Dreamstime
He bought the Odyssey, Lisa told me. She was excited.
“Really?” I said.
My wife and 13-year-old son had just come back from a used bookshop, and came home with a few goodies.
I was intrigued by Mark’s purchase of the Odyssey. Could this be something we could read together, like the old days? I got kind of giddy and nostalgic.
“Hey, maybe we could read it together?” I asked him. “You know, maybe a chapter a night.”
He sensed my sheepishness.
“Maybe,” he said.
I’m a journalist and Lisa is an academic. There’s no reading gene. I attribute his literacy to us reading as a family.
From the start I read Goodnight Moon and Guess How Much I Love You to him nearly every night in the womb — even when we called him Zoë, before the ultrasound showed he was a Mark.
So many nights, so many bedtime books: There’s a Monster at the End of this Book, Messy Bessey, Mirandy and Brother Wind, Sally Ann Thunder Ann Whirlwind Crockett, Little Bears Adventures, Thomas the Tank Engine, Cam Jansen, even some revised Hardy Boys.
Yet, it was Rick Riordan’s series of reimagined mythologies of Greece, Rome, Egypt, and Scandinavia that catapulted Mark from listener to reader. We’d go from me reading aloud, to him reading aloud for a few pages, to him skipping ahead during the day, to, finally, me not in the picture.
Digital Distraction
And this isn’t to say that Mark’s love of reading isn’t tempered by an awful lot of what I find to be digital nonsense – playing first-person games of carnage on his recently purchased phone.
Mark and his friends watch YouTubers play games, as well as watch other YouTubers comment about YouTubers playing games. And they laugh. Out loud. No, seriously.
It’s distraction. Noise. Nonsense.
And yet I can still hear the Pac-Man death sound effect when I goof something up. How many coins were shoved into machines for the hope and honor of placing one’s name among the high-scorers on Frogger? I could’ve owned a share of Google.
My parents, however, let me forge my own reading path: encyclopedias and comic books; the sports page gave way to other sections of the newspaper.
Common Sense
Have we forgotten the distractions from our youth: arcades, TVs, Gameboys?
Yes.
Do we worry too much about distractions with the fear our children will grow up to be dullards?
Probably. But that’s OK. Time to suss out a few facts.
First, children do need downtime from school, which, if we were honest, is now even more of a grind with a skill-and-drill, teach-to-the-test mindset and little time for recess and play.
Second, research shows that interactive gaming, including the more violent ones, can have positive effects, from promoting memory to improving motor skills.
“The Brain-Boosting Power of Video Games,” the July 2016 cover story for Scientific American, touted that fast-paced “shooter” games “enhance certain cognitive functions, including bettering attention, reaction times, and switching from one task to another.”
This doesn’t mean science has turned on the “Continuous Gaming” sign. Moderation and investigation are key.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that there be no media for children under 18 months, save for the occasional video chat (We screwed that one up).
For children ages 2 to 5 years, limit screen use to one hour per day of high-quality programs, the academy suggests.
“Parents should co-view media with children to help them understand what they are seeing and apply it to the world around them,” the organization says.
For children ages 6 and older, the academy suggests that parents “place consistent limits on the time spent using media, and the types of media, and make sure media does not take the place of adequate sleep, physical activity, and other behaviors essential to health.”
Mimicking Behavior
Recent studies on interactive gaming undermine a 2014 French survey that posits gaming offers little or no positive correlations to school performance, “whilst reading did, particularly in memory and comprehension.”
“It seems then despite lack of a causal link … reading may be more likely to enhance academic performance,” the authors note. “[The] results of this survey fully justify the educational role of parents and teachers in promoting reading.”
I know: Duh!
But how do we foster a love of reading in children with so many distractions, and for whom reading is often a challenging chore rather than cherished pastime?
I was a reluctant reader as a child, although I read everything around me with great fluency, particularly cereal boxes. My parents, however, let me forge my own reading path: encyclopedias and comic books; the sports page gave way to other sections of the newspaper.
As a high school freshman, I read Robert Cormier’s The Chocolate War, I was taken by how accurate it felt. I was hooked after that.
Mark, too, was a reluctant reader. But we found a way to make reading fun, by reading together and making observations about characters and plots, and finding real world examples.
Mark, for example, recently heard the phrase “herculean task” on a news story, and exclaimed, “Oh, I get it!” (Thank you, Rick Riordan).
There’s no high score for that, but it was quite a victory.
Reading is an odyssey, a journey we sometimes make together, and other times alone.