She's adorable (4.00 / 2)

They'll feel soft and mushy and cuddly till they're 5 or so. Get in a lot of hugging.

This is the new baby advice I give everyone, given long before it's needed...but it was one of those life lessons I learned the hard way....persoanlly.  It's for your sibling right now.

When my kids were in the early grades....my older daughter read a lot of what I called trashy books...very undemanding vocabulary and simple sentence constructions with dumb, asinine plots.  A lot of Sweet Valley High and the lower end Nancy Drew books. So I decided to institute a chart where if she read 3 "good" books she got one piece of trash. The number of books read fell...She just hated reading for pleasure...I had taken all the pleasure out of it.

So when the younger one started to read, I let her read anything any everything she wanted.  One week she read 22 Sweet Valley High books. Soon she was reading lots of good, long, demanding books.  She still reads for pleasure.

Life lesson ...don't do what I did.  Don't turn something that gives joy into drudgery.  

Now the happy ending is my older daughter moved to Brooklyn...Subways are for reading.  

"Incrementalism isn't a different path to the same place, it could be a different path to a different place"
Stoller

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by: debcoop @ Fri Nov 28, 2008 at 23:06:01 PM UTC

debcoop's advice (0.00 / 0)

is good.  That's why I thought the Accelerated Reader program in the schools was a disaster.  (My kids are now in their 20s, so not sure it's still being used.)  

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by: Susan S @ Sat Nov 29, 2008 at 13:22:17 PM UTC