Posted on 12/19/2016
What do most well-meaning parents do with vegetables? We require our kids to eat them, get them into our kids in any way we can, and generally bribe our kids with unhealthy, sugary desserts, in an effort to get them to eat their veggies! After all, they need those nutrients, right? Well, I’m not a nutritionist, and I’m not going to critique your child’s dietary issues, whatever they may be. But with that image in view of how we treat vegetables, I’d like to invite you to consider whether you treat books the same way. If so, can I make a little suggestion? Stop. Please, for the love of all stories and imagination and knowledge and the many other wonderful things that books can offer, stop treating books like vegetables.
But Aren’t Books Like Vegetables?
Okay, I get your point. Like green beans, books are good for you and for your kids. Learning to like green beans and other nutrient-rich vegetables will be part of a healthier lifestyle and possibly lead to a longer lifespan. (Okay, now it seems like getting your kids to like their veggies might be even more important than getting them to eat their veggies. But I digress.) Sure, someday your child could read something (perhaps even about the nutritional benefits of eating green beans) that leads her to finding a cure for cancer. But that’s beside the point: Unlike vegetables, books are not simply a means to an end. In themselves, books are the good stuff. Reading is a privilege. Reading books is a beneficial process, all on its own.
What Happens When We Treat Books Like Vegetables?
I know there’s still debate within the nutritionist community on this one, but work with me: What if you could get the exact same nutritional benefit from a gummy vitamin as you could from the daily recommended portion of vegetables? No question: you’d do it, right?
Well, maybe. If your mom told you that you would get a rich, sugary dessert only if you ate the actual vegetables, maybe you’d say no to the veggie pill. But why would your mom do that? If the pill had just as many nutrients and the dessert would be a negative component for your health, it just wouldn’t make sense (hello, childhood obesity epidemic?). Bear with me here: Many of us do the same thing with books. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you? All those incentive charts that make kids earn screen time by reading: i.e. reading is like eating their vegetables, by which they can earn the “dessert” of screen time.
Guess what we’re asking to happen as soon as our children have no restrictions on screen time? Since we’ve dangled it out there as the reward or treat, once they’re free to do so, they’ll simply treat themselves to more screen time and abandon reading, altogether. It might not happen this way, but it probably will; after all, in the system which we created, earning screen time was the entire point of reading.
So how do we change our children’s relationships to books? Check out the next post.
Read the Series
• Part 1: Do You Treat Books Like Vegetables?
• Part 2: How To Stop Treating Books Like Vegetables
• Part 3: If Books Aren’t Vegetables, Why Do We Have To Make Such an Effort?
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