To think that kids being great readers isn't so much better than being gamers?

[Utterbunkum]

I write this as a prolific reader. It was the family joke that I could be found with a book at all times. I loved reading, it was my greatest pleasure. I read from a young age.

But I wasn't a clever child. In every other respect, I was average, apart from maths, at which I was an unmitigated dunce (still am). This was later diagnosed as dyscalculia, unheard of in my childhood. A bit of a digression, but I think my maths teacher at secondary school, who was also the dyslexia assessor, knew something was off. He offended my mum once by asking her how I did in English and being surprised when she told him, 'very well, it's her best subject'.

To cut a long story short, my only skill (reading quickly and easily) has been of very little practical use. I got a degree in Eng Lit as a mature student, which did little to get me out of the minimum wage earning potential.

I find it interesting the importance people place on reading as an activity over gaming. My reading was just as antisocial (more so, since you can't chat with your mates whilst doing it) and the young gamers I know seem to be far more analytical and have higher earning potential than I ever did. My husband barely picked up a book. He is an IT whizz with a very high IQ. My nephew is not dissimilar.

I still love reading. And I do think kids who don't are missing out, but I suspect that's because my life has been so enhanced by it from an enjoyment perspective. But kids who game probably feel the same. I don't think reading is quite the superior form of entertainment some think it is.

Neither myself or husband or dc have ever read a book unless forced to.

Ds didnt master reading English until he was 12 years old.
His writing is like that of a 4year old (he is early 20s and English grammar is something that I don’t think he will ever understand

However he did teach himself Spanish and is now learning Mandorin
His writing is so neat when he forms the characters that you wouldn’t believe it was the same person writing the same words in English

He is by far the most intelligent person I know of his age yet without that English GCSE the only employment open to him are minimum wage jobs.

Sorry for the random typos - thanks, autocorrect! 😅😆

I love ACOTAR. @DarkAcademia Have you read them, too? If not, I'd read along, as the series does become more adult as it progresses, so DD may have questions (particularly if she's early teens). Great tackling of mental health and relationships, though.

On the main point, I think the ideal would be for people to consider kids being great readers as good as them being great gamers.

The skill you have is that you are literate. Literacy is a fundamental skill that is the bedrock for so much.

Is anyone saying literacy isn't important - I though OP was talking about more reading for pleasure.

I did when kids were young try very hard to encourage a love of books or comics or anything that meant they were practising reading skills but once they hit a certain level does it matter as much? DS an avid reader, once he got past slow start, trailed off in teen years with his reading - less gaming more actual coding with him - still did well in GCSE.

I also looked for fun way to practise maths skills - though those were harder to find - an online site they did - math-factor -was great though and they've done really well with maths since - though also did real world activities as well.

Most of DH spare time is spent making things - models to paintings to clothes or watching TV - he'll read magazines but only occasional book - he still capable of reading for work - which is a university lecturer so yes well educated and has to read to keep us with new advances in field.

There's a reason places like GCHQ and technology companies recruit heavily among gamers.

They're not recruiting gamers who can't read.

They are recruiting readers who can't game.

I don't think reading is quite the superior form of entertainment some think it is

Agreed. I speak as an avid reader - I learnt to read at a very young age and was reading at an adult reading level by the time I was 8 or 9. My degree is in English literature and I now have a book reviews blog. But ultimately reading is entertainment. A hobby. Reading for pleasure isn't a morally or intellectually superior leisure activity to watching a TV drama or playing Red Dead Redemption or chatting with friends or playing football or anything else.

Just because someone doesn't read books, that doesn't mean they aren't engaging with stories and consuming information.

I also find it odd that among the objections that Mumsnetters have to kids spending a couple of hours gaming is that 'You can't tear them away from it' and 'It's solitary so they aren't engaging with others'. OK, fine, but that would also have applied to me as a child when I spent hours reading. I had to be dragged to the dinner table and then told off for trying to read during the meal, and when I was reading for hours I certainly wasn't taking part in conversation. We all have things that we find super-absorbing, whether it's reading or gaming or binge-watching Succession or doing bloody jigsaw puzzles, and I don't think one is any better than the other.

There's a reason places like GCHQ and technology companies recruit heavily among gamers.

This comment alone fills me with apprehension - I worked in IT from the 1970s and know about coding and analysis at the machine level. There needs to be logical thinking and analytical ability and being able to understand what the user wants from the system and how rigorously to test it. I would trust a reader over a 'gamer'.

@ForeverDelayedEpiphany I am truly sorry for your loss.

How many gamers who can't read do you think there are?

It's completely different. Reading enriches you culturally and intellectually, gaming doesn't.

I'm not anti-gaming as such, it's a fun pastime if that's what you're into, and yes it can be a career path for a tiny handful of people (as can anything really), I just don't think hours spent completing the latest Zelda gives you much of a cultural or intellectual insight into anything.

It's all about balance. My DC were reading pre school. They also loved pokemon (which I thought taught them numbers, cypes/categories and numbers through strength Quotients. They had a love of music and played instruments. Most importantly they had access to a variety of books as well as school stories and Harry Potter.

Both took firsts in their first degrees at Oxford or Cambridge (both Liberal arts and language based). One now teaches English, the other is an academic and has had his first book published.

Interestingly both love language. Only last night dd informed me she had studied 8 languages and had mastered three: English, Music and BSL (her French is pretty fluent) as well as Spanish, Latin, Arabic and German.

Thank you for your kind words. ❤️

Oh, I do like gaming very much too, and will happily spend an hour with my DS on his Switch playing Mario Kart. I find it relaxes me and isn't as difficult to get into as reading is now for me.😊

One thing I've noticed about reading so much with my kid (four now, been reading daily since birth) is the exposure to new words that wouldn't naturally come across his path. I have a fairly wide vocabulary, yet there are words that pop up in books that he wouldn't normally be exposed to until much later, if at all. As such he has a fantastic vocabulary, really advanced for his age, and absolutely loves learning new words, trying to read signs, sounding out letters, it's lovely.

My husband and I both taught Primary for many years. There will be exceptions to every rule, but the children that read widely were, on the whole, better learners in every respect than those that gamed a lot.

Reading builds knowledge, empathy, concentration, visualisation skills, imagination, understanding of language, and logical reasoning. It won't increase your IQ, make you good at every subject or "cure" special educational needs. It just enables you to use the brain you already have to its best potential.

Gaming (and I'm about the generalise) is highly addictive, uses a sophisticated pattern of withdrawal and rewarding with dopamine to encourage children to ignore their cues to switch activities, and can quickly become an obsession. That's before we get onto the issue of children playing games inappropriate for their age and issues of online safety when children are left unmonitored with an internet connected gaming console.

Reading with your child and encouraging them to read is the best and most important thing a parent can do for their education.

A few caveats: Not all games and books are created equal. Compulsively reading every Wimpy Kid book ever written is not equivalent to reading a range of high quality literature. Spending hours on Fortnite is not the same as collaborative play and world building on Minecraft. Some games (like Times Tables Rockstars and Reading Eggs) are specifically designed for educational purposes, but I've never met anyone who describes themselves as "a gamer" and means they have the top score in TT Rockstars.

‘Mills and book crap’- the authors that spent time researching tropes and plot and theme and thinking up different scenarios and planning and researching their setting and reading voraciously to improve their knowledge and language and characters would love that. 😉 See op, you’ll never escape people’s preconceived notions.

Being a gamer doesn't mean you can't also read. Just because someone doesn't read for pleasure, that doesn't mean they aren't literate.

FWIW, I have a relative (now in his mid-70s) who is an extremely eminent scientist - the world's leading expert in his field, holds multiple professorships at elite universities worldwide, recipient of various prizes, pioneer of technologies that now save people's lives every day. He never reads a book, ever. He wasn't interested in books as a child and he isn't interested in them now. It obviously didn't stop him excelling academically, or from writing his thesis, research papers, textbooks etc.

@Verbena17

I think at GCSE level, Shakespeare has ruined a love of reading for many kids.
I don’t believe Shakespeare needs teaching to kids except for if they choose English Literature in 6th form. I think at GCSE level, only an English language paper needs to be taught and have English Lit as an additional subject you can choose if you want, like you do for French, history etc.

I fully agree. Our son was a prolific reader until he went to secondary school but they managed to kill it stone dead for him even before the GCSE years and Shakespeare! He completely lost interested and wouldn't even read the set-books let alone anything extra for fun. It was such a shame as we'd really made an effort from a very early age, reading to him every night, teaching him to read long before he started primary school, buying loads of books that interested him, but, no, almost as soon as he started secondary, he just refused, same with poetry and all fiction really - he just doesn't "get" it. He's brilliant with non fiction though!!

At least he had learned the literacy skills and is excellent with functional English, i.e. grammar, spelling, essays, written arguments, etc., which enabled him to get highest grades possible in written GCSEs and A levels, i.e. Geography, History, Economics, etc. His lowest GCSE grades were English Language and English Literature!! Couldn't believe that even in the Eng Language paper there was still fiction comprehension, poetry and creative writing - virtually no "practical" real life English/Literacy at all!

School teaching/examinations of English has really lost it's way! When I was at school, we did comprehensions of things like a recipe or an appliance instruction book and did "real life" tasks such as writing letters, but now it all seems dominated with poetry and description writing/fiction with very low relevance to day to day real life literacy needs.

if you can read well, you can comprehend history, geography, physics, chemistry, coding, etc. etc., better.

if you game, you can kill znardvaars when they invade from the plant Vorrrdzinger to attack the kralggiii.

@stayathomer I have never actually read Mills & Boon, romance isn't my thing, but I am sure I have read the equivalent in crime, lol.

I think reading is a good thing, reading good quality fiction has been shown to improve theory of mind and reading is also great for learning, for relaxing and your mental health.

Gaming in moderation is probably fine as well and probably has some benefits, its not my cup of tea but if kids are doing a bit of gaming then reading a book before bed then that is probably fine. I suppose the issue with gaming and screens in general is that some kids seem to become dependent on them, or use them to the exclusion of everything else and you don't much hear of kids who have a melt down when they can't read their book but you hear it pretty frequently about video games and screens.

On balance reading is probably a better past time for anyone so I voted that yanbu!

If I could have written this post it would have been me and I still love reading and it didn't stop me getting good jobs either. All my children live reading and this will never be discouraged there learning all the time totally different to a game

I'd agree with this.

Poetry at GCSE has been particular low point. Poetry I did at school had structure rhymes patterns as well as imagery - occasional fun but still making a point one - a lot of poetry DC have studied seems more like prose and it's often harder to spot usage of language in them somehow - pretty much made our kids hate all of it.

Their first primary school did Shakespeare and to my surprised did is is such as way to be age appropriate and fun for them - secondary school killed that interest - took taking them to the globe for they to see how great it could be - they were very surprised how much they enjoyed it. Even DS who used to like analysing texts and comparing and contrasting pre GCSE hated both English GCSE.

And yet I, a prolific reader, absolutely cannot comprehend physic, chemistry or coding...

Reading for pleasure as a kid is shown to be linked to success later in life. https://natlib.govt.nz/schools/reading-engagement/understanding-reading-engagement/reading-for-pleasure-a-door-to-success

It might be that they haven't done the study on gaming yet, or maybe it's love of narrative rather than reading, or something else, but the current understanding is that yes it is much better than gaming in a learning sense.

I don't have anything against gaming but I don't think it should be lauded as an alternative to reading.

@Ladyj84 I did not say my love of reading prevented me getting good jobs. I said it did not result in me doing better than a lot of gamers do today.