To let dd15 simply read all summer

[OhLaDiDaDiDa]

Aibu to be okay with dd15’s plan to spend her entire summer reading?

She has GCSEs next year, and I strongly suspect she won’t follow up her plan of studying a few hours very day this summer.

She gets good grades and is a nice girl.

She updated her TBR (“to be read”) list of 100 books and that’s her plan! Some of them are non fiction and the fiction is a lot of “good quality” stuff (not junky AI romantasies!)

I've been meaning to read the hellbound heart for years.

My concerns would be has she got friends and is socialising? I’m a massive reader but it shouldn’t be in pls r if friends but in addition to.

Doesn’t sound like there’s anything wrong with it to me. Better that than other things teenagers get up to.

The OP has already told us she has friends.

This was me and I still read 100+ books a year with a full time job and two small children. It didn’t prevent me from having a social life but gave me a fab vocabulary and I’m sure helped me to achieve the A*s I got at GCSE and A level in English. To read is to explore places you’ve never been and empathise with people you’ve never met - there’s no such thing as too much reading!

Op I can read like this, to the point I have to stop reading for a week or 2 every now and again to get my head in the real world. I used to read at work (on break) but I'd get too distracted and not want to do any work after so I stopped myself reading at work but as soon as the kids are in bed all best are off 😂 then get up early to read somemore before they wake up. Honestly the advice here about changing location, cooking dinner etc etc will help her but even if her head is in a book, she will be absolutely fine 😘

Sounds good to me too OP. I spent most of my free time reading as a teen.

Definitely let her! She’s at a lovely care-free moment in her life. She should be allowed to indulge in such a beneficial activity. I doubt she would be doing it all day anyway.

Wonderful idea. That’s what I did at that age and I remember those summers as the happiest of my life. The only thing I would suggest is to make sure not all the reading happens at home — she can read on the bus, in the park, in a cafe. I find I remember the books I read outdoors by the river or even on the local bus ambling through London better than anything I read at home. I also used to read a lot of poems at that age (I know!) and learn them off by heart as I walked to the shopping centre to meet a friend.

I loved reading so much I had a career as a Librarian .Maybe your DD will go on and work in libraries when she is older. It sounds perfect to me. Some teenager get involved in all sorts so I would say maybe you need to be glad about this. I am retired now but still go to libraries often. I met my DH at the library I worked due to him being a keen reader.

Let her read and leave her alone, especially if it's not crap that she's reading. There's plenty of research about the benefits of reading on both emotional and intellectual development. Someone upthreated made a comparison between reading "too much" and eating chocolate too much, which is one of the strangest comparisons I have heard in quite some time.

You can work from age 13 and my two older children have done so

Bonus points if she reads all night and sleeps all day :)

You can work at 13, but it's very hard to 'find a job' as such.
Things like babysitting, paper round (if they even exist any more), garden work etc

there are still paper boys and girls round me.

Ahh, that's nice. I can't remember the last time I saw one. I'm in a village.
I think the Sunday paper delivery lasted a bit longer than the daily one.
I think there are more leafletting ops around in towns.

There are two who deliver around me, a daily boy and a sunday boy. The shop has quite a wide reach and ocacsionally when I walked dogs really early I used to drop in there. It was full of young teens loading their bags.

Where do you live? 1985? 😁

Yes like causing trouble and being horrible.

You’re unreasonable to think yr10 students are doing a couple of hours a day of revision over their summer holidays.

I'm assuming you're not a reader? This sounds like bliss to a reader - not sure how this is even a concern!

pretty much.

Great way to spend the summer. All those books ready to be discovered for the first time. I highly recommend Carson McCullers "The heart is a lonely Hunter", that I read one summer a long time ago. It involves a teenage girl hanging out (one summer). There will be summers enough for earning money and gaining independence.

I’ve been an avid reader all my life, I wasn’t weird, and had lots of friends but there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book although my mother did have to chuck me out sometimes when it was sunny, let her read all she wants, as long as she’s getting some sort of fresh air and exercise, has to be better than a screen or roaming the streets all day causing trouble.