Keep Reading Aloud Through High School. . .

Today was filled with appointments and lots of waiting. But I didn’t mind. I knew ahead of time what kind of day it was going to be, so I determined to make the best of it. I spent three hours at a coffee shop (indoors while it was cool and outdoors when it got warm) reading and journaling. I also walked outside in the beautiful autumnal air. The weather was nice enough to wear my shorts, flip-flops, and a tank top, but there was just enough of a cool breeze to merit wearing a light-weight cardigan. It felt just wonderful outside, and we’ve definitely tipped toward fall around here. Yay. It was a happy, invigorating feeling.

The reading material I had with me in the coffee shop was a novel and one of my writing notebooks, and in my notebook I ran across a piece of writing—a memory—that I liked. It has to do with the sweetness and power of reading aloud with our children, which I’m sure that probably everybody already does. But I want to encourage you all to keep on reading to your children, even in high school. If you start when your children are young and keep on reading until they leave home, you will find much joy and pleasure, and there are some important relational and educational benefits to doing so as well (though it seems wrong to add utilitarian purposes to this because it’s really more of a beautiful thing than a dutiful one!).

This is just a light, simple post, and I realize I’m preaching to the choir, but bear with me because I like this topic!

Years ago, I was in the kitchen and Aaron was sitting at the dining table. As I cooked and Aaron did whatever it was he was doing, we visited. And somewhere in the course of the conversation Aaron made this pronouncement to me: “If you did only two things right, it was the books and the food.” I hope I did more than two things right, but I got his point. And I liked it!

Books were the biggest part of our family’s educational life and probably the biggest pleasure we shared. I began reading to the kids when they were babies, and we read aloud together through toddlerhood, through the elementary years, and into high school. We read almost every single day, throughout the day. And if we missed the daytime reading, we rarely missed the bedtime reading sessions. We often read before the kids went to bed, and then read again after they were in their beds with prayers said, chatting done, and lights out. Night after night, year after year, I’d sit on the hallway floor outside their bedroom doors to read.

When the kids were young, I couldn’t sit down without a little one throwing a pile of books on my lap and crawling up to hear their favorite stories. The same stories. Over and over and over again. I still know Piggy in the Puddle (toddler Melissa’s favorite story) mostly by heart. Sometimes I was tempted to hide certain books (just for a day or two!), but I knew that this would only result in a desperate child who would enlist me in a search for that book. So, I kept reading them. Sometimes I’d try to skip sentences or paragraphs and do a condensed version, but the kids noticed, and they would correct me and insist that I read it again, the right way. And I thought, “If they have this memorized, why don’t they just look at it and ‘read’ it themselves? Then I can read something else to them.” Most of the time, though, I was happy to read those same books because I sensed joy in my child when I did.

Our children throw their favorite books on our laps because those particular stories bring them great delight, and they love sharing them with us. We connect warmly and deeply over story. Reading together is a powerful relationship builder, so we should never avoid or despise those hours. By investing ourselves in reading aloud, we are saying to our children, “I love you. I like you. I love reading with you. Aren’t stories fun?” We nurture a love of books, and we nurture our relationship with our children. And our influence on the lives of them grows. And the closeness of our entire family grows. Reading together is priceless.

If we will continue to read books together through the years, our children will continue to enjoy it. Here’s the piece of writing I found in my notebook today, written Tuesday, November 11, 2003. It simply reiterates what I just wrote above:

“I’ve spent hundreds—no, it must be thousands—of hours over the years reading to my children. We’ve enjoyed so many books together, and it’s special to all of us to think about these times again and to recognize the real closeness and richness we’ve gained from enjoying books together. For a long time now, my kids have come out of their rooms or from the corner chair or from wherever they have been engrossed in a book to read something aloud to me that made them laugh, moved them, or made them think. I love this.

“Today, while I was cooking dinner, Melissa began to read aloud from her place in Return of the King, and she just kept reading and reading. She was reading aloud to me just like I’ve read aloud to her throughout her entire life. When the phone rang in the middle of Melissa’s reading, I said (just like my kids used to say to me),”Wait! Don’t read any more until I hang up. I don’t want to miss any of this. . . Okay, now start again.” For an hour, Melissa read to me, and she happened to be right at my favorite part of the book. I’ve read this part more than once before, but a good book always seems new and never loses its power. Its truths seem to grow deeper and more profound on subsequent readings. So, while I chopped tomatoes, Melissa read, and tears ran down my face. Melissa’s eyes were full of tears, too. Like I used to, she had to stop reading for a few seconds to collect herself. We talked about the stirring power and beauty of that part of the story and what it means to a Christian—how the scene so beautifully illustrates spiritual truths and stirs up awe and worship toward God.

“This evening I had a sweet glimpse of what it means to be read to. How it makes one feel closer to the one doing the reading. How it draws people together, not just because they’re doing something together but because they are experiencing something together through story. Reading aloud together is a gift!”

I’m so very glad I read to my children. All the way through high school.