Friday 8 March 2013

Be careful what you wish for; Boys and Reading

I love to read.  Always have, probably always will.  The loss of my Kindle on a plane a couple of weeks back - entirely my fault as I can't even blame the children for distracting me since I was sitting a couple of rows away from them and Husband - has left me bereft (pauses for heavy sigh and moment of quiet).  Or rather it did, until I realised I could download the Kindle app to the ipad and that all the purchases I made to date were stored in the ether - but still, I WANT MY KINDLE BACK, DAMMIT.

Anyway.  Where were we?  Oh yes, I love to read.  Boy #1 also loves to read and is a carbon copy of the bookworm I was at the same age.  By the way Mum; I finally get how frustrating it is to try and get your kids ready for school in the morning with one of them constantly glued to a book.  Boy #2 has, on the other hand, up until recently been more about drawing than reading.  The house is awash with carefully drawn pictures of A380 airplanes complete with the customisations he plans to add to them in the future when he is the engineer in charge of design at Boeing. Things like gardens, tennis courts, swimming pools, extra seats for the Super First Class section he's going to introduce - you know the type of thing.

These signs of his active imagination are great, but I have to admit to have been looking forward to the day when he discovers just how much fun reading can be.

Well, that day has arrived.  But rather than resulting in a calm and peaceful scene of both Boys sitting reading in perfect harmony, we now have another turf war on our hands.  Boy #1, you see loves to read stuff like The Hobbit, Harry Potter and such-like - but he's also partial to the odd comic and illustrated Asterix and TinTin book.

And guess which books are most attractive to a 7 year old brother just discovering the joy of books?

That sitting and reading in perfect harmony?  We'll get there, I'm sure.  Eventually.

2 comments:

  1. The Ball & Chain has gone out of town till next Tuesday (or is it Wednesday?) and left his Kindle here. Panic.
    I said "Why can't you just buy a book at the airport?" but no, it had to be Fed Ex'd to him.
    I'm not even going to tell you how much that cost. Let's just say he could have bought a sodding library.

    Oooh, nice big numbers on the verification thingy.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I love it when they discover reading. Littleboy 1 now likes to read in bed after lights out; I bought him a special reading lamp. It may mean he gets less sleep but I really encourage it. He loves Roald Dahl and Tintin - but Harry Potter is "too scary" as yet.

    ReplyDelete

Go on - you know you want to...