P has a 3 week summer break now. I was telling her yesterday that now since she has holidays she has to spend a minimum of 1 hour reading everyday and finish all those books she has made me buy and not read yet. There is a wishing chair, a Winnie the Pooh, a Roald Dahl ,of course the kids favourite Geronimo 🙄, and a couple more which I can’t remember now….

Every time their school has a parent event, very conveniently they set up a book fair those days (I’m sure they get a cut from those guys). And they will give a list of the books going to be available to the kids and ask them to mark it and give it to the parents. Last time she marked some books and they were not even there! Had to buy her something else. It’s kind of a nuisance for me because P will keep buying books. She hasn’t still read all those she has and asks me to buy more! Last time I put my foot down and told her no more books until you have finished everything…. so target in these 3 weeks is to finish those off. 

Now the biggest deal with her was “when do I read” coz during the day she only wants to play. She still has a lot of imaginary play and totally loves doing her jumping around. She watches some TV too. Maybe an hour on holidays ( school days is restricted to half an hour screen time). So she said fine. I will read in the hour as soon as I wake up and till you wake up. Coz even on holidays she is up by 6:30 and me being a lazier bum wake only much later (I won’t say when 😉) so I woke up to the below scene in my bedroom. She had some mates over too for reading 🙃

She has always been fond of reading and I think it’s such a wonderful thing. It takes you in a completely different world. Where there are so many possibilities and a completely different set of personalities. Reading not only improves your language and vocabulary, but also opens up a whole new world of creativity and imagination. It helps develops concentration ( coz they need to sit in one place and read) and scientifically is said to improve the brain connections. It exposes them to so much information (especially if they enjoy non fiction too) and the curiosity factor can be satisfied to a certain extent on a wide variety of topics. 

Although sometimes I have seen parents pushing kids to read a level much higher than what they should be reading. Ok, fine…. they get to read higher Language and blah blah but are you really giving them something age appropriate? I had her classmate gifting her books meant for 9+ girls. It was about a young girl having crushes and boyfriends and revenge and stuff ! And this is on her 7th birthday. Like seriously? Why? And she was like oh my daughter loves them so she wanted to give P also one. 🙄 Again I come to a point I have made before…. why take their innocence from them? In the competition of making your child ahead of the others you are simply snatching their childhood. Let them be… let them read what they are meant to. Ultimately they are going to be exposed to all that nonsense. Why now?

Bottom line…. read and let read! 😀 but be wise in what you are choosing for your kids!