is back on the pile. Yes, I know,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's it's There are some books that are
Speaker 1: so terribly boring to have to reread. For us, it
Speaker 1: was the skip books that are just unbearable, and if
Speaker 1: you're not familiar with them, you can just put that
Speaker 1: on your do not go list. Um. And we don't
Speaker 1: have those unless you like to say wolf Wolf like
Speaker 1: ten times in this space of thirty two pages. Um.
Speaker 1: But reading it repeatedly to your child does actually have um,
Speaker 1: really good pedagogical um sort of. It has an impact
Speaker 1: in that your kids are starting to memorize it, they're
Speaker 1: becoming familiar with it, they're learning in a way to read,
Speaker 1: and that in that they're beginning to recognize the world.
Speaker 1: They know the story by heart, and then they can
Speaker 1: quote unquote read it to themselves, which is very like,
Speaker 1: it's amazing to see he's like memorized. I can't believe it.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, he says, the book pages before I get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah and so. And as part of that taking the lead,
Speaker 1: if they are scared of something, it's definitely a good
Speaker 1: idea to skip over it, because like we're not instructors,
Speaker 1: we're not teaching our child how to read. We're teaching
Speaker 1: them to love to read. That's our job as parents.
Speaker 1: And so why would you was your child through something
Speaker 1: that is not pleasurable to them or just bringing up
Speaker 1: negative emotions. So you definitely want to let them go
Speaker 1: pass those scary passages. And perhaps because you're an actor,
Speaker 1: you'll fall into a trap that I too fell into,
Speaker 1: even though I can't act at all, which is sometimes
Speaker 1: you get very caught up in your own experience. That's right,
Speaker 1: you mean my performance of the Gruffalo. Sure, exactly what
Speaker 1: you're saying. Right, You've got voices for all those characters, right,
Speaker 1: Like the snake has its own little hissing thing. For sure.
Speaker 1: You got me nailed, okay, And so it's kind of
Speaker 1: upsetting when your child would be like, I don't like
Speaker 1: the ogre voice, or like could you stop it with
Speaker 1: a hissing um. There were certain books that I liked
Speaker 1: to sing rather than read aloud, and I also can't sing,
Speaker 1: and my kids let it be known after a while
Speaker 1: that like, actually, could you just read that and not
Speaker 1: sing it? You don't have to make up a little
Speaker 1: tune for bread and Jam with Francis for Francis and so, um,
Speaker 1: it's that that kind of stuff you have to let
Speaker 1: go of as a parent and really handed to your kids.
Speaker 1: And I think the same thing goes with your second question, UM,
Speaker 1: which is there's a lot to that question about you know,
Speaker 1: when is your child so too young to read something scary? Um.
Speaker 1: I believe firmly that one, kids kind of know what
Speaker 1: they're ready for and what they're not ready for. And
Speaker 1: also kids are like kids will put things down, and
Speaker 1: they also will choose to see certain things. That goes
Speaker 1: back to what I was saying about Harry Potter. You know,
Speaker 1: like if you think back to some of the things
Speaker 1: that you movies, you saw books you read as a child,
Speaker 1: and you didn't quite get it, and then you see
Speaker 1: it again as a growing up and you're like, oh
Speaker 1: my god. You know, like I had no idea. Um,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bit older than you. And when I
Speaker 1: was growing up in the seventies and eighties, you know,
Speaker 1: parents weren't as as protective or cautious about material, and
Speaker 1: there wasn't as much that was directly made for kids.
Speaker 1: They'd be like, sure, let's all go see terms of
Speaker 1: endearment or you know, let's go to watership down where
Speaker 1: there are bloody bunnies, you know, dying on fields and
Speaker 1: everything sort of you know, if it wasn't our sort
Speaker 1: of seem like maybe it was okay. A lot of
Speaker 1: the times I didn't absorb that stuff. I mean I
Speaker 1: remember seeing terms of endearment, for example, with my mother,
Speaker 1: and she came out sobbing and was so apologetic, and
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't know what the problem is.
Speaker 1: Of course I saw it as an adult and I
Speaker 1: was weeping. Um, but kids don't necessarily see or absorb
Speaker 1: all that, and some kids are drawn to it and
Speaker 1: some very much are not. And one of the fascinating
Speaker 1: things I find about, you know, viewing your child as
Speaker 1: a reader, as you really have this different lens into
Speaker 1: their inner life because you find out things that you
Speaker 1: wouldn't necessarily know. Like one of my three kids, um
Speaker 1: doesn't like sad stories? Does actually now two of them
Speaker 1: don't like sad stories. I love crying when I read.
Speaker 1: I love it so much, like if it if it
Speaker 1: breaks me down, I'm like, this is the best book. Um.
Speaker 1: My kids really don't like that, and so they will
Speaker 1: shut the book. They'll ask not to get a book
Speaker 1: about a dying squirrel again or about like a you know,
Speaker 1: disabled box. Um. And you know, and then there were
Speaker 1: kids that really really want that and seek that out,
Speaker 1: especially when they get to you know, the teenage years.
Speaker 1: That's great. So really we're letting them take the lead.
Speaker 1: Were you a huge reader as a kid? Um? I
Speaker 1: definitely was a huge reader as a kid. I um
Speaker 1: I felt like things were better in books than they
Speaker 1: were in real life. Um I. It wasn't that I
Speaker 1: was a hugely unhappy child. I grew up with though,
Speaker 1: with seven brothers. And some people will hear that, and
Speaker 1: they but like, you must have been so spoiled and
Speaker 1: so cherished, and it's like no, I was, you know,
Speaker 1: got the crappy eaten out of me. Like anything anything
Speaker 1: that was yeh, anything that was like remotely girlish was
Speaker 1: like really not cool. Um And also it um I
Speaker 1: often had a situation where they would get paired off
Speaker 1: and I would be alone. So girlhood was sort of
Speaker 1: seen as a negative thing. I was also really shy,
Speaker 1: and I had no ills or talents whatsoever. So you know,
Speaker 1: other kids might go and have you know, violin lessons,
Speaker 1: or play soccer or do gymnastics and I was really,
Speaker 1: um unskilled at all of those things, and so for me,
Speaker 1: the default was always to read in books because things
Speaker 1: felt better in there. Um. You know, there were sisters
Speaker 1: in books and everybody got along, and you know, parents
Speaker 1: made like homemade meals that weren't you know, steam broccoli
Speaker 1: and baked potatoes, and just like all these great things
Speaker 1: would happen in books. Or you could you know, be
Speaker 1: heroin like Meg Murray and A Wrinkle in Time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: did your um? Were your parents very like you said?
Speaker 1: They really were? They just leaving you alone and so
Speaker 1: you were able to read whatever you so chose. Or
Speaker 1: were they encouraging of the topics and things that you
Speaker 1: were interested in? Well, you know, I grew up in
Speaker 1: the great era of underparenting. You know, it's like take
Speaker 1: benign to collect and like and multiply it. So a
Speaker 1: lot of the time they weren't all too aware. But
Speaker 1: I was also a very good kid, even though I'd
Speaker 1: like to read about dark things. And I remember, um,
Speaker 1: I remember one time going and getting a book. Um,
Speaker 1: and now I was probably ten years old, and I,
Speaker 1: you know, would pick things out because of the cover.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what I was doing, and I realized
Speaker 1: as I got into it that it was a lesbian
Speaker 1: love story and fairly explicit, and I actually turned it in.
Speaker 1: I was like, I don't think this is appropriate for me.
Speaker 1: You're such a goody two shoes. I'm obsessed by the way.
Speaker 1: I can only call that because I would have done
Speaker 1: the exact same. Although then fast forward about a year later,
Speaker 1: I was reading um, Bob Woodward's Wired, which was the
Speaker 1: John Belushi story, and you know, I think my mom
Speaker 1: saw it and that like confiscated it. Yeah, that should
Speaker 1: not that's not that's that's a lot. Yeah, I was.
Speaker 1: I think I was eleven. Oh my god. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: was like, you're not reading about a harmonatic. I meant
Speaker 1: this already, but so I'm a reader, Adam is not.
Speaker 1: Are there any I'm not sure how it is in
Speaker 1: your household, but are there any tips on how to
Speaker 1: encourage partners to cross over the reading rainbow? So to speak?
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel, I mean, we have you talked about,
Speaker 1: like reading right now. In our son's life is very ritualistic.
Speaker 1: It's what he does first thing in the morning, um,
Speaker 1: when he wakes up, and you know, it's a good
Speaker 1: thirty forty minutes and it's what he does before bed
Speaker 1: and and he demands it, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: He's like, is it time to read books now? Like
Speaker 1: it's a it's a real thing. And I actually took
Speaker 1: this idea from Carrie Washington, but I didn't need I
Speaker 1: was one of the many perks of being an actor
Speaker 1: is for some reason, when you get pregnant and have
Speaker 1: a baby, they send you a ton of free stuff,
Speaker 1: which I then give to all of my other actor
Speaker 1: friends or my siblings or whatever. But I didn't need
Speaker 1: anything for my baby shower, so I just asked everyone
Speaker 1: to please bring their favorite children's book and it was awesome. Um,
Speaker 1: And not to say, most of your mom is out
Speaker 1: there listening, register for whatever the hell you need, because
Speaker 1: it's the opportunity, and you spend a lot of time
Speaker 1: getting other people stuff, so make the most of it.
Speaker 1: But for me, the a great idea. I didn't need stuff.
Speaker 1: Or if your mom out there who's had a ton
Speaker 1: of hand me downs and you don't need stuff, I
Speaker 1: have to say, like getting a children's book from each
Speaker 1: friend and having each person right in that it was
Speaker 1: from them is so great because not only does my
Speaker 1: son have this awesome library right now, and people were
Speaker 1: really cool. They gave books that were for all different ages.
Speaker 1: But then they also, you know, they when he Albi
Speaker 1: knows now when he opens the book, like, oh, this
Speaker 1: one's from Carry or this one's from aunt Tera. So
Speaker 1: we have a really good um base right now. And
Speaker 1: again we read morning and night and my husband's really
Speaker 1: taken to it, which was great, Like he reads a
Speaker 1: lot because my husband is not a reader, but he's
Speaker 1: only two and a half. How do we keep this up?
Speaker 1: How do my husband and I keep encouraging reading in
Speaker 1: our son? All right, I have a lot to say
Speaker 1: about this, but one thing I will say I think
Speaker 1: might influence your husband if he is prone to is
Speaker 1: he if he's easily influenced by research and by data.
Speaker 1: Here are a few facts that you can arm yourself with.
Speaker 1: One is that we know that modeling reading behavior is
Speaker 1: hugely influential. If you want to raise a reader, be
Speaker 1: a reader. Your kids should see you reading for pleasure.
Speaker 1: They should hear you talking about the books that you love,
Speaker 1: so that books are not just seen as something for
Speaker 1: little kids, but books are something to aspire to. Books
Speaker 1: are something that adults choose to do in their spare time.
Speaker 1: That that's how you know, and when you think about it, like,
Speaker 1: at a certain point, kids look at grown ups as
Speaker 1: like having all the rights and privileges of the world,
Speaker 1: right when they begin to realize that they're not the
Speaker 1: total center and that there are other things that parents
Speaker 1: are doing without them, whether it's like going out on
Speaker 1: a date night or drinking or whatever it might be.
Speaker 1: So you want to make sure that the things that
Speaker 1: they're looking up to, that they're aspiring to are things
Speaker 1: that actually you would like them to do. And specifically
Speaker 1: with boys, there is some really interesting and kind of um,
Speaker 1: I won't say alarming, but no, it is alarming. Let's
Speaker 1: go there, like I this is what I was going
Speaker 1: to bring up later, but like, we should definitely get
Speaker 1: into this now that studies seem to indicate that there's
Speaker 1: a gender gap, with more girls tending to read for
Speaker 1: pleasure than boys, and we see a ripple effect and
Speaker 1: higher education, which me is my warrior self scares the
Speaker 1: crap enemy, um and I and I know that to
Speaker 1: be true. I only had one brother, but my brother
Speaker 1: sure as hell wasn't a reader, and I was and
Speaker 1: I am, and my husband's not. And you know, so
Speaker 1: I see, I hate to say, at the writing on
Speaker 1: the wall, um or the reading on the wall. And so,
Speaker 1: there are actual statistics out there that boys read less
Speaker 1: than girls, right they do. So boys read less frequently
Speaker 1: than girls do, They read fewer books, they are less
Speaker 1: likely to say that reading is a preferred activity. They're
Speaker 1: less likely to read for fun, for pleasure over the summer,
Speaker 1: um and so. And then coupled with that, boys tend
Speaker 1: to read or learn to how to read, about a
Speaker 1: year behind girls. Now what's interesting is that, just as
Speaker 1: a little side note, that's also kind of comforting if
Speaker 1: you're raising a boy, because the age at what your
Speaker 1: child learns to read is not a reflection of how
Speaker 1: good a reader they will become. It's kind of like
Speaker 1: tying your shoelaces. Like if you learn to tie your
Speaker 1: shoelaces at age four versus age seven, it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: you're going to be a better shoelace tier, you know,
Speaker 1: in your twenty one So you know, the age at
Speaker 1: which you learned how to read does not affect your
Speaker 1: performance later in life. If that were true, like women
Speaker 1: would be ruling the whole world because you know, we
Speaker 1: all learned how to read before the way earlier, earlier.
Speaker 1: In general their exceptions. Um. That said, we do know
Speaker 1: that boys read less, we do know that they enjoy
Speaker 1: it less. And here to statistics where parents are a
Speaker 1: little bit responsible. One is that both girls and boys
Speaker 1: say they see their fathers reading less frequently than they
Speaker 1: see their mother's reading. So boys early on kind of
Speaker 1: get the idea of like, oh, like girl books, maybe
Speaker 1: those are for girls. You know, that's for women. That's
Speaker 1: not like a man thing, that's not uh, you know,
Speaker 1: a guy thing to do. Um. And then interestingly, not
Speaker 1: to lay all the blame on the fathers. Both women
Speaker 1: and men. Both mothers and fathers read aloud less often
Speaker 1: to their sons than they do to their daughters. And
Speaker 1: there yes, but there's some interesting reasons why that might be.
Speaker 1: One is, and now you have a boy who assume
Speaker 1: age three super active. Sometimes when you're reading to him,
Speaker 1: he might not be cuddling up on your lap, snuggling
Speaker 1: his lov e and like holding onto your arm in
Speaker 1: the way that you might have like imagined, you know,
Speaker 1: bedtime reading might be. He might instead be crawling off
Speaker 1: your lap, wandering around the ruling the teddy bear. It's
Speaker 1: like that's right. And you know, boys are just generally
Speaker 1: more active. They can be more kinetic readers, and there
Speaker 1: are things that you can do. You can get them
Speaker 1: books that are more suited to boys. So boys like
Speaker 1: interactive books, they might like pop up books. They might
Speaker 1: like books that they can you know, that have lots
Speaker 1: of flaps. The other thing is, and this becomes even
Speaker 1: more important as boys get older, is that not every
Speaker 1: boy wants to sit down and read Pride and Prejudice. Like.
Speaker 1: They don't necessarily want to read a long novel. They
Speaker 1: don't necessarily want to read a block of gray text.
Speaker 1: They might be a fact seeker. They might want to
Speaker 1: sit down. I mean, one of my kids who is
Speaker 1: now ten, we'll sit down with the science encyclopedia and
Speaker 1: he will read it. Now, I there's nothing I would
Speaker 1: want to read less than a science encyclopedia. Like I
Speaker 1: would never sit down and be like, I think I'm
Speaker 1: going to read the encyclopedia. Um, he will read a
Speaker 1: book about the periodic table Like that to me is
Speaker 1: that's not what I think of as like reading a book,
Speaker 1: but it is to him. So and a lot of
Speaker 1: other boys also are more visually oriented, so they might
Speaker 1: like graphic novels. They might be drawn to comics, and
Speaker 1: those are really great ways to get boys and enthusiastic
Speaker 1: about reading comics. Hello occur to me because I mean
Speaker 1: not in my wheelhouse. You know, I don't even think
Speaker 1: about it. No, I mean, you know, comics are great.
Speaker 1: They're great, And it doesn't mean that your child is
Speaker 1: never going to read serious books like I read tons
Speaker 1: of Archie comics, peanuts, you know, Calvin and Hobbes, like
Speaker 1: all of those are great ways for boys to get
Speaker 1: pleasure out of reading, even things like books of sports
Speaker 1: statistics or joke books, like, all of that is reading,
Speaker 1: and it's really important. Again, this is going back to
Speaker 1: letting your child take the lead, not to judge as
Speaker 1: a parent, not to be like that's not a real book.
Speaker 1: That's prejudice or you know again, like if they're rereading,
Speaker 1: kids as they get older will sometimes reread their same
Speaker 1: book like twenty times. That's because it's become a source
Speaker 1: of comfort for them, right, Like the characters in the
Speaker 1: book might be people they sort of consider their friends,
Speaker 1: characters they like to hang around with. Like there's a
Speaker 1: reason so many people reread read Harry Potter it's because
Speaker 1: who wouldn't rather be at Hogwarts sometimes than in the
Speaker 1: real world. Right, That's a fun place to be. So
Speaker 1: kids also want to revisit that world. So I would say,
Speaker 1: like not to judge the kind of book your kid
Speaker 1: is reading, how often they're reading it, like just to
Speaker 1: sort of sit back and remember, my kid is choosing
Speaker 1: to read. My kid is getting pleasure from it, and
Speaker 1: so I really need to back off because and here
Speaker 1: again goes to especially when Albi gets a little bit older,
Speaker 1: he has a lot of other choices and he's going
Speaker 1: to have many, many more of what to do. He
Speaker 1: can go on Hulu, he can play Minecraft, he can
Speaker 1: play um Fortnite, he can text his friends. I know
Speaker 1: it's all gonna happen, and he'll be on TikTok. They'll
Speaker 1: be like ten thousand other new websites. They'll be World
Speaker 1: of Warcraft. Like. He can do all of those things.
Speaker 1: If he is picking up a book and it's a
Speaker 1: book about like, you know, the ten worst murders of
Speaker 1: all times, Like, be happy he's picking up a book.
Speaker 1: Let him read that, Let him enjoy that. Um. So
Speaker 1: at this age that we're that, I'm that my child
Speaker 1: will at some point be it when they have all
Speaker 1: of these other options and they're now reluctant to read
Speaker 1: it all, how do we reel them in? Is it
Speaker 1: just the worst parenting in the world to incentivize them
Speaker 1: or reward them or something, or because now reading has
Speaker 1: become a big part of school, right, so like now
Speaker 1: we probably associate reading with our English class or whatever.
Speaker 1: I can remember my cousins like when we would be
Speaker 1: on our summer family camping trip, they would have their
Speaker 1: summer reading assignment, you know, and they would be hemming
Speaker 1: and hawing and hating it and just complaining and the
Speaker 1: book is so dumb and they don't want to do
Speaker 1: it and blah blah blah, Like how what do you do? All? Right?
Speaker 1: So this is going to sound totally counterintuitive because as
Speaker 1: a parent, you're really used to incentivizing your kid with
Speaker 1: rewards and negative consequences when they do something bad. Like
Speaker 1: you want your kids to eat peas. You're like, oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, the peas are so yummy. Here, just eat
Speaker 1: this one spoonful of peas and then you can have
Speaker 1: carrots and then you can you know whatever, this next
Speaker 1: sweet thing is um And so we're used to a
Speaker 1: system of like positive and negative consequences. But you really
Speaker 1: have to put a hold on that when it comes
Speaker 1: to reading, because you don't want your kid to read
Speaker 1: in order to get something. You want your kid to
Speaker 1: read because the reading is the reward. Reading a book
Speaker 1: doesn't mean you get an extra hour if I've had
Speaker 1: time reading the book is the good thing in and
Speaker 1: of itself. You want to build that intrinsic motivation to read,
Speaker 1: as opposed to giving them extrinsic rewards, saying like, if
Speaker 1: you read ten books this summer, then at the end
Speaker 1: of the you know year, you'll get your first phone
Speaker 1: or whatever it is, whatever incentive plan you have depending
Speaker 1: on the age of your child, or like, let's just finish,
Speaker 1: you know, just finish reading this one book. Let's say
Speaker 1: your child is learning to read, and then you can
Speaker 1: have like a second dessert or whatever. Don't do it,
Speaker 1: because you're you're giving them a message that reading is work,
Speaker 1: Reading is the hard thing. Reading is the bad thing
Speaker 1: in order to get to the good thing. So again,
Speaker 1: fast forward ten years from now, when your kid's going
Speaker 1: to be able to make all those choices on his own,
Speaker 1: he's not going to read because reading is fun. He
Speaker 1: already knows that reading is work and reading is something
Speaker 1: they have to do. Right, that makes perfect sense. Um,
Speaker 1: are there types of books that I don't know are
Speaker 1: like especially beneficial to certain developmental points? Like like you said,
Speaker 1: I know you had mentioned already. Um, like I remember
Speaker 1: when it switched and now he was like obsessed with
Speaker 1: the flip books. And you know like hide and seek
Speaker 1: books where you open up stuff and flaps and things
Speaker 1: are in there. But are there developmental books that we
Speaker 1: should be putting in front of our kids or again
Speaker 1: just really sitting back and offering a bunch of different
Speaker 1: stuff and just see whatever they want to take the
Speaker 1: lead on. It's the latter, I mean for sure. Remember
Speaker 1: it's interesting we forget as parents. Right, You'll be like,
Speaker 1: my kid loves poppies, but maybe your kid has never
Speaker 1: seen a cat, or maybe your kid has never read
Speaker 1: a book about trucks. You know, like they only know
Speaker 1: what they know. They don't know. If they don't know,
Speaker 1: you're introducing all that stuff to them, and sometimes you're
Speaker 1: introducing it for the first time through a book. So
Speaker 1: some kids they don't need to have been on a
Speaker 1: plane to read a book about a plane. Like everything
Speaker 1: is new to a small child, and so your job
Speaker 1: is to expose them to as much variety as possible
Speaker 1: because you don't know what your kid likes or doesn't like,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know either. So it's really exciting, I think,
Speaker 1: to see like what your child ends up gravitating towards,
Speaker 1: because you just you find out more about your child,
Speaker 1: You find out things that you didn't know, and because
Speaker 1: kids are so changeable and you know this too, three
Speaker 1: months later it'll be something else. Yeah. It's like my
Speaker 1: husband and I never in a million we've been either
Speaker 1: thirteen years, I've never said the word excavator, back, eighteen wheeler,
Speaker 1: cement mixer, I mean, every single type of dang truck exists.
Speaker 1: And like that's just because all we do is read
Speaker 1: about trucks, you know, and it's like that's what he
Speaker 1: wants right now. Um, but two actors reading about trucks,
Speaker 1: Adam and I sometimes look at each other. We're like
Speaker 1: this is crazy, like this, you know, we're we we
Speaker 1: love like, oh, we have all those baby Shakespeare books,
Speaker 1: like oh, the baby version of Romeo and Juliet, or
Speaker 1: like the baby version of Symboline. And maybe he doesn't
Speaker 1: want that he wants, you know, good night, gunite construction
Speaker 1: site or whatever, which is a great book. It's a
Speaker 1: great book. And you know an interesting fun fact about
Speaker 1: that book. That was that author's first book, and it
Speaker 1: was found off the slush pile um, which I feel
Speaker 1: like is like the actor equivalent of you know, being discovered.
Speaker 1: You know you're working right at them all or you know,
Speaker 1: working at McDonald's. Like it just so happens, you know,
Speaker 1: to rarely. Um. And that's how that book came to be.
Speaker 1: And it's fascinating. You know. I had all these ideas
Speaker 1: of what my kids to be interested in. Like I
Speaker 1: thought that my daughter would be, you know, the kind
Speaker 1: of girl who would like to read about like nature
Speaker 1: and would be chasing frogs like. She did not want
Speaker 1: to do that. And I couldn't blame her, because I
Speaker 1: wasn't that girl either, you know, out there in the
Speaker 1: mud with the bugs. Like she was not interested. My
Speaker 1: boys and my daughter, none of them could have cared
Speaker 1: less about dinosaurs. I brought home tons of books about
Speaker 1: dinosaurs because my first job at the New York Times
Speaker 1: was as the children's folks at it Are, So I
Speaker 1: got all these books, um, and never, they never could
Speaker 1: care less about dinosaurs, like none of them. But then
Speaker 1: some kids are completely obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, So it's it
Speaker 1: is kind of fascinating, um to see what your what
Speaker 1: your kids end up being interested in in terms of
Speaker 1: like the level and all of that. It goes back
Speaker 1: to my point of you're not there to teach your
Speaker 1: child how to read, so you don't need to worry
Speaker 1: too much about, you know, is this the right level.
Speaker 1: The thing at your child's age to think about is
Speaker 1: are they engaged with the story? Do they feel you know,
Speaker 1: you can you can gauge their attention and their interests
Speaker 1: when while you're reading to them, or is this too
Speaker 1: many words per page? Are they wanting to, you know,
Speaker 1: turn the page to get ahead. When your child is three,
Speaker 1: they're actually reading the book, but what they're reading is
Speaker 1: the pictures while you're reading the words, and so as
Speaker 1: you're reading to them, they will be looking at the
Speaker 1: pictures and there's often a different story embedded in those pictures. Right.
Speaker 1: Sometimes your kids will laugh and you'll be like, there
Speaker 1: was nothing funny in what I said, but they're laughing
Speaker 1: at some other little substrand of the story that's going
Speaker 1: on on the page in the pictures, and so you
Speaker 1: can gauge again if your child is sort of not
Speaker 1: looking at the book is wanting to close it. It's
Speaker 1: really funny too. I mean, I'm sure you saw this one.
Speaker 1: Albie was even you know, younger than he is now.
Speaker 1: The kids will just shook the book. Oh. He does
Speaker 1: that all the time. If I try to pick, like, hey,
Speaker 1: can mommy pick a new book off the shelf? You know,
Speaker 1: which is like me dying a slow death that I've
Speaker 1: read the same fifteen books every morning and night for
Speaker 1: the past week. And I I go to get a
Speaker 1: new book, and if it's it's funny because if it
Speaker 1: is what I would deem like more advanced, there's too
Speaker 1: many words on the page. He's not having it, like
Speaker 1: he's just like, you know, he shuts it. He's just
Speaker 1: not he's like, you know, he or he doesn't like
Speaker 1: the pictures or for whatever reason I don't know. Um, yeah,
Speaker 1: he decides um. And then I find it interesting when
Speaker 1: he goes back to books that he liked when he
Speaker 1: was really really little, like, um, oh god, what is
Speaker 1: that Path of Bunny Paul Paul and Judy Like Path
Speaker 1: the Bunny? Now you scratch your dad's scratchy feel like
Speaker 1: sometimes he'll request like books from when he was very little,
Speaker 1: or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, you know, which he was
Speaker 1: super into at one, but he hasn't really looked at
Speaker 1: in two years, Like we're back on that. You know,
Speaker 1: that is that is totally appropriate, and that is great.
Speaker 1: That's great because it's funny, like kids are capable of
Speaker 1: kind of nostalgia and wanting that comfort from a very
Speaker 1: young age, and and sometimes it feels new to them,
Speaker 1: and sometimes it feels familiar, or sometimes they're seeing something
Speaker 1: different in it. You know, books like The Very Hungry
Speaker 1: Caterpillar when they were really little and they seemed really
Speaker 1: into it and they were taking their little fingers and
Speaker 1: poking it through the teeny coles in the page. That
Speaker 1: may have been what they loved so much about that
Speaker 1: book then, but what they might love about it a
Speaker 1: year later is the words. You know, Oh yeah, he's
Speaker 1: what he's into about it now is that it says
Speaker 1: chocolate cake and cup cupcake and lollipop. Like he's into it.
Speaker 1: He's like, oh, this is a book that there are
Speaker 1: treats and right right, and when you read it to him,
Speaker 1: when he was like fourteen months old, he just like
Speaker 1: putting his fingers and exactly didn't know what a lollipop was. Exactly.
Speaker 1: What do you think parents, I'm not there yet, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure it will come. The stress about when their
Speaker 1: kids have to learn to read, and are they reading yet,
Speaker 1: and if it's challenging or they're supposed to be at
Speaker 1: a certain place at school. Like I just feel like, ah,
Speaker 1: that must just be very stressful. Yes, you will get
Speaker 1: that stress. It will come, But I hope that I
Speaker 1: can provide um some comfort because, as I said earlier,
Speaker 1: it truly does not matter the age at which your
Speaker 1: child learns to read. There are there are studies that
Speaker 1: show that the age at which your child begins to
Speaker 1: read has no bearing on how good a reader they become,
Speaker 1: how voracious a reader they become, how enthusiastic or sophisticated
Speaker 1: a reader they become. Their other things that do have
Speaker 1: an impact on it, the agent which you start reading
Speaker 1: does not. And in fact, you know, it's like any
Speaker 1: other milestone we all know, we go to the pediatrician,
Speaker 1: we read the parenting books. You see the milestones. There's
Speaker 1: always a range, right, and sometimes you know you'll look
Speaker 1: at like another kid and you'll be like, wow, like,
Speaker 1: my kid can totally do a forward somersault and that
Speaker 1: kid can't, So my kid is ahead. And then you'll
Speaker 1: see that kid like get up and use an extremely
Speaker 1: sophisticated sentence with like three adverbs with their parents and
Speaker 1: be like, oh, you're like, is doing this other thing
Speaker 1: that my kid maybe isn't. Like, kids developed different things
Speaker 1: at different times, and it really does not have any
Speaker 1: like long term implication. And with reading, it's a complicated process.
Speaker 1: It's decoding, it's word recognition, it's like piniamic awareness. There
Speaker 1: are all these different things that happen in the brain,
Speaker 1: and not all kids are developed mentally. Their brains aren't
Speaker 1: developed necessarily at this, you know, at the same time
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. And that's one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why boys read later. Their brains aren't there yet.
Speaker 1: In Europe, in Scandinavia and I was going to braise up.
Speaker 1: I've read about this, keep going. I love it. I'm fascinated. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they don't even start to teach kids how to read
Speaker 1: until there's seven, eight or nine years old. And what's
Speaker 1: smart about that is that if you're child is pushed
Speaker 1: to read at too young an age, and then they're
Speaker 1: gonna hate it. They're gonna hate it because they're going
Speaker 1: to be frustrated and they're going to self label themselves
Speaker 1: as bad readers, and they're going to label books is
Speaker 1: something that's hard and that makes them feel bad about
Speaker 1: themselves because every kid who's in like group D on
Speaker 1: the leveled Readers knows that the other kids are in
Speaker 1: group N, and then automatically they're just gonna start thinking, well,
Speaker 1: books aren't my thing. I'm not a good reader, I'm
Speaker 1: no good at that. I'm going to do this instead,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm a math person or maybe i'm, you know,
Speaker 1: a sports person or whatever it is. So the kids
Speaker 1: become frustrated if they learn to read or they're forced
Speaker 1: to read at too young an age. And what happens
Speaker 1: too is interesting. When kids do start to read, for
Speaker 1: the most part around age six, they are reading stories
Speaker 1: that go like this, the cat sat on the mat. Now,
Speaker 1: if you know any six year olds, you know that
Speaker 1: many six year olds are able to listen to the
Speaker 1: first book of Harry Potter and totally enjoy it. They're
Speaker 1: ready for more sophisticated stories than the cat sat on
Speaker 1: the mat. So the book they're reading is incredibly boring.
Speaker 1: So one thing to do when your kid is that
Speaker 1: age is to remember, okay, what they're being for to
Speaker 1: read on their own super boring. You don't want them
Speaker 1: to think that reading is all bad, So you want
Speaker 1: to remember as a parent what you can do as
Speaker 1: opposed to sort of sitting over them and making them
Speaker 1: sounded out and do all of that kind of quote
Speaker 1: unquote helping. Remember that's the teacher's job, hand that over
Speaker 1: to them. That's what they're doing in school. What you
Speaker 1: do is you continue to read them wonderful picture books
Speaker 1: with stories they like, with beautiful illustration. And remember picture
Speaker 1: books are written for adults to read, so the words
Speaker 1: are much more sophisticated. They are, you know, the their
Speaker 1: books that that six year old could never read by themselves.
Speaker 1: Keep reading to them. You don't want to send the
Speaker 1: message to them that now that you're reading on your own,
Speaker 1: that's all you get, you know, bedtime reading with mommy
Speaker 1: or on the mat and you're in group and like
Speaker 1: good luck in You don't want to like pull out
Speaker 1: from under them something that they love for years, which
Speaker 1: was like bedtime reading with mommy or Sunday morning reading
Speaker 1: in bed or whatever it is that you did, so
Speaker 1: you don't want to take away something and punish them
Speaker 1: for learning to read. And then also, maybe you're reading
Speaker 1: to them a book at night that's a chapter book.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate,
Speaker 1: or you're reading the Betsy Tasty books or A Little
Speaker 1: House in the Prairie or Harry Potter, whatever it is.
Speaker 1: They can still absorb that story while you're reading it,
Speaker 1: So you want to make sure that they're getting the
Speaker 1: full range of books so they know while they're why
Speaker 1: they're doing that really boring and difficult, the cats out
Speaker 1: on the matwork. M this is this is such. You
Speaker 1: are just rocking my whole planet right now. And I
Speaker 1: can't wait for this podcast to be cut together. And
Speaker 1: I give my husband like the ones where I'm like
Speaker 1: this one. You have to listen to this, he has
Speaker 1: to listen to just quickly, Um, before we wrap up,
Speaker 1: I want to switch gears a little bit and talk
Speaker 1: about another article you wrote that really spoke to me
Speaker 1: about letting children get bored again? Can we I want
Speaker 1: to talk a little bit about that, because I think
Speaker 1: this is I think this is an amazing reminder in general,
Speaker 1: but also during this time that we are in quarantine
Speaker 1: and where a lot of us are being asked to
Speaker 1: step back and stay indoors with our kids. Um And
Speaker 1: you know, as an artist, you know, imagination was a
Speaker 1: huge part of my childhood. And I feel the helicopter
Speaker 1: parent thing that your parents generation did not partake in,
Speaker 1: but mind certainly did. And I feel that with all
Speaker 1: the over scheduling and all this stuff that we're constantly
Speaker 1: bringing our child and again I saw it with a
Speaker 1: lot of the kids I baby set for It's like
Speaker 1: you picked them up from school, they have a play date,
Speaker 1: then they have an activity. It's like unbelievable amounts of
Speaker 1: shipped to do. And I just feel like my most
Speaker 1: of my memories from my childhood was being really bored
Speaker 1: and not being allowed to watch TV, but then being
Speaker 1: able to turn my like bird bath in the front
Speaker 1: yard into like a witch's cauldron, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I'm getting dressed up in all this stuff where I
Speaker 1: had a chalkboard downstairs which was like endless amounts of
Speaker 1: hours of playing teacher and all of these things, and
Speaker 1: I feel like boredom is a really important thing, um
Speaker 1: and also very beneficial to parents because sometimes I'm just like,
Speaker 1: just go play, Like like I don't, I don't have
Speaker 1: to put out, you know, right now in quarantine, all
Speaker 1: I see on Instagram is eight thousand activities. I'm supposed
Speaker 1: to be cutting and gluing for my child, and I
Speaker 1: just don't have the energy to do it. So talk
Speaker 1: to me about boredom. Boredom is not only a normal
Speaker 1: part of life, like no matter what age you are,
Speaker 1: but it is a necessity. It has benefits, and it's
Speaker 1: something that we all have to learn how to make
Speaker 1: use of. And I think that anyone when you really
Speaker 1: think about it, you realize why this is even though
Speaker 1: the impetus for most parents is too when you see
Speaker 1: a child who's not occupied, is to kind of maximize
Speaker 1: the moment, like, oh we should do an art project,
Speaker 1: or like what you know, what are you up to?
Speaker 1: What are you thinking? Trying to somehow get your child
Speaker 1: kind of optimize that moment or you know, maybe they're
Speaker 1: under stimulated, when in fact, when kids are bored, right,
Speaker 1: that's when they have to figure it out for themselves.
Speaker 1: That's how kids become resourceful, That's how they become, as
Speaker 1: you said earlier, imaginative, like that's where make believe comes from.
Speaker 1: When I was growing up, one of the most often
Speaker 1: spoken phrases from my mother was if I said I
Speaker 1: was bored, she would say, then go outside. Now for me,
Speaker 1: that was like the most punitive things she could have said,
Speaker 1: because I was not an outdoorsy, sporty girl. So if
Speaker 1: the punishment, if the alternative was going outside, and then
Speaker 1: I really had to figure out something else to do.
Speaker 1: And this actually ties to what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: which is reading. My solution was to go and to read,
Speaker 1: or to write stories, or to draw very bad, un artistic,
Speaker 1: untalented pictures. But I was at least doing it. Um.
Speaker 1: You had to kind of make do. When I was
Speaker 1: growing up, we had this room in my house called
Speaker 1: the sun Room, UM, which I think was just because
Speaker 1: it was I think, you know, had been like a
Speaker 1: terror us that was windowed in at some point and
Speaker 1: into it my sharans through like broken pieces of furniture,
Speaker 1: you know, old appliances, just like random bits of crap
Speaker 1: from around the house, like in complete sets, and my
Speaker 1: brothers and I would go in there and we would
Speaker 1: just make things now what we did not always safe,
Speaker 1: Like I remember we used to play a game called
Speaker 1: jump the Roof where we would pile everything up into
Speaker 1: like as tall a pile as we could and sometimes
Speaker 1: put the cat in, you know, at the very bottom,
Speaker 1: and then we would find somewhere very high and leap
Speaker 1: on to the top of the pile of broken stuff
Speaker 1: and you know, fall to the ground. So but that's
Speaker 1: what kids did back before they sort of had, you know,
Speaker 1: something often a device at the ready that could constantly
Speaker 1: entertain them. You know, you just kind of did what
Speaker 1: you had to do. And when you read. I love
Speaker 1: reading memoirs as an adult, um, and I loved reading
Speaker 1: them as a child to to read biographies to kind
Speaker 1: of for me, they were like life lessons, like this
Speaker 1: is how it's done, you know, like you want to
Speaker 1: become you know, Dolly Madison that was all that was
Speaker 1: available for girls back then, or color color or you
Speaker 1: know one of these that's what you or Florence Nightingale. Um,
Speaker 1: you follow these steps, and that's how I read them.
Speaker 1: But I often like reading memoirs of an earlier age
Speaker 1: because you realized, like it was boring, Oh is it boring?
Speaker 1: Like you read books about like people um in the
Speaker 1: early twentieth century and the nineteenth century to go for
Speaker 1: a car ride, like in a car that was going god, huge, huge,
Speaker 1: fifteen miles an hour, just looking at the trees, or
Speaker 1: like you watch those you know, movies like Room with
Speaker 1: the View, any of the nineteenth century movies, and they're
Speaker 1: just walking around because that was entertainment. Like people learned
Speaker 1: to play the piano because that's what you had for music.
Speaker 1: You didn't have Spotify, So it was like the onus
Speaker 1: becomes on you to create the entertainment. If you don't
Speaker 1: have something from outside that's that's always stimulating you and
Speaker 1: sort of prompting you to respond. You become the generator
Speaker 1: so important. It's just so important. And I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I hope that that provides moms during this time with
Speaker 1: some you know, when we first went into quarantine about
Speaker 1: a month ago. You know, I I generally I am
Speaker 1: not a big TV watcher with my kid, and I
Speaker 1: really let up on those rules. It's okay at the beginning,
Speaker 1: which is okay, but then I have to say, I've
Speaker 1: been doing this experiment this week where I said, Adam,
Speaker 1: you know what, let's like, let's just like let him
Speaker 1: be bored and like in the house. Like I mean again,
Speaker 1: I can do this right now because I didn't have
Speaker 1: a very heavy work week. If you have a freaking
Speaker 1: heavy work week and you're losing your mind, the kid
Speaker 1: can watch it. I don't care, you know what I mean, Like,
Speaker 1: whatever anyone has to do to survive and be happy
Speaker 1: and feel loved is the only thing that matters. But
Speaker 1: but this week I was like, let's just do a
Speaker 1: few days with like him. He just isn't gonna watch TV,
Speaker 1: and he's been really bored and it's been so fascinating
Speaker 1: to watch what he's doing. Yeah, I mean it's like
Speaker 1: you see you see again your child like making the
Speaker 1: choices for himself, figuring out what it is that he's
Speaker 1: going to do, like imaginative play that's not directed. Right,
Speaker 1: all you need to do is provide like a few things.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the great things about and now
Speaker 1: I'm going back to screens but you know Toy Story
Speaker 1: four where they had um the great you know four
Speaker 1: key toy, Like anything can be a toy, right, anything
Speaker 1: can be a toy. It's all in the eye of
Speaker 1: the beholder. And so you don't even have to have
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff around. Like kids will make something
Speaker 1: into a toy. That's what they did before we had
Speaker 1: lots of plastic toys to provide them. They made their
Speaker 1: own toys, so they saw toys and things that weren't toys. Um.
Speaker 1: Any final advice for parents, any last things? You feel
Speaker 1: like we didn't touch on or hit on or I
Speaker 1: mean I feel like I could talk to you for
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand hours and this is so helpful and
Speaker 1: so informative, and I just think you are doing such
Speaker 1: important work. Pamela, truly thanks. Here's my parting words, which
Speaker 1: are that you know, it goes back to that reading
Speaker 1: is the verbal word. Don't reward reading, because reading is
Speaker 1: the reward. All the stress that parents feel around raising readers,
Speaker 1: around um, you know, raising their children to be productive,
Speaker 1: successful whatever that might be fulfilled people. You know, we all,
Speaker 1: I think, are motivated by truly understandable circumstances. We have
Speaker 1: a lot of economic uncertainty. People know, it's a competitive world.
Speaker 1: It's hard to get into a good college. Some kids
Speaker 1: just sort of lose their motivation. So we are so
Speaker 1: eager to kind of plant everything into our child that
Speaker 1: will lead them towards success whatever that might look like
Speaker 1: that we forget to kind of take pleasure in it.
Speaker 1: And so specifically with books, I would say, you know,
Speaker 1: this is the fun part. This is you are introducing
Speaker 1: your children to something great. This is not broccoli, this
Speaker 1: is chocolate cake. You are opening up a world of
Speaker 1: like stories and a mad genation and possibilities and characters.
Speaker 1: You know, when I think about myself as a reader
Speaker 1: and what it is that I look for in books,
Speaker 1: I look to be transported. I look to gain access
Speaker 1: to a world that I would otherwise never have access to,
Speaker 1: whether that's living on Mars or being a coal miner
Speaker 1: in nineteenth century France, or being it's always a British queen.
Speaker 1: For me, it's always a British queen. Might not be
Speaker 1: a British queen, even a British lady in waiting, Like
Speaker 1: you know, any of that, that's your chance. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what you do as an actor, right, You get
Speaker 1: to inhabit another person, You get to be in a
Speaker 1: different world, You get to actually like it's a whole
Speaker 1: new story that's opened to you. And so I would
Speaker 1: say to parents, like, remember, like you are you are
Speaker 1: opening up a portal to magic for your children. You
Speaker 1: are offering them away to to empathize, to see the
Speaker 1: world through others eyes, to no worlds that don't exist
Speaker 1: or that once existed or will never exist. And so
Speaker 1: you're doing something great for your children. And if you
Speaker 1: remember that that mission and that sense of enthusiasm, that
Speaker 1: will come through as opposed to, you know, feelings of
Speaker 1: obligation and stress and pressure and like they don't need
Speaker 1: to they don't need any of that. They're going to
Speaker 1: get that from the outside world from you. When it
Speaker 1: comes to books, You're taking them to Disneyland. You know,
Speaker 1: you are giving them the magic key. This is so wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Pamela for being on Katie's Crib.
Speaker 1: Thank you for all of your words of wisdom. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to jump back into the book I'm currently reading.
Speaker 1: Um uh, this is awesome. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: being on Katie's Crib. Pamela. It was a total pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me. Thank you guys so much for
Speaker 1: listening to that awesome episode with Pamela. I learned so
Speaker 1: much and it makes me just want to jump back
Speaker 1: in my bed and read more of my book and
Speaker 1: hate what books are you currently reading to your kids?
Speaker 1: Are there any huge faiths that I got to know about.
Speaker 1: You can tell me by telling us on our socials
Speaker 1: or subscribing and following us at Katie's Crib or email
Speaker 1: me book ideas at Katie's Crib and Shonda land dot com.
Speaker 1: You all are awesome. Katie's Crib is a production of
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