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!)

Solitary confinement with 100 books for 6 weeks is not good for ones socialisation skills obviously. Doesn't have to be a museum, a cafe with lunch, a picnic whatever!

Thank God my parents left me in peace with my books.

It’s 6 weeks. For all we know she will still be talking to family, friends etc. I very much doubt she means she wont step outside the house for one minute.

How weird. She goes to school so she can just isolate for 6 weeks, don't some of you do anything with your kids in the holidays?!

Equal amounts of activity and solitude is generally a good idea. I'm surprised it has to be said on a parenting forum but here we are.

I was allowed to spend much of my summer holidays reading throughout my teens. Some of it would be on the beach (we lived at the seaside) so I’d be doing some swimming too. And I did see friends and and do active stuff with them, so there was some balance.

Can you stop with the lecturing tone? Some of us disagree with you. So what?

The op herself says 'But seriously - she reads all day, all night, doesn’t do a lot else'

It's up to parents to make sure they do a bit of everything in the hols.

I’m so pleased my parents were negligent.

Well she's posted for opinions so I'm sharing mine, politely. One of ours wanted to play their clarinet all day every day but we managed to restrict it to a couple of hours between others activities.

I don’t understand why you think this would be a problem?

its what I did and my dc did. I would always have a load of second hand books ready for the summer hols and a stiff walk to the library and back was plenty of exercise. 15 is a good time to get your head around ideas that are new. I would infiltrate a few books like the Pedant in the kitchen to encourage a bit of imaginative cooking and Fay Weldon’s book about why everyone should read Jane Austen. And Georgette Heyer is good fun for a teenager and my brother and I used to fall about over P G Wodehouse. Children need time to breathe after a school term.

You had no friends or activities all summer and read 100 books with no interactions at all? No parks, picnics, no exercise? Whatever floats your boat I suppose. Sounds very sad imo.

I think the issue is the dc doesn't have friends so is pretending she's quite happy being alone. If I were the op I'd get her to do somehing a day involving moving her body day even if a walk or whatever then let her read 100 books.

It wasn’t sad. It was fabulous. It’s why I loved my English Literature degree.

This was me as a teenager in the eighties .
My mother was a single mother with three kids and she didn’t have enough money for activities
I didn’t have many friends either .
So during the summer I would go to the library and get as many books as possible and I would read for hours
One of the happiest times of my life

Haven’t RTFT so may have been suggested. Would any of her friends be interested in a book group type thing? If some of the ones abroad are in a similar time zone they could chat/zooom/meet (not sure what that age would be using. So for example I have relatives in India - midday UK I think is 4.30pm there and may also be a reasonable time Indonesia? Or maybe her friend that can’t go out much?

Now you are just making things up. OP actually says she does have friends and is popular

She’s 15, that’s now illegal

Yes you need equal amounts of activity and interaction. Someone reading 100 books in 6 weeks will not have the greatest social skills.

You've clearly never met my DD.

Me too. I once got a very generous book token and spent it all in one go. Loved taking that huge pile home with me. I would lie in the garden or on my bed and read. Sometimes listening to music sometimes just enjoying my time to myself.

I have had a successful career, retired early have a great family. I am not sad at all!

I’m so envious of that book token!

Who said anything about a) solitary confinement or b) reading all 100 books in six weeks. She has a TBR list of 100 books. That doesn't mean she's intending to read them all over the summer holiday, for god's sake.

So much literal-mindedness on this thread. It's almost like some people could benefit from reading more fiction.

Some say life is the thing. I prefer reading.

A head full of ideas, characters and books that will sustain and comfort you for the decades of your life.

The girl can have a sandwich and a drink in the garden or in the park and she walk to the latter, if exercise is essential. Reading does not mean she will not move her body while her mind moves to marvellous places from the wild hills of, Wuthering Heights to the frightening futurescape of, The Handmaid's Tale.

Your image of a reader seems to be a monk sitting in a dusty old library with only a cat and a hairshirt for company and bread and water for sustenance!😀

Readers are bright, engaged, thoughtful, articulate and self assured. They have furniture in their head, things to think about and things to talk about and when, they grow up, they are valued by those that matter.

They can exercise too!

Wow so many comments! Sorry I disappeared to do some work.

I’m actually quite pleased to read such a mixed bag of comments - thanks for all of your input.

Dd does have one friend who is a bookworm (I suspect this is the friend who got her back into reading, actually). I’m not sure what she’s doing this summer, but I’ll encourage dd to send her a message or two.

Dd has now agreed to make dinner a few times a week and also says she might go paddle-boarding with a few girls from school next week. So I think I can coax her out of her room a bit!

She won’t swim or gym or play racket sports or cycle… but she did also say she might do a hike with some of the people in her class who are doing DofE. And she has promised to keep up her martial arts over the summer (this is her main hobby). She also spent 20mins playing with her brother this evening so I’m thinking I can build on that.

She really CAN read almost non-stop all day long and late into the night. She reads walking to and from school (on her phone). Whilst eating dinner. Whilst putting on her shoes. You get the idea. Perhaps it’s a mild neuro-diversity. I’ve really never encountered anyone who reads like this - ok, maybe the occasional page-turner. But not every book!

I have loved reading the various comments about glorious lazy summers of years past, before the responsibilities of work and life dragged us all away.

And dd DEFINITELY needs to make a friend with a tennis court and a swimming pool and a sun-drenched lounger to read and snooze on … that just sounds blissful, thank you to the pp for that dreamy idea.

I did suggest dd could do some baby sitting but I think she’s feeling a bit shy so I need to have a think how I can help her advertise her services. Another thread I suspect!

Its what I did the summer I was 15...it was awesome 👌

@MaybeMeansMaybe for some reason this beautiful post made me feel a bit emotional. I’d love my dd to become that young woman.