conuly | How to make your kid a non-reader.

LOL, I could never resist kiping my kid's books to read for myself - in all fairness, I did buy a whole lot of them for her, and also gave her a passle of my old ones, so I think I should get to read them if I want.

It's never been a matter of "encouraging her to read", either - ha, just try to discourage her; I bet if I stole all her books, all the lightbulbs and flashlights in her room, and her glasses, that STILL she'd find a way to keep on reading. Bibliophilia is apparently a genetic trait.

Two words: "Harry Potter"

Every single book in the series seemed to mysteriously disappear as soon as I put it down. Living in a house with three other voracious readers and only one copy of the book everyone wants to read does not make for peaceful reading. It makes for ninja-style sneak thievery (which is fun in its own right, but not when you're in the middle of a Quidditch match).

We just pre-order 5 of every book that comes out.

The bloodbath in our homes would be outrageous if we didn't! :-)

Same here. Whenever I left a book somewhere, upon my return I would find my mom or dad had snatched it "just out of interest". There were many secret sneak-and-steal wars in our household, and I suppose this is one of the reasons why I dislike to put a book down before I finished it (or at least reached a point at which the suspense isn't quite so high).
To be fair, I must admit that when I was on vacation with my younger cousins, I often snatched a book they weren't reading at the moment... *cough*

My first thought on reading that suggestion about "appearing to take interest" was, "What, there are people who don't do that naturally?"

Our friend Gian (god she was a brat growing up), her mom Nona was like that. She always took time to tell my parents how wonderful it was that they pretended to like our books, and they never were able to explain to her that they did like our books.

You're not supposed to correct the kid's pronunciation? I mean, I wouldn't do it harshly, but if she was practicing reading aloud and said something wrong.. err.. it would make her not want to read if I told her the actual word? Do they know how many words I'm embarrassed to admit I don't know how to pronounce because I've only seen them in text?

I think once in a while is fine and can certainly save embarrassment - for example, my sister was 15 before she learned how to pronounce "conspicuous" - but if they're mispronouncing a lot of words then you can't possibly correct them every time and not annoy them.

It's like my dad never wanting to play the piano because his older brother would call out from the next room, "F-sharp, Jim!"

We have a running joke in our family from the time Connie (I think she was about 13) said "psychic", only she had only read it, never heard it, so now we always say it the way she did: "Fizz-kick"

I think the point is that if somebody's trying to tell you the house is on fire, you don't take the time to correct their grammar. Similarly, if your kid is saying something important, you listen to what they're saying, you don't just listen with a metaphorical red pen.

Ooga brought up the point that it's the frequency of the corrections that matters; I was envisioning a mispronunciation every once in a while, not every other word.

The thing is, if your kid is reading, he or she will likely come up with a lot of words they can't pronounce. This isn't their fault, it's the fault of the English writing system. But if you're constantly correcting them for what they've learnt, instead of being happy that they're learning something, or listening to what they say, they'll stop trying to do that.

I understand that. I'd still want to correct them if they were struggling with something, though.

But hey, I don't plan to have kids, so no worries that I'll mess them up. ^_~

*snerk* Beautiful. I've sent it to my mom.

You'd enjoy the most recent post in my journal, btw.