When it comes to reading and your marriage, who is the bigger reader? Did you both read books about marriage and how to maintain a good marriage before you got married? Or did you assume you’d figure it out as you went along?
I have to say neither Mick nor I read books about marriage before we married, which is perhaps surprising since we are both big readers. We did however talk a lot about what we expected of marriage and how our marriage was going to work.
There is another aspect to reading that does not include reading books about marriage but reading generally. Do you and your spouse ever sit and read together? Or read bits out to each other? When I find something that particularly strikes me in a book, I will often read it to Mick and we’ll talk about it. He does the same, especially if it’s something in Time magazine and the world news which I rarely read.
What your husband does can also affect your children. Recent results show a widening gap in the achievement of boys and girls, as evidenced by recent SATS results. It also revealed of 17,089 young people surveyed, girls read a lot more frequently than boys. Perhaps we should not be surprised at these figures of boys don’t see their fathers reading.
The great examples our son had was two parents who both read and who encouraged him to read through library involvement and bringing home lots of books. We also both read to him and to our daughter from the time they were babies.
As a result our son and his wife have followed through that pattern and read to their children since they were babies. They are encouraged to borrow books from the library, as well as having their own library which Mick and I do our share in adding to from time to time. Each Christmas or birthday there is nearly always at least one book as part of their gift.
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Given that reading proficiency and enjoyment, as well as reading frequency, is strongly linked to attainment levels, we should be doing all we can to encourage our children and especially boys, since they are lagging behind, to read. A positive male example helps in this.
Too often boys claim that reading is ‘boring.’ As parents we need engender a love of reading and help them choose books they will enjoy. I believe it doesn’t matter so much what they are reading, so long as they are reading.
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