To cringe at this guardian article about children and books

[MyopiaUtopia]

Surely I can't be the only person to think this is one of the most humblebraggy self-congratulatory and smug articles ever?!

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/books/2020/mar/01/how-to-raise-a-little-bookworm-in-the-age-of-smartphones-and-tablets

Sorry OP - just realised you’re not the mum! Have had some good news today and half a bottle of red on a school night

YABU. This is a great article and the author has reason to be proud of herself and celebrate her daughter’s love of books.
I love what she did with changing the pronouns to female in all her books to show her heroes and monsters could be girls!

She couldn’t read at 3? Oh dear dear dear.

Glad I'm not the only one who has done all that and still produced a child who hated reading. His sister has read more English literature than most people I've met, but ds prides himself on not having read a book since the Oxford Reading Tree. Actually no, tell a lie, he did read Zlatan's autobiography.

I probably was Flora, to some extent. But at least my parents insisted on table manners.

I think I might steal "cringed myself inside out."

Anyway, the article, what a load of smug bollocks! I was going to suggest that the child might be reading her mother's obvious fiction, but seeing as vomiting over such shite would have given her away hiding in the corner, and doesn't inspire tones of wonder, I doubt it...

Ha ha, I bet this person has only one child. After having a second child I realised the 99% of who we are is inherent, parents merely take care of children until they’re ready to take care of themselves. I was a bookworm. My mother didn’t switch pronouns in books and I wasn’t banned from watching tv (I watched loads). I just found an author that I clicked with at the age of 8 (in the school library with no parental involvement) and it was a life long love affair. Parents don’t have anywhere as near as much influence over their children as they think they do, we merely help cultivate the stuff that is already there.

LOL to ‘cringed myself inside out’. I was (sort of) that child, except when I pottered off to read in a shop, blissfully oblivious of everything but a good book, my parents went ape and decided I must have been abducted. Not too much in awe when they finally found me

I read this the other day & stopped at the point when she actively took the screens away when she started school or something like that.
Yes reading's important, but reading & screens are not mutually exclusive & there are plenty of educational apps & programmes as well as utter trash. More in favour of teaching to choose wisely & think critically than take away any other option.

It's surely not that impressive to have an 8 year old that's not glued to smartphone or tablet? The story would have been more worth of note if she'd been talking about a teen.

I watched shit loads of tv as a child but could read at 3. Possibly because I was the youngest child in a large family and they were all mad keen readers - even my grandparents were big readers.

I think my eldest sister probably taught me as it certainly wasn’t my parents (she never really had much time for me anyway).

The tips are great too, I’m going to try some. Good for her and for Flora!

My 8 year old reads a lot and I have to wrestle books out of her hands at bedtime or when she's walking down the street. So what? Some of what she reads is boring crap some of it very worthwhile. I haven't done anything special and strangers never comment on it because it's not that unusual. Most kids I know will get sucked into a good book from time to time.

she is very pleased with herself.
is she really that unusual?
surely most parents still read books to their dc?

“ When she reads in restaurants, for example, waiters tell me how rare it is to see a child immersed in a book, instead of glued to a phone”

How is this something to boast about?
It’s just as fucking rude to read a book at the table as a screen , especially in a restaurant

I've been an avid reader since I was a child. I read to my children every night. If they brought me a book, I dropped whatever I was doing to read it to them. Alas neither of them read regularly now though dd loved To Kill A Mockingbird when she read it for school last term. Other than that I might occasionally see her with a Jacqueline Wilson and ds stopped once he grew out of David Walliams. What else can you do? 🤷‍♀️

my youngest hated reading, until something clicked with Jacqueline Wilson, before then it was such hard work.

I think Reading is a good skill like many others really ,baking a decent sponge cake ,learning to ride a bike ,swimming .I was a dreadful little swot as a child in the 60s/70s! Before the birth of technology obviously .I think an I pad is a useful tool ,and gives so much info at the touch of a button ! My parents invested heavily in a set of Encyclopedias for me .These are still in my possession but so much stuff has changed over the years ! Tech is still a good skill , and will be so much used in the future whether we think so or not!

Bet she's popular at the school gate at dropping-off time!

Humblebrag is an excellent word

She has a very narrow view of smartphones / screens if she thinks that it's a case of smartphones / screens vs. printed books. My 8 year old is also a 'bookworm' who reads in book shops and reads under the covers at night and early in the morning but he also is able to code, loves his LEGO Boost that taught him how to build and code his own robot, and we used an iPad a lot when he was younger before he could read to keep him occupied on long car journeys or in restaurants sometimes.

Screen time doesn't mean your kid will be an illiterate idiot. In fact, one of my son's favorite iPad games when he was 4 was a maths game and it really helped build his skills in that area.

Also why were the books she was reading to her daughter / giving her daughter so out of date and twee? Enid Blyton - really? Give the kid something that was printed more recently than 1956 for god's sake. Older doesn't mean better, especially not when it comes to representations of other cultures or gender roles.

@Doggybiccys My username is because I am partially sighted due to pathological myopia and other conditions :)

I totally get why encouraging reading for children is brilliant (I'm with you on that one, Flora's mummy) but as someone who can physically only read on my smartphone due to my eye condition, I'm getting very tired of the constant "phones are evil, books are better" narrative. I'm guessing if mummy of Flora saw me on the tube staring at my phone she would tut at me considering me the victim of lazy parenting . Also I know this is nitpicking but fgs tell precious Flora to look where she is going as she's walking! I wouldnt be too impressed if a child immersed in their book went smack into me and my white cane as I walked down the road....

the assistants will intervene and beg me not to disturb her further. “Look at her, she’s reading,” they’ll whisper to me, in a tone of wonder, as if I did not have eyes"

This is obviously the Guardian version of the Mn "and all the bus applauded".
Or maybe they meant "please don't disturb her because we saw what a temper she had last time you were in and refused to buy the plastic tat from the corner and we've only just repaired the damage from last time."

I've been in many bookshops over the years, with 3 reading dc, who would flop down happily reading for as long as they were left. No one has every said anything like that, because there were far too many other children doing the same to comment on one child.
They also spend far too long on screens. It isn't mutually exclusive.

My eldest was reading fluently by the time he was 3, always head in a book. He’s always also had unlimited access to tv, screens and games consoles. The 2 aren’t mutually exclusive. Some kids just love reading.
DD also likes to read but not to the same extent.

I’m not smug about although I do feel a bit sad when you read that there are many many children in the UK who don’t own a single book! We must have 1000s of books in our house!

Backlash 😂😂😂

I also agree with PP who said 'wait till they're 14'. My nearly 13 yo got her first phone recently. From an avid reader, she barely opens a book (except school). Occasionally I wrestle it from her, and she'll once again, temporarily get absorbed in reading.

Hopefully it'll even out.

‘the assistants will intervene and beg me not to disturb her further. “Look at her, she’s reading,” they’ll whisper to me, in a tone of wonder’
Course they do love. Jesus wept, talking of fiction, most of this article appear to be completely made up. I’m sure Flora the Wunderkind is as fabulous as her mother says let’s just hope she’s not as insufferable.
My kids read in public occasionally but I have yet to have a stranger stop and run over to comment. FFS