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

Your child loves books and that’s all down to you!?
Nothing whatsoever to do with your child who is an actual separate person with her own thoughts and interests?
NEWSFLASH - children love stories!!!
The majority of kids of this age that I know are exactly the same.

Oh and if your kid loves reading SOOOOO much, why did you have to ‘incentivise’ her to read more?

I used to read the Guardian but went off it a few years ago because of this kind of smugness. Too many poorly written and one-sided articles with that kind of air of ignorant smugness, trying too hard to adopt a left wing agenda for the sake of being left wing rather than actually addressing all the facts.

‘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! ’
Well done you for having the money. I grew up owning few books but we went to the library weekly and took home as many as we were allowed each.

The books I did own were through the Puffin book club, where you could pay weekly instalments for the book.
Not owning books isn’t through choice sometimes.

Quite, @originalcobra.

Boasting about having 1000 books is, even if you shop in charity shops, probably boasting you have a spare grand you used on things you could have had for free from the library.

I love having books for my DD, but it is a privilege. When I was growing up, most of my books had stamps in - they were from ex-library sales - or they were from my brother's godmother. I buy DD books full price and feel so lucky (I also buy from charity shops).

I was a bookworm. The kind that somehow self taught how to read in the toddler years and would go missing in busy, spawling shops and be discovered after 10 minutes of frantic searching, sitting on the beanbags engrossed in books in the children's department. DM was stressed and cross, not thrilled

Sadly the DCs got the dyslexia genes, not the bookworm ones. They do read for pleasure, but not in public due to the additional concentration required. DS1 favours non-fiction, factual books in nice bite-size paragraphs with detailed full colour diagrams, most of which tend not to be very portable. When he reads fiction, he goes for the Diary of a Wimpy Kid type; lavatorial and chunky layouts which are much easier to deal with in the face of visual stress. Film/ TV adaptions of classics are great for children like him. I'm just grateful that he picks up books voluntarily!

I tend to find that the best ways to encourage independent reading are by shouting, "lights out!" or "tidy your bedroom".

It's great Flora enjoys books.

I read the same article earlier and cringed. It's like some self congratulatory article in the daily mail

Fucking hell 😂😂😂

Ds1 loved books from a very early age...still does

Dd does not read...ever, actually i lie, she read a book once

Ds2 late to start...but loves books as much as his brother

All treated exactly the same...its the luck of the draw

@FlamingoAndJohn I have just guffawed out loud at your post!

Oh dear God! My daughter surprised the hell out of me when she came home from her first week of school nursery able to read very easy picture books because she had been read to from birth. Just had not occurred to me to ask her read herself other than spelling out words. At 10 she is still an avid reader but a choice between a screen and a book and the screen will often win. However she came home tonight and curled up on the sofa in her PJ's with a book as she has been enjoying it and I find if I have some boring TV on she will divert elsewhere. Certainly not newsworthy that a child reads a book.

It’s just as fucking rude to read a book at the table as a screen , especially in a restaurant

Yes!!! It’s so anti-social. As a bookish kid I was constantly given hell for reading at the table and under no circumstances would I have been allowed to take a book to a restaurant. People are so damned smug about their children reading in restaurants but it still means they are ignoring each other. It’s also not any healthier for children to sit and read all day than it is for them to sit on screens, but somehow we think it’s wonderful, just because they are reading.

DD loves to read. She can’t hold books for long so we got her a kindle, she uses it more than any other screen, but she will get lost in her iPad too.

Ha! Also just realised that she is sitting on a bed of books I had given away by the time my DD was 5 at the latest! Thanks to a PP for pointing that out!

My 10 year old inspired by an elderly supply teacher came home and read Shakespeare in the original off her own bat (twelfth night). Read that and weep guardian journo

I got dd a child's kindle (with all internet/games etc. locked off it) last year when she turned six. She wasn't showing much interest in books.

She reads that thing for at least two hours every night...for fun. She's even tucking in to the LOTR after really getting into the hobbit! I thought it would only be a passing thing, now I have to get one with better storage!

Now personally I'm a luddite, I prefer our bookcases but does it really matter what form it's in?

She's even tucking in to the LOTR after really getting into the hobbit!

She’s not still 6 is she? I can't quite believe a 6 year old is capable of reading LOTR. If she is then I am very willing to look at your daughter with a ‘tone of wonder’, that would be incredible. She would make Flora look decidedly average in her reading abilities. I read it at 10. Remains my most favourite book ever.

hahahaha (r/thathappened) 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 the customers looked towards the little girl and gave a huge round of applause

like fuck they do! pretentious parenting! Poor Flora.

I know someone else whose 4 year old has a "reading room" in their house

I was a bookworm who learned to read before school (my neighbour used to do flash cards with her little boy and I joined in). I have no memory of anyone ever reading to me and my parents had no books at home so no hot housing from them.

However my neighbour took me with her to the library and my parents bought me a weekly comic and the books I asked for for Christmas and birthdays and those weekly kids encyclopaedias.

I read all the time, I devoured books, I hid in them. I read trash and classics and the backs of cereal packets. I let pans boil over and younger siblings get into mischief because my head was in a book. My parents were not impressed or particularly encouraging.

If a kid wants to read, they want to read. I honestly don’t think there’s a great deal you can do to influence it either way. All four of mine read (three are grown up now). I just read to them lots (partly for my own pleasure) and bought them books I thought they’d like.

And I made sure they had plenty of other things in their life, not just reading.

Why does it matter if it’s paper books vs ebooks?

I have given away all my books (except cookery books) to charity shops. I read through the kindle app on my phone or iPad. I still read for at least an hour a day. I just don’t need as many antihistamines for dust mites allergy. I don’t care if DC read books on paper or on a screen but then I don’t have a column to write.

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

And then everyone on the bus clapped.

Thanks @nevernotstruggling!

I can also make the print HUGE ON MY IPAD AND PRETEND THAT I DON’T NEED READING GLASSES.

I’m an English teacher. My ten year old told me today that he hates reading 🤔My other son is a great reader. I’ve raised them both the same so...

I couldn’t read that self congratulatory wankery. I was a bookworm ( thanks menopause for my current inability to concentrate ). I have worked in a bookshop and love hanging out in bookshops and the library. I have bought countless beautiful books for my DD7 but she apparently “ hates “ reading. If I take her to the library she does colouring or plays on the computer. ( online catalogue). She is read to every night and has a magazine subscription but does the puzzles in it and not much else. I limit screen time but she would never pick up a book willingly. Besides all my best efforts she’s just not interested because at the end of the day she is not me. I will continue to give her the opportunity and hope it’s something she embraces as she gets older.

I read obsessively as a child. It was an escape from a pretty horrible home life.

What's the opposite of a humble brag? A super brag? An uber brag?