Don’t Rush Bedtime…

I’ve mentioned before about how sometimes I need to reflect to remember to relish my bedtime reads with my kiddos. When I take the time to be present, my mood switches from fussing at them to get ready for bed, to laughing and enjoying a good book.

However, there are some nights where I want to get them to bed quickly, for a variety of reasons, either its late or I wanna watch something on TV (being honest here), and I want to read the shortest book/chapter possible.

But because of the way my life works, it is on those nights that I end up spending the most time reading with my children.  For example, recently I had these experiences with them.

*My son has a good sized collection of National Geographic books, and he’s getting to the age that I want him to read some of them to me. We take baby-steps, so we did some partner reading, where I read a page and then he reads a page, with the book titled Cheetahs. As much time as he spends with these books, I was under the impression that he almost had them memorized, so this would be an quick bedtime read…not so much.

Really, it wasn’t even that he struggled reading the words so much, it was that he needed to tell me about things in the pictures, or read the captions, or read it in a robot voice instead. All things that are creative and even necessary sometimes, but not when TGIT  is waiting downstairs on my TV.

To be honest, I kept looking to see how many pages were left in the book, and I was itching to scrap the partner reading and finish reading it to him myself.  However, about halfway through the book my son found his stride and was breezing through the rest of the book. I felt a lil guilty, as I complimented his reading on my way out the door.

*It was late one night, and usually if it gets too late, we scrap the book and just send them to sleep without one. This was one of those nights. I was on my way to turn off my daughter’s bedroom light when she said this,

“I don’t care what we read, as long as its good”

Well, how am I supposed to turn that down? So I did an about face and grabbed the Whatever After book we had been reading and read another chapter.

So, in your #RaisingReaders quest, I understand that there will be nights that you prefer to just tuck your child in, turn off the light and walk out. However, keep in mind not only the memories you are creating, but also the readers you are raising.

Thank God for DVR and keep #RaisingReaders!