Speaker 1: Welcome to Katie's Crib, a production of Shonda Land Audio
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Speaker 1: back to Katie's Crib. This week, I'm rereleasing one of
Speaker 1: my early interviews back from We'll have a brand new
Speaker 1: episode up for you next week. Enjoy the conversation. Bye,
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Katie's Crib. You guys. I'm Katie Lows,
Speaker 1: and today we are tackling a topic at the forefront
Speaker 1: of my mind with the mother who wrote the book
Speaker 1: on it, author of How to Raise a Reader. She's
Speaker 1: the editor of the New York Times Book Review and
Speaker 1: the host of their book review weekly podcast. Please welcome
Speaker 1: the one and only Pamela Paul. Pamela. Thank you so
Speaker 1: much for going. I like, wait first, do you go
Speaker 1: by pam or Pamela Pamela. I'm a Pamela Great. I
Speaker 1: 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, Um. I
Speaker 1: think one was on back Pain because he has a
Speaker 1: bad back, and then UM one was I think Headache
Speaker 1: of the Pelvis because he was also having pelvic floor problems. So, um,
Speaker 1: those are the only two books I've seen him read.
Speaker 1: He's an avid reader of his phone and the news
Speaker 1: and things like that, but he has never read a
Speaker 1: book for enjoyment. And um, we have a two and
Speaker 1: a half year old son, and I I just your
Speaker 1: article really really spoke to me, and your word really
Speaker 1: speaks to me. And I I'm a New Yorker, so
Speaker 1: I'm a warrior and I am already worried about how
Speaker 1: to raise a reader. It was like, well, I gotta
Speaker 1: have Pamela on this podcast because I got some questions
Speaker 1: for her. Um, so first, why don't you tell me
Speaker 1: a little bit about yourself and how many words per
Speaker 1: minute you read? All right, well, let's start off with
Speaker 1: the fact that I am also a warrior. Um. The
Speaker 1: book that I wrote immediately before this My Life with
Speaker 1: Bob flawed heroin seeks book of books. Plot ensues. The
Speaker 1: first paragraph is actually about everything that I worry about
Speaker 1: at night, and that if I can't find something, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't have something sort of in the queue
Speaker 1: to worry about, I will find it. So we are
Speaker 1: on the same page there um, and on the same
Speaker 1: page in terms of being readers. But maybe you will
Speaker 1: be also like me, a slow reader, so words per
Speaker 1: minute like that kind of thing terrifies me, or pages
Speaker 1: per minute. I'm actually hugely slow and distractable reader, so
Speaker 1: I know, I know it's a huge defect at my
Speaker 1: line of work. And I also forget everything that I read. Um,
Speaker 1: So you know I said I don't forget. For example,
Speaker 1: when I meet someone, I joke that I should have
Speaker 1: worked at like E Entertainment television because I remember exactly
Speaker 1: when I meet someone in the circumstances, but I do
Speaker 1: not remember what I read. The nice part of that
Speaker 1: is that rereading is like when I do it a
Speaker 1: total pleasure because it's like I'm enjoying it for the
Speaker 1: first time. Does it seem at all? I have that too,
Speaker 1: where I'll read a book I'll start something and I'll
Speaker 1: be like, I've been here before, and I've been like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I feel like I've totally read this,
Speaker 1: but I'm not one percent sure, so I'll just keep going. Yes,
Speaker 1: I you know, it's funny. I the same thing happens
Speaker 1: with movies. And I remember once being at Lincoln Plaza
Speaker 1: cinema now closed, but you'll remember, as a fellow New Yorker,
Speaker 1: UM the Great Upper West Side our cinema, and sitting
Speaker 1: there and watching a French movie and thinking, why do
Speaker 1: every French movie about the French Resistance have to start
Speaker 1: Julie Pinos and Daniel o'tei And why must it always
Speaker 1: start with a nighttime scene of them bombing a train track?
Speaker 1: And it only you know. I was about thirty minutes
Speaker 1: into the movie before I realized I saw this movie.
Speaker 1: I saw this movie when it first came out in France,
Speaker 1: like three years earlier. Um, but I stayed so I
Speaker 1: can I can enjoy the for the second time. It
Speaker 1: does become vaguely familiar. But one interesting thing I think
Speaker 1: 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, Albi 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 are like she has
Speaker 1: abandoned her child and her husband. What kind of mother?
Speaker 1: What kind of woman? And then though, if you read
Speaker 1: it again and like your forties or your fifties or
Speaker 1: your sixties, you're like, mah, I kind of get it,
Speaker 1: like she needed to know that she was having like right,
Speaker 1: life is long, and she was having a different experience.
Speaker 1: I guess I can sort of relate because we do
Speaker 1: as actors, like I like to see the same plays
Speaker 1: over and over again, you know, like I'll run to
Speaker 1: see Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf? You know X amount
Speaker 1: of times, although I guess it's to see somebody perform it.
Speaker 1: But I'm also always in a different place in my life,
Speaker 1: and I pick up new and different things and understand
Speaker 1: them differently. And so with kids, they're changing and developing
Speaker 1: so quickly that if a four year old reads a
Speaker 1: book and then even two months later, once it read again,
Speaker 1: they're a different person by that time, they're different interesting,
Speaker 1: And as they get older, this is even more the
Speaker 1: case because, like, let's use Harry Potter as an example
Speaker 1: that everyone is familiar with. If you read Harry Potter
Speaker 1: as some kids you know, do sort of precociously or
Speaker 1: have it read to them when they're in third or
Speaker 1: fourth grade, all that stuff about Cedric dying again. Sorry
Speaker 1: if I'm giving away plot points here. It read all
Speaker 1: the freaking Harry Potters it was. That was like a
Speaker 1: decade or more than that. Oh my god, I don't
Speaker 1: even know. No, no spoilers, go for it, all right.
Speaker 1: So at the end of book, for um Cedric who
Speaker 1: is a lovable character, um sort of side character, but
Speaker 1: nonetheless he did nothing wrong. He's a good kid, and
Speaker 1: he dies. So for a lot of kids, at a
Speaker 1: certain point, they're too young and they might not process it. Um.
Speaker 1: At a slightly older age, they might be like that's terrible,
Speaker 1: and like that's not you know, kids often see things
Speaker 1: in very black and white terms. They be like, how
Speaker 1: can a good person die? That's not okay? And then
Speaker 1: as they get even older, they might be genuinely upset
Speaker 1: by it on an emotional level because maybe they're that age.
Speaker 1: And then when they get even older, they might appreciate
Speaker 1: it as a reader, as a literary device. They might
Speaker 1: be like, Oh, that's so interesting. So he dies. And
Speaker 1: that's when the novels JK. Rollings seven Harry Potter novels
Speaker 1: shift from being books for children into being books for teenagers,
Speaker 1: which is what happens in books five, six, and seven.
Speaker 1: They become books for teenagers. Um and of course grown
Speaker 1: ups like them too, but little kids. A lot of
Speaker 1: the stuff that happens in those later books it's teenage
Speaker 1: stuff because JK. Rolling had the books age and the
Speaker 1: character's age along with her readers, so that the people
Speaker 1: who originally joined in would sort of constantly feel like
Speaker 1: it was about them and like a little kid, you know,
Speaker 1: they're not gonna the love story, and like the kind
Speaker 1: of middle school antics that happened between the characters where
Speaker 1: people aren't talking to one another, like that's kind of
Speaker 1: just kind of glide over them. But for the reader
Speaker 1: who's eleven and twelve years old, that completely hits them
Speaker 1: where they're Yeah, it's right where they are. What about
Speaker 1: when we're at this new phase right now where um,
Speaker 1: he just learned that things scare him. Um, it's like
Speaker 1: new in the past couple of weeks. So now there's
Speaker 1: just a lot of quests to skip certain pages or
Speaker 1: you know, like, oh, just make sure you don't do
Speaker 1: the rocket thing. That's too even though the page just
Speaker 1: has rockets on it. He's like, no, that's too loud.
Speaker 1: I don't want to read that page. And like, I
Speaker 1: got it, We're not going to read that page. Was
Speaker 1: skipping it, you know, or he'll he'll wake up. Sometimes
Speaker 1: there's a kid's book called the Gruffalo or oh things
Speaker 1: that have monsters or dinosaurs me to love. But like
Speaker 1: he was so into it for a week and then
Speaker 1: the next week he was like, it's too scary, and
Speaker 1: I said, okay, it's too scary. You know. He had
Speaker 1: a night where he went to sleep in. An hour
Speaker 1: later he woke up and he said, Mom, I'm scared
Speaker 1: of the Gruffalo. Um. And I feel like these are
Speaker 1: all new emotions. Similarly, I was in nanny for like
Speaker 1: ten years before I was able to just be an actor,
Speaker 1: and I remember kind of on the flip side, I
Speaker 1: remember some of my older kids really getting obsessed with
Speaker 1: like very dark dark books, um, things about death and
Speaker 1: and things that and really leaning into that. Is there
Speaker 1: ever a time where you like, kids shouldn't be reading
Speaker 1: stuff like shouldn't be I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess it's the same with movies, or maybe it's not.
Speaker 1: I don't know. This is your imagination, which is awesome.
Speaker 1: But um, I was reading something from your book My
Speaker 1: Life with Bob, which you brought up, and it said,
Speaker 1: like many other morbid kids with Jewish ancestry, I was
Speaker 1: drawn to Holocaust reading from the moment I d a
Speaker 1: lessons seeking out death and torture and deprivation and evil,
Speaker 1: which I totally get. Um, Now, my kid's not there,
Speaker 1: he's afraid and just doesn't want to process it. But
Speaker 1: is there is that right to to just follow his rules? A?
Speaker 1: And then the second question and that is is there
Speaker 1: things that kids shouldn't be reading? Oh? These are two
Speaker 1: really great questions and big questions. Um. And I want
Speaker 1: to say that it obviously had training as a nanny
Speaker 1: in parenthood, which is very good because you know, it
Speaker 1: sounds like you should what you're doing what you should
Speaker 1: be doing, which is let your child take the lead,
Speaker 1: and that applies to, you know, skipping over pages, slowing down,
Speaker 1: sadly often reading a book for the twenty time. And
Speaker 1: I'm going to note that and tell my husband that
Speaker 1: today that Thomas and Friends is back on the pile. Yes,
Speaker 1: I know, it's it's. It's it's There are some books
Speaker 1: that are so terribly boring to have to reread. For us,
Speaker 1: it was the Biscuit books, which are just unbearable. And
Speaker 1: if you're not familiar with them, you can just put
Speaker 1: that on your do not go list. Um. And we
Speaker 1: don't have those unless you like to say, woof Wolf
Speaker 1: like ten tho 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 like, it's
Speaker 1: 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 force 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 performance experience.
Speaker 1: That's right, you mean my performance of the Gruffalo. Sure,
Speaker 1: exactly what you're saying, Right, You've got voices for all
Speaker 1: those characters, right, Like the snake has its own little
Speaker 1: hissing thing. For sure. You got me nailed, okay, And
Speaker 1: so it's kind of upsetting when your child would be like,
Speaker 1: I don't like the ogre voice, or like could you
Speaker 1: stop it with a hissing um. There were certain books
Speaker 1: that I liked to say rather than read aloud. And
Speaker 1: I also can't sing and my kids let it be
Speaker 1: known after a while that like, actually, could you just
Speaker 1: read that and not sing it? You don't have to
Speaker 1: make up a little tune for bread and jam with
Speaker 1: Francis for Francis and so um. It's that that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff you have to let go of as a
Speaker 1: parent and really hand it to your kids. And I
Speaker 1: 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 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
Speaker 1: child and you didn't quite get it, and then you
Speaker 1: see it again as a growing up and you're like,
Speaker 1: oh 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 really? 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.
Speaker 1: Um My kids really don't like that, and so they
Speaker 1: will shut the book. They'll ask not to get a
Speaker 1: book about a dying squirrel again, or about like a
Speaker 1: you know, disabled box. Um. And you know, and then
Speaker 1: there are kids that really really want that and seek
Speaker 1: that out, especially when they get to you know, the
Speaker 1: teenage years. That's great. So really we're letting them take
Speaker 1: the lead. Were you a huge reader as a kid? Um?
Speaker 1: I 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'll be 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 yeah, anything that was like remotely girlish was like
Speaker 1: really not cool. Um And also it um I often
Speaker 1: had a situation where they would get paired off and
Speaker 1: I would be alone. So girlhood was sort of seen
Speaker 1: as a negative thing. I was also really shy, and
Speaker 1: I had no skills 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 shows? 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 was like
Speaker 1: take benine to collect and like and multiply it. So
Speaker 1: a lot of the time they weren't all too aware.
Speaker 1: But I was also a very good kid, even though
Speaker 1: I'd 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: 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 although then fast forward about a
Speaker 1: year later, I was reading Bob Woodward's Wired, which was
Speaker 1: the John Belushi story, and you know, I think my
Speaker 1: mom saw it and confiscated it. Yeah, that should not
Speaker 1: that's not that's that's a lot I was. I think,
Speaker 1: oh my god. Yea, like, you're not reading about a harmonatic.
Speaker 1: I mentioned this already, but so I'm a reader, Adam
Speaker 1: is not. Are there any I'm not sure how it
Speaker 1: is in your household, but are there any tips on
Speaker 1: how to encourage partners to cross over the reading rainbow
Speaker 1: so to speak? I mean, I feel, I mean, we
Speaker 1: have you talked about, like reading right now in our
Speaker 1: son's life is very ritualistic. It's what he does first
Speaker 1: thing in the morning, um, when he wakes up, and
Speaker 1: you know, it's a good thirty minutes, and it's what
Speaker 1: he does before bed and and he demands it, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, He's like, is it time to
Speaker 1: read books now? Like it's a it's a real thing.
Speaker 1: And I actually took this idea from Carrie Washington. But
Speaker 1: I didn't need I was one of the many perks
Speaker 1: of being an actor is for some reason, when you
Speaker 1: get pregnant and a baby, they send you a ton
Speaker 1: of free stuff, which I then give to all of
Speaker 1: my other actor friends or my siblings or whatever. But
Speaker 1: I didn't need anything for my baby shower, so I
Speaker 1: just asked everyone to please bring their favorite children's book
Speaker 1: and it was awesome. Um. And not to say, most
Speaker 1: of your mom is out there listening, register for whatever
Speaker 1: the hell you need, because it's the opportunity, and you
Speaker 1: spend a lot of time getting other people stuff, so
Speaker 1: make the most of it. But for me, the a
Speaker 1: great idea. I didn't need stuff. Or if your mom
Speaker 1: out there who's had a ton of hand me downs
Speaker 1: and you don't need stuff, I have to say, like
Speaker 1: getting a children's book from each friend and having each
Speaker 1: person right in that it was from them is so
Speaker 1: great because not only does my son have this awesome
Speaker 1: library right now, and people were really cool they gave
Speaker 1: books that were for all different ages. But then they
Speaker 1: also you know, they when he Albi knows now when
Speaker 1: he opens the book, like, oh, this one's from carry
Speaker 1: or this one's from aunt Tera. So we have a
Speaker 1: really good um base right now. And again we read
Speaker 1: morning and night and my husband has really taken to it,
Speaker 1: which was great, Like he reads a lots because my
Speaker 1: husband is not a reader, but he's only two and
Speaker 1: a half. How do we keep this up? How do
Speaker 1: my husband and I keep encouraging reading in our son?
Speaker 1: All Right, I have a lot to say about this,
Speaker 1: But one thing I will say that I think might
Speaker 1: influence your husband if he is prone to is he
Speaker 1: if he's easily influenced by research and by data. Here
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 1: love so that books are not just seen as something
Speaker 1: for little kids, but books are something to aspire to.
Speaker 1: Books are something that adults choose to do in their
Speaker 1: spare time. That that's how you know, and when you
Speaker 1: think about it, like at a certain point, kids look
Speaker 1: at grown ups as like having all the rights and
Speaker 1: privileges of the world, right when they begin to realize
Speaker 1: that they're not the total center and that there are
Speaker 1: other things that parents are doing without them, whether it's
Speaker 1: like going out on a date night or drinking or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. So you want to make sure
Speaker 1: that the things that they're looking up to, that they're
Speaker 1: aspiring to are things that actually you would like them
Speaker 1: to do. And specifically with boys, there is some really
Speaker 1: interesting and kind of um, I won't say alarming, but
Speaker 1: it is alarming. Let's go there, like I this is
Speaker 1: what I was going to bring up later, but like,
Speaker 1: we should definitely get into this now that studies seem
Speaker 1: to indicate that there's a gender gap, with more girls
Speaker 1: tending to read for pleasure than boys, and we see
Speaker 1: a ripple effect and higher education, which me is my
Speaker 1: warrior self scares the crap enemy, um and I and
Speaker 1: I know that to be true, I only had one brother.
Speaker 1: But my brother shore as hell wasn't a reader, and
Speaker 1: I was and I am, and my husband's not. And
Speaker 1: you know, so I see, I hate to say, at
Speaker 1: the writing on the wall, um or the reading on
Speaker 1: the wall. And so, there are actual statistics out there
Speaker 1: that boys read less than girls, right, they do. So
Speaker 1: boys read less frequently than girls do, They read fewer books,
Speaker 1: they are less likely to say that reading is of
Speaker 1: preferred activity. They're less likely to read for fun, for
Speaker 1: pleasure over the summer, um and so. And then coupled
Speaker 1: with that, boys tend to read or learn to how
Speaker 1: to read, about a year behind girls. Now what's interesting
Speaker 1: is that, just as a little side note, that's also
Speaker 1: kind of comforting if you're raising a boy, because the
Speaker 1: age at what your child learns to read is not
Speaker 1: a reflection of how good a reader they will become.
Speaker 1: It's kind of like tying your shoelaces. Like if you
Speaker 1: learn to tie your shoelaces at age four versus age seven,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean you're going to be a better shoelace tier.
Speaker 1: You know, in your twenty one so you know, the
Speaker 1: age at which you learned how to read does not
Speaker 1: affect your performance later in life. If that were true,
Speaker 1: like women would be ruling the whole world, because you know,
Speaker 1: we all learned how to read before the way earlier,
Speaker 1: way earlier. In general their exceptions. Um. That said, we
Speaker 1: do know that boys read less, we do know they
Speaker 1: enjoy it less. And here to statistics where parents are
Speaker 1: a little bit responsible. One is that both girls and
Speaker 1: boys say they see their fathers reading less frequently than
Speaker 1: they see their mother's reading. So boys early on kind
Speaker 1: of get the idea of like, oh, like girl books,
Speaker 1: maybe those are for girls. You know, that's for women.
Speaker 1: That's 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 I
Speaker 1: assume aged three superactive. 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 room, throwing the teddy Bear.
Speaker 1: It's 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 encyclopedia like it. Would
Speaker 1: never sit down and be like, I think I'm going
Speaker 1: to read the encyclopedia. Um, he will read a book
Speaker 1: about the periodic tabe Like that to me is that's
Speaker 1: 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 enthusiastic about
Speaker 1: reading comics. Hello, mean 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, that's going back to letting
Speaker 1: your child take the lead, not to judge as a parent,
Speaker 1: not to be like that's not a real book. That's
Speaker 1: not prejudice or you know again, like if they're rereading,
Speaker 1: kids as they get older, will send time reread the
Speaker 1: same book like twenty times. That's because it's become a
Speaker 1: source of comfort for them, right, Like the characters in
Speaker 1: the 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 Harry Potter. It's because who
Speaker 1: wouldn't rather be at Hogwarts sometimes in their real world? Right,
Speaker 1: that's a fun place to be. So kids also want
Speaker 1: to revisit that world. So I would say, like not
Speaker 1: to judge the kind of book your kid is reading,
Speaker 1: how often they're reading it, like just to sort of
Speaker 1: sit back and remember, my kid is choosing to read.
Speaker 1: My kid is getting pleasure from it, and so I
Speaker 1: really need to back off because and here again goes
Speaker 1: to especially when Albi gets a little bit older, he
Speaker 1: has a lot of other choices and he's going to
Speaker 1: have many, many more of what to do. He can
Speaker 1: go on Hulu, he can play Minecraft, he can play
Speaker 1: um Fortnite, he can text his friends. I know it's
Speaker 1: all gonna happen, and he'll be on TikTok. They'll be
Speaker 1: like ten other new websites, they'll be World of Warcraft.
Speaker 1: Like he can do all of those things if he
Speaker 1: is picking up a book and it's a book about like,
Speaker 1: you know, the ten worst murderers of all times, Like
Speaker 1: be happy he's picking up a book le can read that,
Speaker 1: Let him enjoy that. Um So at this age that
Speaker 1: we're that, I'm that my child will at some point
Speaker 1: be it. When they have all of these other options
Speaker 1: and they're now reluctant to read it all, how do
Speaker 1: we reel them in? Is it just the worst parenting
Speaker 1: in the world to incentivize them or reward them or something,
Speaker 1: or because now reading has become a big part of school, right,
Speaker 1: so like now we probably associate reading with our English
Speaker 1: class or whatever. I can remember my cousins like when
Speaker 1: we would be on our summer family camping trip, they
Speaker 1: would have their summer reading assignment, you know, and they
Speaker 1: would be hemming and hawing and hating it and just
Speaker 1: complaining and the book is so dumb and they don't
Speaker 1: want to do it and blah blah, law Like, how
Speaker 1: what do you do? All right? So this is going
Speaker 1: to sound totally counterintuitive because as a parent, you're really
Speaker 1: used to incentivizing your kid with rewards and negative consequences
Speaker 1: when they do something bad, Like you want your kids
Speaker 1: to eat peas. You're like, oh my gosh, the peas
Speaker 1: are so yummy. Here, just eat this one. Spoonful of peas,
Speaker 1: and then you can have carrots, and then you can
Speaker 1: you know whatever, This next sweet thing is um And
Speaker 1: so we're used to a system of like positive and
Speaker 1: negative consequences, but you really have to put a hold
Speaker 1: on that when it comes to reading, because you don't
Speaker 1: want your kid to read in order to get something.
Speaker 1: You want your kid to read because the reading is
Speaker 1: the reward. Reading a book doesn't mean you get an
Speaker 1: extra hour if I've had time reading the book is
Speaker 1: the good thing in and of itself. You want to
Speaker 1: build that intrinsic motivation to read, as opposed to giving
Speaker 1: them extrinsic rewards, saying like if you read ton but
Speaker 1: this summer, then at the end of the you know year,
Speaker 1: you'll get your first phone or whatever it is, whatever
Speaker 1: incentive plan you have depending on the age of your child,
Speaker 1: or like, let's just finish, you know, just finish reading
Speaker 1: this one book. Let's say your child is learning to read,
Speaker 1: and then you can have like a second dessert or whatever.
Speaker 1: Don't do it, because you're you're giving them a message
Speaker 1: that reading is work. Reading is the hard thing. Reading
Speaker 1: is the bad thing in order to get to the
Speaker 1: good thing. So again, fast forward ten years from now,
Speaker 1: when your kid's going to be able to make all
Speaker 1: those choices on his own, He's not going to read
Speaker 1: because reading is fun. He already knows that reading is
Speaker 1: work and reading is something that they have to do. Right,
Speaker 1: that makes perfect sense. Um, are there types of books
Speaker 1: that I don't know are like especially beneficial to certain
Speaker 1: developmental points? Like like you said, I know you had
Speaker 1: mentioned already. Um, like I remember when it switched and
Speaker 1: now he was like obsessed with the flip books and
Speaker 1: you know, like hide and seek books where you open
Speaker 1: up stuff and flaps and things are in there. But
Speaker 1: are there developmental books that we should be putting in
Speaker 1: front of our kids or again, just really sitting back
Speaker 1: and offering a bunch of different stuff and just see
Speaker 1: whatever they want to take the lead on. It's the latter,
Speaker 1: I mean for sure. Remember it's interesting we forget as parents. Right,
Speaker 1: You'll be like, my kid loves poppies, but maybe your
Speaker 1: kid has never seen a cat, or maybe your kid
Speaker 1: has never read a book about trucks. You know, like
Speaker 1: they only know what they know. They don't know. If
Speaker 1: they don't know, you're introducing all that stuff to them.
Speaker 1: And sometimes you're introducing it for the first time through
Speaker 1: a book. So some kids they don't need to have
Speaker 1: been on a plane to read a book about a plane.
Speaker 1: Like everything is new to a small child, and so
Speaker 1: your job is to expose them to as much variety
Speaker 1: as possible because you don't know what your kid likes
Speaker 1: or doesn't like, and he doesn't know either. So it's
Speaker 1: really exciting, I think to see like what your child
Speaker 1: ends up gravitating towards because you just you find out
Speaker 1: more about your child, You find out things that you
Speaker 1: didn't know, and because kids are so changeable and you
Speaker 1: know this too, three months later it'll be something else. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's like my husband and I never in a million
Speaker 1: we've been to other thirteen years, I've never said the
Speaker 1: word excavator, back ho eighteen wheeler, cement mixer. I mean,
Speaker 1: every single type of dang truck exists. And like that's
Speaker 1: just because all we do is read about trucks, you know,
Speaker 1: and it's like that's what he wants right now. Um,
Speaker 1: but two actors reading about trucks, Adam and I sometimes
Speaker 1: look at each other. We're like this is crazy, like this,
Speaker 1: you know, we're we we love like oh, we have
Speaker 1: all those baby Shakespeare books like oh, the baby version
Speaker 1: of Romeo and Juliet, or like the baby version of Symboline,
Speaker 1: and maybe he doesn't want that. He wants you know,
Speaker 1: good Night, Gunite construction site or whatever, which is a
Speaker 1: great book. It's a great book. And you know an
Speaker 1: interesting fun fact about that book. That was that author's
Speaker 1: first book and it was found off the slush pile um,
Speaker 1: which I feel like is like the after our equivalent
Speaker 1: of you know, being discovered, you know, while you're working
Speaker 1: right at them all or you know, working at McDonald's,
Speaker 1: like it just so happens, you know, so rarely. Um.
Speaker 1: And that's how that book came to be. And it's fascinating.
Speaker 1: You know. I had all these ideas of what my
Speaker 1: kids would be interested in. Like I thought that my
Speaker 1: daughter would be, you know, the kind of girl who
Speaker 1: would like to read about like nature and would be
Speaker 1: chasing frogs like she did not want to do that.
Speaker 1: And I couldn't blame her, because I wasn't that girl either,
Speaker 1: you know, out there in the mud with the bugs.
Speaker 1: Like she was not interested. My boys and my daughter,
Speaker 1: none of them could have cared less about dinosaurs. I
Speaker 1: brought home tons of books about dinosaurs because my first
Speaker 1: job at the New York Times was as the children's
Speaker 1: books editor, So I got all these books, um and
Speaker 1: never they never could care less about dinosaurs, like, none
Speaker 1: of them. But then some kids are completely obsessed, obsessed, obsessed,
Speaker 1: So it's it is kind of fascinating, um to see
Speaker 1: what your what your kids end up being interested in.
Speaker 1: In terms of like the level and all of that.
Speaker 1: It goes back to my point of you're not there
Speaker 1: to teach your child how to read, so you don't
Speaker 1: need to worry too much about, you know, is this
Speaker 1: the right level. The thing at your child's age to
Speaker 1: think about is are they engaged with the story? Do
Speaker 1: they feel you know, you can you can gauge their
Speaker 1: attention and their interests when while you're reading to them,
Speaker 1: or is this too many words per page? Are they
Speaker 1: wanting to, you know, turn the page to get ahead.
Speaker 1: When your child is three, they are actually reading the book,
Speaker 1: but what they're reading is the pictures while you're reading
Speaker 1: the words, and so as you're reading to them, they
Speaker 1: will be looking at the pictures and there's often a
Speaker 1: different story embedded in those pictures. Right. Sometimes your kid
Speaker 1: will laugh and you'll be like, there was nothing funny
Speaker 1: in what I said, But they're laughing at some other
Speaker 1: little substrand of the story that's going on on the
Speaker 1: page in the pictures. And so you can gauge again
Speaker 1: if your child is sort of not looking at the
Speaker 1: book is wanting to close it, it's really funny too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm sure you saw this one. Albie was
Speaker 1: even you know, younger than he is now. The kids
Speaker 1: will just shut the book. Oh, he does that all
Speaker 1: the time. If I try to pick like, hey, can
Speaker 1: 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 go to get a new book,
Speaker 1: and if it's it's funny because if it is what
Speaker 1: I would deem like more advanced, there's too many words
Speaker 1: on the page. He's not having it, like he's just like,
Speaker 1: you know, he shuts it. He's just not he's like,
Speaker 1: you know, he or he doesn't like the pictures or
Speaker 1: for whatever reason I don't know. Um, yeah, he decides um.
Speaker 1: And then I find it interesting when he goes back
Speaker 1: to books that he liked when he was really really little, like, um,
Speaker 1: oh god, what is that path of Funny and Paul
Speaker 1: Paul and Judy like Path the Bunny. Now you scratch
Speaker 1: your dad's scratchy like sometimes he'll request like books from
Speaker 1: when he was very little, or The Very Hungry Caterpillar,
Speaker 1: you know, which he was super into at one, but
Speaker 1: he hasn't really looked at in two years, like we're
Speaker 1: back on that. You know, that is that is totally appropriate,
Speaker 1: and that is great. That's great because it's funny, Like
Speaker 1: kids are capable of kind of nostalgia and wanting that
Speaker 1: comfort from a very young age, and sometimes it feels
Speaker 1: new to them, and sometimes it feels familiar, or sometimes
Speaker 1: they're seeing something different in it. You know, books like
Speaker 1: The Very Hungry Caterpillar when they were really little and
Speaker 1: they seemed really into it and they were taking their
Speaker 1: little fingers and poking it through the teeny coles in
Speaker 1: the page. That may have been what they loved so
Speaker 1: much about that book then, but what they might love
Speaker 1: about it a year later is the words. You know,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's what he's into about it now is
Speaker 1: that it says chocolate cake and cup cupcake and lollipop
Speaker 1: Like he's into it. He's like, oh, this is a
Speaker 1: book that there are treats in it, right, right? And
Speaker 1: when you read it to him when he was like
Speaker 1: fourteen months old, he just like putting his fingers and
Speaker 1: exactly didn't know what a lollipop was. Exactly. What do
Speaker 1: you think, parent? I'm not there yet, but I'm sure
Speaker 1: it will come. The stress about when their kids have
Speaker 1: to learn to read and are they reading yet, and
Speaker 1: if it's challenging or they're supposed to be at a
Speaker 1: 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 with 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 summersault 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, is doing this other thing that my
Speaker 1: kid maybe isn't. Like kids developed different things at different times,
Speaker 1: and it really does not have any like long term implication.
Speaker 1: And with reading, it's a complicated process. It's decoding, it's
Speaker 1: word recognition, it's like finiamic awareness. There are all these
Speaker 1: different things that happen in the brain, and not all
Speaker 1: kids are developed mentally. Their brains aren't developed necessarily at this,
Speaker 1: you know, at the same time to be able to
Speaker 1: do that. And that's one of the reasons why boys
Speaker 1: read later. Their brains aren't there yet. In Europe, in
Speaker 1: Scandinavia and I was going to base up. I've read
Speaker 1: 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 gonna label books is something
Speaker 1: that's hard and that makes them feel bad about themselves
Speaker 1: because every kid who's in like group D on the
Speaker 1: leveled Readers knows that the other kids are in group N,
Speaker 1: and then automatically they're just gonna start thinking, well, books
Speaker 1: aren't my thing. I'm not a good reader, I'm no
Speaker 1: good at that. I'm going to do this instead, maybe
Speaker 1: I'm a math person or maybe i'm you know, a
Speaker 1: sports person or whatever it is. So the kids become
Speaker 1: frustrated if they learn to read or they're forced to
Speaker 1: read at too young an age. And what happens too
Speaker 1: is interesting. When kids do start to read, for the
Speaker 1: most part around age six, they are reading stories that
Speaker 1: go like this, the cat sat on the map. 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 forced 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 day on them. Matt and and you're in group
Speaker 1: and like good luck in you don't want to like
Speaker 1: pull out from under them something that they love for years,
Speaker 1: which was like bedtime reading with mommy or Sunday morning
Speaker 1: reading in bed or whatever it is that you did.
Speaker 1: So you don't want to take away something and punish
Speaker 1: them for learning to read. And then also, maybe you're
Speaker 1: reading 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 or 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 mat work. M this is this is such.
Speaker 1: You are just rocking my whole planet right now. And
Speaker 1: I can't wait for this podcast to be cut together.
Speaker 1: And I give my husband like the ones where I'm
Speaker 1: like this one. You have to listen to this, he
Speaker 1: has 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: that 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 board
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 of this stuff. Where
Speaker 1: I had a chalkboard downstairs, which was like endless amounts
Speaker 1: of hours of playing teacher and all of these things.
Speaker 1: And I feel like boredom is a really important thing
Speaker 1: um and also very beneficial to parents because sometimes I'm
Speaker 1: just like just go play, like like I don't I
Speaker 1: don't have to put out, you know, right now in quarantine,
Speaker 1: all I see on Instagram is eight thousand activities. I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to be cutting and gluing for my child, and
Speaker 1: I just don't have the energy to do it. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about boredom. Boredom is not only a
Speaker 1: normal 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 to 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, to 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: terrorist that was windowed in at some point and into it.
Speaker 1: My sharans through like broken pieces of furniture, you know,
Speaker 1: old appliances, just like random bits of crap from around
Speaker 1: the house, like in complete sets, and my brothers and
Speaker 1: I would go in there and we would just make things.
Speaker 1: Now what we did not always safe, Like I remember
Speaker 1: we used to play a game called jump the Roof
Speaker 1: where we would pile everything up into like as tall
Speaker 1: a pile as we could and sometimes put the cat in,
Speaker 1: you know, at the very bottom, and then we would
Speaker 1: find somewhere very high and leap onto the top of
Speaker 1: the pile of broken stuff and you know, fall to
Speaker 1: the ground. So but that's what kids did back before
Speaker 1: they sort of had, you know, something often a device
Speaker 1: at the ready that could instantly entertained them. You know,
Speaker 1: you just kind of did what you had to do.
Speaker 1: And when you read. I love reading memoirs as an adult, UM,
Speaker 1: and I loved reading them as a child to to
Speaker 1: read biographies to kind of for me, they were like
Speaker 1: life lessons, like this is how it's done, you know,
Speaker 1: like you want to become you know, Dolly Madison that
Speaker 1: was all that was available for girls back then, or
Speaker 1: helling Color or you know one of these. That's what
Speaker 1: you're Florence Nightingale. Um. You follow these steps and that's
Speaker 1: how I read them. But I often like reading memoirs
Speaker 1: of an earlier age because you realize, like it was boring,
Speaker 1: Oh is it boring? Like you read books about like
Speaker 1: people um in the early twentieth century and the nineteenth
Speaker 1: century to go for a car ride, like in a
Speaker 1: bar that was governing, like god, huge, huge, fifteen miles
Speaker 1: an hour just looking at the trees, or like you
Speaker 1: watch those you know, movies like Room with the View,
Speaker 1: any of the nineteenth century movies, and they're just walking
Speaker 1: around because that was entertainment. Like people learned to play
Speaker 1: the piano because that's what you had for music. You
Speaker 1: didn't have Spotify, So it was like the onus becomes
Speaker 1: on you to create the entertainment if you don't have
Speaker 1: something from outside that's that's always stimulating you and sort
Speaker 1: of prompting you to respond. You become the generator so important.
Speaker 1: It's just so important. And I think, you know, I
Speaker 1: hope that that provides moms during this time with some
Speaker 1: you know, when we first went into quarantine about a
Speaker 1: month ago. You know, I I generally I am not
Speaker 1: a big TV watcher with my kid, and I really
Speaker 1: 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 to 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 as I don't care, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like whatever anyone has to do to survive and be
Speaker 1: happy and feel loved is the only thing that matters.
Speaker 1: But but this week I was like, let's just do
Speaker 1: a few days with like him. He just isn't gonna
Speaker 1: watch TV, and he's been really bored and it's been
Speaker 1: so fascinating to watch what he's doing. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: it's like you see you see again your child like
Speaker 1: making the chices for himself, figuring out what it is
Speaker 1: that he's 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 mean,
Speaker 1: I feel like I could talk to you for a
Speaker 1: hundred thousand hours and this is so helpful and so informative,
Speaker 1: and I just think you are doing such important work. Pamela,
Speaker 1: truly thanks. Here's my parting words, which are that you know,
Speaker 1: it goes back to that reading is the reward. Don't
Speaker 1: reward reading, because reading is the reward. All the stress
Speaker 1: that parents feel around raising readers, around um, you know,
Speaker 1: raising their children to be productive, successful whatever that might
Speaker 1: be fulfilled people. You know, we all, I think, are
Speaker 1: motivated by truly understandable circumstances. We have a lot of
Speaker 1: economic uncertainty. People know, it's a competitive world. It's hard
Speaker 1: to get into a good college. Some kids just sort
Speaker 1: of lose their motivation. So we are so eager to
Speaker 1: kind of plant everything into our child that will lead
Speaker 1: them towards success, whatever that might look like, that we
Speaker 1: forget to kind of take pleasure in it, and so
Speaker 1: specifically with because I would say, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the fun part. This is you are introducing your children
Speaker 1: to something great. This is not broccoli, this is chocolate cake.
Speaker 1: You're opening up a world of like stories and imagination
Speaker 1: and possibilities and characters. You know, when I think about
Speaker 1: myself as a reader and what it is that I
Speaker 1: look for in books, I look to be transported. I
Speaker 1: look to gain access to a world that I would
Speaker 1: otherwise never have access to, whether that's living on Mars
Speaker 1: or being a coal miner in nineteenth century France, or
Speaker 1: being it's always a British queen. For me, it's always
Speaker 1: a British queen. Why not be a British queen, even
Speaker 1: a British lady in waiting, like you know, any of
Speaker 1: Like that's your chance. I mean, that's what you do
Speaker 1: as an actor, right, You get to inhabit another person,
Speaker 1: You get to be in a different world you get
Speaker 1: to actually like it's a whole new story that's opened
Speaker 1: to you. And so I would say to parents, like,
Speaker 1: remember like you are, you are opening up a portal
Speaker 1: to magic for your children. You are offering them away
Speaker 1: to to empathize, to see the world through others eyes,
Speaker 1: to no worlds that don't exist or that once existed
Speaker 1: or will never exist. And so you're doing something great
Speaker 1: for your children. And if you remember that that mission
Speaker 1: and that sense of enthusiasm, that will come through as
Speaker 1: opposed to you know, feelings of obligation and stress and pressure,
Speaker 1: and like they don't need to they don't need any
Speaker 1: of that. They're going to get that from the outside
Speaker 1: world from you. When it comes to books, You're taking
Speaker 1: them to Disneyland, you know, you are giving them the
Speaker 1: magic key. This is so wonderful. Thank you so much,
Speaker 1: Pamela for being on Katie's crib. Thank you for all
Speaker 1: of your words of wisdom. I can't wait to jump
Speaker 1: back into the book I'm currently reading. Uh, this is awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being on Katie's grip. Pamela,
Speaker 1: it was a total pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank
Speaker 1: you guys so much for listening to that awesome episode
Speaker 1: with Pamela, I learned so much and it makes me
Speaker 1: just want to jump back in my bed and read
Speaker 1: more of my book. And Hey, what books are you
Speaker 1: currently reading to your kids? Are there any huge fabes
Speaker 1: that I got to know about? You can tell me
Speaker 1: by telling us on our socials or subscribing and following
Speaker 1: us at Katie's Crib or email me book ideas at
Speaker 1: Katie's Crib at Shonda land dot com. You all are awesome.
Speaker 1: Katie's Crib is a production of iHeart Radio and Shonda
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