Boys and Reading

I have no idea if its true but supposedly, boys are slower to read and usually find it harder as children to sit down with a book. Where did I hear this? My mom of course :)

For now, Aaron is willing to drop everything and come whenever I say "Lets do some reading". Unfortunately, if its not a Thomas & Friends book, I have to work really hard to make him stay.

I usually do one non-Thomas book first and then let him have as many Thomas books as he likes. After all, reading is reading right? Nobody tells us grown ups what to read. We just read whatever interests us. I just want Aaron to want to read.

Each Monday morning, Aaron and I go to the Brisbane Square Library in the city. My parents have a clogging class and we tag along for the bicycle ride and library time. Usually, we spend 1 hr there but today, my parents stayed longer at their class and we were there for 2.5 hrs.

The setup of the children's lounge was ideal. There are toys (but not too many) there to distract young children. This distraction works more like a break from the books to revive the short attention span that kids have. It was easy to read Aaron a story, then allow him to go off to play while I picked out another book. He'll eventually wander back for another story again. In between stories, I also managed to enjoy a couple of my old favorites - The Adventures of Tintin.

I was amazed at the calm and quiet time we had in the library. 2.5 hrs is a long time for Aaron to be in the same space. It was me that suggested we leave in the end because I was getting a bit hungry and cold.

I feel happy today that Aaron has come to think of libraries as fun places to go.