Audio Clip (00:00):

Hi, Sarah.

(00:01):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Holly.

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Hi, Sarah. My name is April.

(00:04):

I’m in Melbourne, Australia.

(00:06):

I have a question about…

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My name’s Julianne, and we live in India.

(00:11):

I am wondering…

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Hi, Sarah. This is Crystal from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Can you give me a suggestion for an especially fabulous book?

Sarah Mackenzie (00:22):

Hi, there. I’m Sarah Mackenzie. This is the Read-Aloud Revival, and in this episode I’m answering your questions. You’ve sent in some fabulous questions, and I’m going to attempt to tackle them kind of rapid fire for you here and answer as many as possible.

(00:39):

Today, I’ve got some good questions from the mailbag about when to use IEW or teach composition, when to start using the library and how. And another one on, what to do with a 16-year-old who’s not reading, not choosing to read, and should mom require it?

(01:01):

So we’re going to talk about it all. You ready? Let’s do this.

Lauren (01:11):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Lauren, I live in Minnesota. And a book that I’d recommend right now, we’re reading Minn of the Mississippi, which has just been a really fun book. Living in Minnesota, we drive over the Mississippi River a lot, and it’s just been really fun to learn more about our area and the history of the river.

(01:33):

So my question for you today is about IEW. Just in hearing about it through your podcast, just hearing lots of positive things about it, I’m considering using it for my two oldest sons next fall who are homeschooled. And so it’d be a fourth-grader, and then a second-grader. And my question is for you, around my son who will be in second grade. We focus just on handwriting, math, and reading, K through first or second grade. And your podcast recently, about pine cones and the pine cones we pick up, really resonates with me because I tend to pick up pine cones because I just get excited.

(02:12):

And so, I’ve just been debating whether or not to use IEW for my second-grader, specifically just for composition. So I felt like my third-grader this year, that maybe we just are a little behind on composition. And so, I’m wondering if I should start with my second-grader. Or, if it’s a pine cone and I just need to not pick it up. So I’d love to hear your thoughts on when you started IEW. If you think it’s important, at least for composition to start maybe second grade, or if you found that waiting until third or fourth grade has been a good fit for you.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]So I would just love to hear your thoughts and any recommendations that you have. Thanks, Sarah.

Sarah Mackenzie (02:49):

Ah. Well, thank you for this question.

(02:51):

You know I’m a fan of Andrew Pudewa and all the folks at IEW. I tend to wait until about sixth grade to use IEW for writing, myself. Now you know your own kids, you know what they’re ready for, and what you’re ready for teaching, and your own schedule because you’re the expert on your own homeschool. I tend not to use any IEW writing in until about sixth grade.

(03:15):

Before that, I usually just do read-alouds and handwriting practice as the two core elements of our writing curriculum. Read-alouds and handwriting, yes for writing. And I don’t mean, read-alouds and then they’re writing about it. I mean, I read aloud to my kids and then I’ll also do handwriting practice, and that is the core of our writing curriculum before about sixth grade. I wait to do any composition until about sixth grade, and then IEW is a really great option.

(03:45):

I think it’s worth keeping in mind, teaching composition too early really doesn’t have any benefits. Especially, if your kids are struggling with it or maybe they’re complaining about it. If you have any kind of dyslexia issues in your home or dysgraphia issues in your home, this can be exacerbated by trying to attempt to teach original writing or composition too early.

(04:07):

What we actually want is a lot of grammatically correct, sophisticated language patterns in through the ear. And that is accomplished 100% by reading aloud and audiobooks. So we don’t get grammatically correct, sophisticated language patterns in through our ear any other way. We don’t get it in conversation, we don’t get it in movies or media, we don’t even get it in conversation with adults, with mom and dad, because we don’t speak grammatically correct, sophisticated language patterns. So the only place your kids are getting those are from their read-alouds and their audiobooks.

(04:42):

And then what you also want is, to give them practice with letter formation so that writing, the actual physical act of writing, is easy for them. Once they have letter formation down, so that the physical act of writing is not something they have to think about, we want to keep reading aloud to them and then maybe have them do some copywork, some simple copywork. And this can be very simple. You can buy copywork workbooks online if you want, but it can be even simpler than that. You can really just pluck a book off your shelf.

(05:13):

Let’s take, Ramona the Pest by Beverly Cleary as an example. One of my kids did some copywork with Ramona the Pest, at one point. So basically, what you would do is, you would have your child copy down the first sentence of Ramona the Pest onto some notebook paper. Done. One sentence, that’s it, done. Put a bookmark in it, that’s it. Next day, they copy the next sentence. And the following day, they copy the next. When they get older, you could have them copy longer passages. But really, they could just copy a sentence a day working through any novel, or picture book even, on your shelf.

(05:49):

And that practice of just copying, which we call copywork, it teaches our kids so much about the mechanics of language, punctuation usage. So that by the time they’re in about sixth grade and we’re launching into teaching composition, they’re really familiar with the way good language looks on the page. Now they’ve got all that good language coming in through the ear, all those grammatically correct, sophisticated language patterns coming in through the ear, right? So they know what good language sounds like, and they know what good language looks like because they’re taking that language and they’re copying it right out of a novel onto the page.

(06:28):

So you take something like The Hobbit or something, and they don’t have to do the whole book, you just start to do a sentence a day until you’re done with your school year, then you call it good, right? Now they know what written language should sound like and what it should look like. So then when you start to teach composition, you just speed right ahead of all those introductory, or practice, or early kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, fifth grade writing curricula. You’ve just sped through all of that and you’ve done it really simply. You can teach composition before then, but it’s definitely not necessary.

(06:59):

To use the metaphor you mentioned earlier, it’s definitely a pine cone. It’s picking up a pine cone to do composition, Lauren, before your kids are in about sixth grade. My oldest kids, my three oldest that have all graduated now from our homeschool, they’re all excellent writers. My two daughters who have experience in university, they have gotten comments from their university professors at the quality of their writing. And I’m telling you, we did not do any composition until they were in middle school. It was just reading aloud and copywork. And so, that is a really strong foundation.

(07:37):

And then, by the time your kids get to about sixth grade, you can do something like IEW and it won’t be as hard because they will know what good language sounds like, they will know what good language looks like. And so, they can actually spend their energy doing things like coming up with ideas and connecting ideas, which is actually the harder part of writing. And now, they have the physical act of writing down. Now they can recognize what good language looks and sounds like, and so it’s much easier for them to produce their own.

(08:06):

I will say, my younger kids, they’re all currently 11, 9 and 9. They were asking me, this last year, to teach them some writing because they wanted to all write their own stories. So what we started doing, because they were, I mean, I don’t know, we’re homeschoolers, third, fifth grade-ish, right? The twins are about third grade-ish this last year and Claire’s about fifth grade-ish. We started using something called Writer’s Workshop from Layers of Learning. I’m going to put a link to that program in the show notes. It’s very well done, it is super affordable, and it’s very relaxed. We did it in a really relaxed fashion and it went really well. It’s sort of a unit study approach to writing. Like I said, it’s a very relaxed pace and I’ve been very impressed with the program.

(08:56):

But again, I’m seeing it as gravy. I know that my 9 and 11-year-olds don’t actually need it yet. They don’t need to learn composition yet, so there’s no pressure there. Whatever we get done there is like gravy. Awesome. We wrote some really great paragraphs, or we wrote some really great stories, but there’s no pressure in doing it right or making sure we get through a certain amount of it, because it’s all gravy. It’s all pine cones. Listen to all these mixed metaphors, gravy, pine cones and all that.

(09:22):

Remember your read-alouds are doing most of the heavy lifting in teaching writing. Because good language in through the ear is going to be what comes out later in their writing, because they have all those good language patterns stored in their brains. So your read-alouds count as your writing curriculum. And before your kids are in about fifth or sixth grade, you can absolutely just read aloud, and have your kids do handwriting practice and copywork, and let that be your writing curriculum, if you’d like.

(09:53):

After that, I think IEW is a fabulous program. Layers of Learning is a fabulous program. I’ll put links to both of those in the show notes. I hope that helps.

Kyla (10:03):

Hi, Sarah. My name is Kyla, I’m from Lincoln, Nebraska. I first want to thank you so much for all that you do for homeschooling moms. I’m so thankful to have come across you so early in my homeschooling journey.

(10:16):

My question for you is, how or when do you introduce your kids to choosing their own library books? The thought of taking my four children to the library feels overwhelming. I have a nine-year-old, a seven-year-old, a five-year-old, and a two-and-a-half-year-old. So when we do go, I feel like they don’t know how it’s organized, I haven’t taught them that. How do we even go about that? And when they do pick books, even sorting through them to decide what’s good and what’s not feels overwhelming.

(10:48):

So my question for you is, when do you start taking your own children to the library and how do you go about it?

Sarah Mackenzie (10:57):

Oh, yes. Okay.

(10:58):

So Kyla, my family, we’re huge library users. That said, the way we’ve used the library has changed a lot over the years, depending on my kids’ ages, what I’ve got on my plate, how many small people I’m trying to wrangle, right? You’re in that stage, I think Kyla, you said you’ve got four kids all nine and under. Yeah, taking the kids to the library, at that stage, feels kind of like, it’s like bringing this loud ruckus circus into a very quiet space, right?

(11:26):

I remember that feeling well. And there were years where I did not bring my kids to the library at all. When I had, let’s see, three school aged kids and three toddlers, I always loathed to bring them all anywhere, at all. Least of all the library, where I knew that their antics would be louder than ever, right? So just a little reassurance here that, the reason it feels hard to take four kids, nine and under, to the library is because that is a really big job.

(11:53):

So if that just isn’t something you want to do, you just feel like you should do, I don’t think you need to worry about it. You can use your hold system, put books on hold through your library’s website, your library’s app, and then just pick them up when you’re out, or ask your husband to pick them up when you’re he’s out, or whatever, without having to haul everybody in to the library.

(12:12):

Because I think the answer to your first question of, “When do I start taking my kids to the library?” is, when you want to. Because you could continue just to use that system of putting books on hold and picking them up without bringing your kids into the library forever, if you wanted. I know quite a few families who do that really successfully, there’s nothing wrong with that.

(12:32):

So if you are just saying, “When can I bring all my kids to the library? How do I do that, because I really want to?” that’s a different question. I just don’t want you to feel like you have to, you don’t have to. There’s no rush, basically. Learning how to use a library is pretty straightforward, honestly. You can teach it pretty easily and in the flow of things. So I don’t think you should feel like you need to get your nine-year-old in there to start learning it. It’s okay if your nine-year-old doesn’t know how the library is organized.

(12:58):

I’ll tell you, when I started bringing my kids to the library, I would often ask them maybe on the way like, “Okay. Each of you tell me one thing you’re hoping to find.” And so one kid might say, “Another Boxcar Children book.” So then I would be like, “Okay.” This kid, Drew, let’s say, “Come over here and I’m going to show you where Boxcar Children books are. They’re right here.” And then another one might say, “I wanted books about sharks.” So then I would say, “Okay. That’s going to be non-fiction, so that’s going to be over here.”

(13:26):

And those really casual conversations over time, they sort of add up to knowledge. So by the fifth time that you’ve got a kid asking for a non-fiction topic and you’re like, “Oh, okay. Sharks are right here. Remember how we got sharks over here last time? This time, you want a book about parrots and those are also going to be in animals, and they’re going to be right around here.” Or, “Now you want a book on mummies. Okay. So those are going to be over here, still in the non-fiction section. But look, we’re going to look over here where books about mummies are.”

(13:55):

But if you’re like, “I don’t even know how I’d find it because I’m trying to wrangle my toddlers.” Then you’re in the season of life where taking your kids to the library is not the best idea, frankly. So I think there’s a lot of different ways to go about this. And again, putting books on hold and picking them up is a perfectly fine solution, and one that I used for many, many, many years.

(14:16):

If my kids weren’t overly shy, depending on the kid, if they could do this without having a panic attack, I would suggest that they ask the librarians. So if I had a kid who was like, “I wanted to find the new Zita the Spacegirl book.” And I didn’t know where that was, then I could say, “Okay. Go ask the librarian over there. Say, “You’re looking for Zita the Spacegirl.”” And I would watch him walk over and ask for Zita the Spacegirl. I have kids that could do that and kids that absolutely would not do that. And I might go, “Let’s go ask together.” And I’d say, “We are looking for Zita the Spacegirl.” and then that librarian could come help us.

(14:50):

So that’s also another thing, because your librarian is a really good resource at your library, the best resource actually, at the library. So teaching your kids to approach them… I worked in libraries when my oldest kids were very, very small. I would just be in the collections… or circulation service not collections, in the circulations’ desk. And I will tell you that, we had a lot of conversations on the staff about how you could tell which kids were homeschooled, because they could talk to adults. So they would come up and just talk, they would have the best social skills. Which I know is so funny, right? Because we all think of like, “Oh, homeschoolers don’t have any social skills.” And that’s just not the case.

(15:28):

I wasn’t even homeschooling yet, my kids were too young for that. But on the staff, they would talk about how you knew which kids were homeschooled because they spent so much time with adults, they could come up to an adult at the library and ask a question, in a way that most of the other kids couldn’t. So use that. Teach your kids to go up to the librarians and ask them for help to find something.

(15:49):

Now the other part of your question was, what do you do about checking books out that are not good? And first of all, I think there are a couple of ways to look at this. There are a couple of, quote-unquote, not good books that you might be talking about. You could be talking about just not good as in, this book is beneath them. In homeschoolingland, we often call this twaddle. Personally, I’m not a fan of that word. That’s books that we might think are just not at the level that we want our kids to read at.

(16:17):

And my kids have always made a beeline for these books. Books based on TV cartoons or whatever, of course they do, right? Because if your kid loves, let’s say, Dora the Explorer, as much as my Allison did, she loved Dora the Explorer. Of course when she saw Dora the Explorer at the library, she felt like she was seeing an old friend. And so, she wanted to check out all those books. So there’s that kind of, quote-unquote, not good book. You might just be thinking, “I want my kids to pick better books.”

(16:48):

There’s also another kind of not good book, which you might be referring to as a book you don’t really want your kids reading, or that your child’s not ready to encounter. Books with heavier themes, or that are heavier topics, or just driven by some ideology that you really don’t want your kids reading. So let me tell you how I deal with each. You can take or leave any of these strategies, you are the expert on your own kids in your own homeschool. I’ll just tell you how I’ve done it, and then you can see if any of this might work for you.

(17:17):

For the books that are just not great books that I might be tempted to call dumb, I let my kids check them out. And I will also say that, I have grown a lot in this area. And from my earliest homeschooling days, where I would probably call a book dumb in front of my kids or say, “It’s twaddle.” in front of my kids. And then what I learned and discovered is that, when you call something that someone else enjoys, twaddle or dumb, it doesn’t make them like it any less, it just makes them feel shamed.

(17:47):

So for example, I love Downton Abbey, right? And my husband will say, “It’s a glorified soap opera.” Now does that make me love Downton Abbey any less? No, it does not. It makes me not want to talk about Downton Abbey with him. And bless him, he just meant it nicely. He’d be horrified that I was even mentioning this on the show. But what I’m trying to point out is that, if your kid brings home Diary of a Wimpy Kid, or I don’t know, those Disney fairy series, or whatever it is. A lot of them are series books that you’re like, “You could be reading better books than this.”

(18:25):

You calling it twaddle or dumb is not going to make them like it any less, it’s just going to make them feel like, A, something is wrong with them, or B, they should keep that secret. You don’t want them thinking either of those things. Neither of those things are in their best interest or in yours, right? Taste is acquired over time, and our kids need a lot of exposure to fabulous stories to acquire that taste. They also, at the same time, they need a lot of practice with easy books. So those series that you think your child can read beyond, they’re still really good practice.

(18:58):

Let’s go back to Allison, since we’re talking about her a lot today, she loved those rainbow fairies books. Even beyond the time when she could have read much harder books, she was still reading them in stacks and stacks. She loved them. That was good, because in that phase between the stage when your child has learned to decode and learned the sounds of reading, and before they become fluent where they’re reading with speed and accuracy and ease, in between those two stages, they need to read a lot of books that are easy.

(19:32):

Because the best way for them to become fluent, to read with speed and accuracy with ease, is for them to get a lot of quantity of words under their belt. And that happens much faster with easy books. So they will actually become fluent readers faster if you let them read a lot of books that are just under their level. So don’t worry too much if your kids are stacking up books from the library, Minecraft books, or those fairy books, or whatever, and you know that your child could read a harder book. It doesn’t matter. Taste is acquired over time, I promise they will not still be reading those for fun when they’re 20.

(20:05):

And number two, they need the practice, so it’s really good for them. So if those are the kind of books, like just not great books, I let my kids check them out. I don’t worry about it, and it usually burns out. They get tired of a book in a series after a while because they realize they’re formulaic, and they just grow beyond them. And then, that series, served its purpose and they’re ready to move on.

(20:27):

Now for the other kind of not good books, for books you don’t want your kids reading, I’ll tell you what I do. When my kids bring home books from the library, all of those books go in a pile on my desk. It’s the first stop for those books when we get home. And then I make it a point, pretty soon after we get home, to quickly flip through them. And so I will look and be like, “Okay. I know this author, I know this book.” Or, “The older kids read this book.” Or, “I’ve read this book. Those are all great, great, great, great.” They go in an approved pile, basically.

(20:52):

And then, any books or authors I don’t recognize, or I haven’t heard of, I look up. So I’ll take a few minutes, and the kids know they need to wait for this before they start reading the books. So I’m going to look in a few places for reviews. One of my go-to sources, especially for books that were recently published, is redeemedreader.com. So I will look and see if they have written a review on the book.

(21:18):

They post reviews of books that… they give a synopsis of what the book is. And then, they don’t ever say, “Read this, don’t read that.” They just alert you to the issues that come up in the book, so you can decide if your child is ready for that content, if it’s something you want your kids reading at all or right now, right? So that’s a really good resource so you can find out what kinds of topics come up in that book and if your child’s ready for those. Because depending on your child, your family’s values, and whatever the publisher has decided for that particular book, it might not be a good match for your kid.

(21:54):

I also sometimes, especially if redeemedreader.com doesn’t have a review for it, I will also just sometimes Google the title of the book with something like homeschool book review or Christian book review just to see what else I can find. Is there another mom who’s already written a review, or other reviewers who have written about it that can just alert me to what’s in this book so I can decide if it’s a good fit?

(22:18):

A good example for this is that, I have a couple of very sensitive nine-year-old boys who really can’t handle animal deaths. Really, we’re just not ready. I mean, we just can’t do it, we’ve tried. It’s just not something that we can handle in our books. And so, I will look up and I’m looking for that specifically, along with a whole bunch of other issues that I’m not ready for my kids to encounter, they’re not ready to encounter. And so, I’m looking for those to see if it’s something that will be a good nourishing read for my child or not ready for it yet.

(22:49):

Basically, what we want to do is, we want to get informed as to what kinds of topics and conversations we need to be prepared for if our kids read that book, right? Would we want to make sure that we’re talking with our kids about, if they read a book that has x, y, or z issue in it? We can think of the contents in books like the contents of a suitcase, right? My 21-year-old daughter, she can carry her own suitcase, she can decide what to put in her suitcase, how much weight is too heavy, and how much is not.

(23:18):

We all do this, right? I sat down, not too long ago, to read a World War II historical fiction novel. Usually, those are my favorite. And I was like, “I’m not in a place I want to read this right now. It’s just a little too heavy for what’s happening my life right now.” It just, it was too much. I wasn’t in a good place to read it. So I can just go, this book is too heavy for me right now, I’m going to put it aside for later. And I’m deciding, I’m not going to put this heavy book into my suitcase, I want to pick something lighter, right?

(23:44):

My 21-year-old can make those choices for herself. My nine-year-olds, not so much. They’re not ready for that. So there are a lot of topics, times in history, ideas, that they’re not ready to carry. They’re too heavy for them or they’re just not fit for them, according to what our family wants to discuss and handle at what ages, right? So I’m going to continue to carry that suitcase for them, for a while, and to decide what goes in it.

(24:09):

And the way I do that is, basically, previewing topics. Not necessarily the whole book, because I just don’t have time for that, and I bet you don’t either. But what I’ll do is, I’ll sort of preview, with a bird’s-eye view, and you can do that by looking up reviews. Again, redeemedreader.com should be a first stop for a lot of you because it’s such a great resource. You can also look at Common Sense Media, which does this a lot for movies, but they also have book reviews on there. You could just look up Google Reviews.

(24:36):

And then also, know that things are going to sneak through, your kids are going to read a book that has a topic or a theme, or an issue that you weren’t expecting, or that you missed, or whatever. That’s going to happen, it’s happened with all of my kids. This is not a failure, it’s an invitation. It’s an invitation to have a conversation about that hard thing. And that’s our job as parents, is to have conversations with our kids about all things, right?

(24:59):

And so, a book is a relatively safe way to have those hard conversations, because usually they’re about topics, or themes, or people that are fictional in some way, so they’re one step removed from our reality. So when your kids encounter something in their reading, or in watching, right? In watching a TV show or a movie that you really wish they hadn’t encountered yet, use it as an opportunity to have a conversation.

(25:24):

Whew, that was a lot. That’s what I do. We use the library a ton. I know a lot of families who don’t use the library at all, some who use just internet, putting things on hold and picking them up. And then others, more like my family, that use them very heavily. We use the library a lot. We are already always maxed out on multiple cards at my house, and that’s how I do it at my house.

(25:46):

And hopefully, something in there is helpful for you. Take any of that, leave any of it. Because as I say so often on this show, you are the expert on your own kids in your own homeschool.

Karen (25:59):

Hi, Sarah. Thank you for everything you’ve done to help homeschoolers like us. You have given me so many good recommendations over the years, and I’m very thankful.

(26:10):

I currently have a mildly dyslexic 16-year-old teen who is having a hard time reading on her own. She is very busy with lots of ballet and dance. She’s also struggling with anemia, so she doesn’t have a lot of energy when she’s home. I want her to develop a love of reading, but she is not independently choosing to read or even listen to audiobooks on her own.

(26:38):

Should I stop asking her to read on her own, and only focus on making our family read-alouds deeper for her at the high school level? Or should I continue to ask her to read on her own, plus come to our family read-alouds like normal? I just am wondering if you can give me some ideas on how other families manage things like dyslexia with older kids, and juggling read-alouds with independent books.

(27:07):

Thank you for your time. Bye.

Sarah Mackenzie (27:10):

Okay. Yeah, this is a great question and I’m glad you asked it. Karen, you’re not alone.

(27:15):

So what should you do? Well, you’re going to be the best person to answer that question, right? I bet that you have a gut answer on what you would do if you weren’t worried about what you think you should do. I’ll give you some ideas though. I’ll tuck some ideas that you can put into your pocket, and then you can make your own decision here. A 16-year-old who’s listening to family read-alouds is getting a lot more reading done than most teens are.

(27:46):

In his book, Raising Kids Who Read, Dr. Daniel Willingham quotes some research that, “Teens read an average of six minutes per day of their own choice.” Their own choice to read, their own fun reading, six minutes per day. Now this is an average. And what that means is that, really, when we say teens read an average of six minutes a day, a few teens read a ton for fun, and then most teens don’t read anything at all for fun.

(28:14):

So I would say, I would submit to you that, any reading aloud that you’re doing with your 16-year-old is more than the average 16-year-old is reading. Nobody’s reading aloud to most 16-year-olds, so you’re already winning. She’s actually already reading, because of course read-alouds count as real reading. They actually count as real reading plus, because that’s real reading happening through the ear. All those grammatically correct, sophisticated language patterns coming in through the ear, it’s like real reading plus bonus, right?

(28:43):

So she’s already doing reading. So that could maybe just challenge the idea of like, “Oh, she’s not reading for fun.” She is actually, if she’s coming to your family read-alouds. And even if you’re, quote-unquote, requiring that she come to your family read-alouds, she’s still getting it, and that’s really good.

(28:59):

Another idea you could kind of think about is, a lot of times I have a part of our day when reading is the only option, and before bed is a common time for this. So you could say, for your 16-year-old, I don’t know what time your lights go out at your house, but let’s just say for the sake of this example that lights go out at 10:00 PM, but if she’s reading, she can keep her lights on till 10:30. That’s just the only thing she can do. She can’t be on a phone, she can’t be doing anything else, she just has to be reading or listening to an audiobook, or nothing, or going to sleep.

(29:31):

And you don’t have to do that at bedtime, you could do it earlier in the day as well. I like to have, what we call a quiet reading time, QRT is what we call it. And it’s just 30, well, for my younger kids it’s just 30 minutes a day where they know that reading is the only thing they can do. They go usually do it on their beds or they can also go on a couch, and they can read or listen to an audiobook, but that’s the only option for QRT. So you could do that, something like that during the day too.

(29:56):

I think either way, whether it’s like you’re doing that during the day or you’re just doing it before bed or whatever, it takes into consideration what I like to think of fondly as the watermelon effect. And we’ve talked about… In fact, when I had Dr. Daniel Willingham, the author of Raising Kids Who Read, on the show before, he described the watermelon effect. I’ve started calling it the watermelon effect because I think of it so often.

(30:19):

The idea is this, this is what Dr. Willingham said, he said, if he put a big bowl of watermelon on the kitchen table after dinner as a dessert, his kids would enjoy it. They would all come, everybody would grab some, everybody would like it, everybody would say, “Ooh, that was a sweet, delicious treat.” But if he put next to that watermelon, a bowl of candy or a bowl of ice cream, then everybody in his family would choose the candy or ice cream. And I, honestly, would choose the chocolate ice cream myself, right?

(30:50):

And so the idea being that, reading is like watermelon. It’s sweet and wonderful. But when you always have the option to do something else, let’s say that there is an option to go on a screen, whether that’s a phone or a video game, depending on the kid, right? If there’s an option to go on your phone or to read, going on your phone is the candy because it requires less of you.

(31:15):

And so as humans, we’re always angled toward that lower energy, the thing that’s going to take less out of us. It’s just instinctually what we do. And so, if most of us are presented with going on our phone or reading a book, even if we actually want to be the people who read a book, it takes a lot more willpower. It costs us something to choose that. So instead of putting out the watermelon and the ice cream on the same table, you just take off the ice cream and say, “Right now, we’re having watermelon.”

(31:44):

That’s what we can think about when we have a QRT, or a quiet reading time, or an assigned reading time. And I do this in my house. And during that time, I never tell the kids what they have to read. I’m not assigning the titles, I’m assigning the time. The time is set aside for them. I took all the ice cream and candy off the table and just put watermelon there, but how much watermelon or what kind of watermelon they have is totally up to them. That make sense?

(32:07):

One other thing I think it’s worth mentioning here is that, family read-alouds often shift when our kids become teens because they’re not home as much. And it sounds like this is true with your daughter, because she’s very involved in dance. And this has happened with all of my three older kids as they became teens and young adults. They got a driver’s license, they got jobs, they were gone more often. And so, then I would find myself holding off on reading aloud till I had everybody. And because of that, we weren’t reading aloud nearly as often.

(32:41):

And my suggestion here would be, instead of doing it that way, just keep reading aloud at your normal pace. However often you were doing that, if you were reading aloud after dinner or if you were reading aloud at whatever time, fill in the blank, keep doing that even if your teen or your young adult can’t be there, and then just fill them in.

(33:00):

So let’s say that, they’re working on Monday nights or she’s got dance practice on Tuesday nights, and so they miss those read-aloud sessions. Well, on Wednesday, when she’s back, you can look at the other kids and say, “Who wants to fill in your sister on what she missed?” And now, you’re asking them to narrate. You’re asking your other kids to narrate what’s happened, which is super fabulous. Or you could also, if that particular child really wanted to read or listen to the actual book, they could just do it on their own time before you read aloud again.

(33:31):

But I would still, quote-unquote, require them to be at the read-aloud when they’re home. And then when they’re not, you can just fill in. I would keep reading aloud to all the other kids, and then when they’re back, we can say, “Okay. Let’s fill you in on what happened.” And again, that’s just a really great practice for your other kids to be narrating. And it keeps you going, it keeps you moving forward in your read-alouds instead of putting everything on hold. And then you might find yourself getting kind of resentful or frustrated that your teen is never there and is impacting the younger kids. So this is a good way around that, I think.

(34:02):

So of course, as always, you’re the expert, right? You’re the expert, Karen, on your own 16-year-old daughter. And just like everybody listening right now, is the expert on their own kids. So I just want to take this little opportunity here to be a vote of confidence for you. Whatever your gut is telling you to do in this situation, is probably the right answer.

(34:23):

You asked me, “Should I keep asking her to read on her own and then also have her come to our read-alouds? Or should I stop asking her to read on her own and just have her come to read-alouds?” And I think you could probably follow your gut. I bet your gut is telling you what would be the best fit for your particular daughter. Because remember too, you’re already doing a lot of good reading with your family through those read-alouds, and all of that counts.

(34:49):

Well, this episode feels like enough of me talking, doesn’t it? I think it’s time to hear from the kids. Let’s listen to, Let the Kids Speak. Kids, take it away. What are you reading and loving lately?

Audio Clip (35:05):

Hello. I am Nathaniel Lee from North Carolina, and I’m eight years old. And I like to read Henry Huggins because it’s exciting.

(35:19):

Hello, my name’s Virginia. I’m six years old. I like this book called, Grumpy Badger’s Christmas, and it’s written and read by Paul Bright. Thank you.

(35:31):

Hello, my name’s Carl. I’m from North Carolina. And I like this book called, Goodnight Moon from Margaret Wise Brown. And I like it so much because I like sleeping all the time, and I like sleeping just like Linda. And I’m four years old. And have a merry, merry, merry Sunday.

(36:07):

My name is Vanette. And my name…

(36:11):

Where are you from?

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]Idaho.

(36:14):

Idaho. And this is my favorite dinosaur, book of…

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]Dinosaurs.

[NEW_PARAGRAPH]Dinosaurs and [inaudible 00:36:23].

(36:23):

Magnificent Book of Dinosaurs.

(36:24):

What is it’s-

(36:26):

Oh, and you love Deinonychus.

(36:27):

I love the Deinonychus and T-Rex.

(36:32):

Hi. My name is Drew, and I live in Dallas, Texas. My favorite book is The Wonky Donkey because the bird took his eyeball out.

(36:41):

And how old are you, Drew?

(36:42):

Six years old.

(36:45):

Hello, my name is Emery. I’m nine years old, I live in Arkansas. And my favorite book is The Wingfeather Saga. My favorite character in there is Leeli, because she’s energetic and she really doesn’t like help. But sometimes she just has to have it, because she has a twisted leg. Bye.

Sarah Mackenzie (37:16):

Thank you. Thank you, kids. Great recommendations, as always.

(37:20):

Hey, if you want the show notes to this episode, they are at readaloudrevival.com/227 because this is episode 227.

(37:30):

And I’ll be back in two weeks with another episode for you. Until then, you know what to do. Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids, through books.