If Only Every Parent Could Have This Trouble

They are words I never thought I’d hear myself say: Close that book and do your homework. Turn off the light and put the book away. Put down that book and finish your dinner.

And they lead to endless negotiations as my youngest daughter pleads for “just one more minute; just until I finish this chapter, this sentence, this paragraph ... please.”

I stifle a smile even as I scold her, delighted by the maneuverings of a child who--like her mother--would rather read than eat or sleep.

But her passion sometimes has me at its mercy. How do you punish a child whose infraction is reading ... in the car, in the bathroom, at the kitchen table; when she’s supposed to be getting dressed for school, studying long division, putting away the dishes, brushing her teeth.

Banish her to her room, where books are lined up on the shelves, stacked on the floor, tucked behind the bed and between the sheets? Somehow I can’t bring myself to say it: Go to your room, young lady. You’re being punished. And don’t you dare pick up a book and read.

It’s another of those reminders that the reality of raising children often bumps up against what you think you know.

I raised my first two by the book, so to speak; perched on my lap where they’d learn to read. Every bedtime brought a story, every week a trip to the bookstore or the library. Dr. Seuss, “Pat the Bunny,” “Goodnight Moon” ... all trusted friends from infancy.

The result? One child considers Cliffs Notes a literary workout. The other reads with one eye on the clock, so she can quit the moment her required time is up.

And what of their baby sister, who came of age in a household so busy I seldom made time with her to read? At 11, she’s read more stories than either of her sisters; she devours books they can’t find time to read.

Looking back, maybe there were clues in her demeanor, her affection for solitary pursuits, her ability to imbue even the most pedestrian of objects with lives and personalities. As an infant, she was an observer, who could entertain herself for hours just watching her hands move in front of her eyes. At 2, she’d toddle around the house carrying shoes and combs and pepper shakers, babbling to them as if they were alive. By the time she started kindergarten, she was directing elaborate exchanges among the dogs, her blankie, our Barbie dolls.

This was clearly a child with a vivid fantasy life, a robust inner dialogue. Maybe it didn’t matter what I did; she was wired at birth for a love affair with words.

For confirmation, I went to Reid Lyon, head of child development and behavior for the National Institutes of Health. There are, he agrees, some children who have a natural affinity for reading, “just as there are naturally gifted athletes and naturally talented piano players.”

But reading is essentially a skill that must be properly learned and consistently practiced before it can be done proficiently. “Children with active imaginations tend to gravitate to reading more, because they get a good deal of fun out of it,” he says. But enthusiastic readers share other attributes as well. They are able to read quickly and effortlessly, so plowing through a book doesn’t feel like a chore. And they have strong, broad vocabularies that let them link the stories they read with their own worlds.

I suppose my daughter has those traits, though I don’t think I can take the credit. She was the one I never drilled on phonics, never put through the paces of a reading program, never force-fed lessons on decoding. But her first-grade class had only 20 children, and a teacher who taught them how to sound out words.

And she was lucky enough to land last in our boisterous home, where someone’s always talking, there’s an overflowing bookcase in every room, and the only place to find silence is inside your head.

Teaching children to read is our country’s educational priority. So say no less than our president and any number of celebrities. We’ve settled on the science; now all that’s left is to get books into the hands of kids, so that everyone has enough to read.

But how do you get them to love it? That’s just as important as the mechanics, but it happens more mysteriously.

I don’t remember when I began to love reading, but somehow through the long summer days and sleepless nights of my youth, books became my escape. I’d pedal my bike to the library, fill its wire basket with books, then settle on our back porch to read. At night, when my imagination made me too fretful to sleep, I’d draw books from the rack outside my room ... medical books, travel brochures, encyclopedias. They became my late-night salvation; I’d read almost anything.

Books today face such competition for kids’ attention from the computer, cable TV, video games, that the fact children choose to read is really quite a testimony to our need to find ourselves in others, to conceive of alternate realities, without limits on what we can think, imagine and be.

Maybe, before we start hooking our kids on phonics and pointing out that, “See, even Shaq and Britney Spears like to read,” we ought to try stoking their imaginations, because that’s what will power their desire to read.

Read to them, yes. But listen, as well. Even the littlest children have stories to tell. Stop teaching tiny hands to grip a mouse and power through a computer program. Give them crayons and paper and paint, and the freedom to create their own visions.

Talk to them often from the time they are small, about anything and everything. Let them see that language shapes our world, gives structure to what we think and see and life to our imaginings.

Let them see you relax with a book, so they perceive reading as a pleasure unto itself, not just as a means to find an answer, complete an assignment, please a teacher ... or Mom or Dad.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised by the way reading dominates my daughter’s life. How many times have I been holed up with a book when I should have been sleeping or getting ready for church or making lunch or ironing something?

How many times have I heard my daughters say, “Put the book away, Mommy. It’s time to leave.”

*

Sandy Banks’ column is published on Sundays and Tuesdays. Her e-mail address is sandy.banks@latimes.com.