{"id":9219,"date":"2009-08-13T13:04:42","date_gmt":"2009-08-13T18:04:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=9219"},"modified":"2009-08-13T16:41:42","modified_gmt":"2009-08-13T21:41:42","slug":"selfishness-pays-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2009\/08\/selfishness-pays-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Selfishness Pays (Off)"},"content":{"rendered":"

So, what with Utah\u2019s poor Iowa Test scores<\/a>, I\u2019ve had a few people asking me how I turned all my children into such voracious little readers. \u201cDid you read to them every day when they were little?\u201d friends query.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy, no. Of course not,\u201d I respond. \u201cI\u2019m much too selfish for that.”<\/p>\n

Which is sort of the truth. On one hand, they did and do get read to almost every day\u2014because scriptures count as reading, my friends. And, stellar saints that we are, we read as a family most every day. And, yes, I counted the \u201ccomics\u201d picture scriptures as \u201cscripture reading\u201d when they were little.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, I\u00a0am not and have not ever been a consistent storybook reader. I have hoards of cute books, and we did read them occasionally. But I simply did not follow all that good advice about reading stories every single day. I am much too selfish for that. Bedtime came for the little people, and I was anxious to put them there\u2014so I could go read my own books.<\/p>\n

That is the whole truth: I don\u2019t read to my kids. I read in front of my kids.<\/p>\n

I read obsessively, compulsively. I probably have a disorder. I\u2019m the lady you see reading at the red stoplight. (I have my kids trained to tell me when the light turns green because I just have<\/em> to know what happens next. Even when parked at an intersection.) I have piles of books by my bed, by my computer desk, on the side tables, and on the end tables, and every bookshelf in the house is double- or triple-stacked. I laugh at the silly Home Show bookshelves that are inevitably filled with more decorations than books or with obviously unread leather bound classics. But I am jealous of how cute they look, so sometimes I try to put decorations on my bookshelves and arrange them nicely. But it only lasts a week or a month before new books squish or smash the cluttery pretty things. I love books, and I love reading\u2014love them so much that I feel rather nasty and off-ish if I don\u2019t spend at least a half-hour per day (and usually much, much more) in some fantasy land living a crazy life through someone else\u2019s eyes.<\/p>\n

I suppose my kids have learned from my example because I wouldn\u2019t have judged a few of them as native, instinctive readers. But it has worked out beautifully. I\u2019ve read what I wanted, and they\u2019ve learned to love reading. I see this as one example of when selfishness pays off. I sure wish there were more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So, what with Utah\u2019s poor Iowa Test scores, I\u2019ve had a few people asking me how I turned all my children into such voracious little readers. \u201cDid you read to them every day when they were little?\u201d friends query. \u201cWhy, no. Of course not,\u201d I respond. \u201cI\u2019m much too selfish for that.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9219","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn","category-parenting"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9219"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9219\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9228,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9219\/revisions\/9228"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}