I ♥ My Little OCD Reader

For a long time my little kids struggled with reading. They (with their born-11-weeks-prematurely brains) took much longer to learn than my older children (with their born-at-39-or-41-weeks-gestation-just-like-they-should-have-been brains) did, and took even longer to read fluently or easily.

Part of the problem in a situation like that is cyclical. No one likes to do anything that is too hard, but when you don’t do the hard thing it doesn’t get any easier, and then you keep not liking to do it because it’s so hard. And on and on.

We read to them and read to them and read to them. If you’ll remember, Russ read ALL 7 of the Harry Potter books to them, a feat that still astounds me. (Have I mentioned lately that he is the best? [Russ, not Harry Potter.] Because I really think he is. [Russ, not Harry Potter.] But I digress.) All of that reading didn’t seem like it was moving them towards being truly independent readers, a trait we cherish around here.

Jenna finally started doing some reading on her own. Then one summer while we were visiting in Utah a cousin introduced Rachel to a series of books about cats, called Warriors. Well anything animal related appeals to Rachel, and both she and Jenna started reading these books. They loved them and couldn’t get enough. Eventually Jared started reading them too and I was happy.

But after about 18 months of solid of warrior cats reading I started worrying. I didn’t want them only reading one type of book. Because this woman has written an unbelievable amount of books about these warrior cats, but one day they’re going to run out, and I don’t want them coming to the end of the warrior cat books and thinking that there’s nothing else out there that they would enjoy reading. (I do know a person who believes, quite seriously, that there’s only one author in the world that he can enjoy reading.)

Eventually I decided to try a little incentive. (This was when we could still afford incentives, obviously.) I told them I would pay 50 cents/book for any book not in their regular reading programme. Jenna branched out in a few different directions, and then Jared tried something new. But Rachel still resisted, not wanting to stop the warrior cat series she was currently on.

Then, for some reason, she started looking at our bookshelves. When next I saw, she had something different on her menu. But was it just one book? On no, not Rachel-the-fan-of-series reader. Rachel had found “Ramona the Pest.” “Ramona and her Mother” and “Ramona and her Father.” A whole stack of Ramona books accumulated though out the years. And guess what. She read them all, in order, and requested the books from the library that we were missing.

It totally made me laugh, because I’m really like that in my reading. If there is a series, I don’t want to read just one book. I want to read all of them. And in order, of course. Sometimes I avoid reading a book because I know it comes in a series, and if I read one I’ll want to read them all. And I HATE having read something out of order and finding out information I shouldn’t have known until later. (Though, truth be told, I have been known to read the 3rd book in the Anne of Green Gables series all by itself just because the romance is so delicious that sometimes I cannot resist it.)

So the girls are back to their warrior reading now. Rachel finished a book today and told me how wonderful it was. Jared has plans to read a book in his other favorite series as soon as he finished “The Alliance.” But at least they’ve all tried (and liked) some new things, at least now they know there are other things out there that the really will enjoy reading.

I think it was money well spent…