teach your children well (or you will end up where I am now)

When I was pregnant with Henry, I worried about all sorts of things, the most irrational of which was, by far, that the baby would be ugly. Yes! Really! One night I said to Wade, "What if the baby isn't cute?" He looked at me like he was waiting for the punch line of a joke. "Seriously," I said, "WHAT IF THE BABY ISN'T CUTE???"

I don't know why he didn't smack me; probably because I was pregnant. And ironically, at not quite five pounds, Henry wasn't exactly "cute." But he recovered! And was a very cute baby.

Anyway, I guess I was so worried about how cute my baby would be that I didn't worry much about Really Important Things, like how I would get these kids to read. Because suddenly, it's an issue.

We have always read to our sons. When Henry was a baby, I would put him in the bouncy seat or under the Gymini and read Jane Austen to him. I think, in his first year, we read all of Pride and Prejudice and most of Sense and Sensibility, (they're the most baby-friendly of the Austen canon, you know). We skipped baby books altogether (because baby books are boring! who cares where baby's toes are? I don't need a book to play that game! boring! get to the good stuff! with plot! and characters! and beautiful language! THAT is what will make him love reading!) and went right to picture books like Henry Hikes to Fitchburg and Green Eggs and Ham.

I was a reader myself, and so I read all about how to raise my baby, particularly those articles about teaching children to love reading--you know, the ones that say Have Lots Of Books In Your House! and Let Your Children Catch You Reading! and my personal favorite, Read To Your Child For Thirty Minutes Each Day! When Henry was a toddler Wade and I would laugh ourselves silly every time we heard those PSAs, the ones that make it sound like a BIG STRUGGLE to find thirty minutes a day to read to your child. Because at our house, story time could last for, oh, TWO HOURS. No joking.

Henry loved to be read to, but he wouldn't sit still and look at the book (probably because he COULDN'T SEE IT). He would walk around the room and play with toys and do his thing while we read, but if we stopped he would come over and tap the book or push it at us or hit us with it, depending on how much he thought he was being ignored. He would listen to the same book over and over and over (and over and over and over and . . . ). These weren't sweet little Sandra Boynton books, oh no--these were big ass LOOOONG books like Katie and the Sunflowers, which is a book about IMPRESSIONIST PAINTERS for god's sake. Eventually we skipped from picture books to juvenile novels, because those Beginning Reader books are so boring! All those simple words! and no good plot! Those won't teach kids to love reading!

We patted ourselves on the back all the time because Henry loved books so much, and loved good books. Clearly, we were doing the right thing. Weren't we?

Just this week it has dawned on us that Charlie doesn't know any of his letters. (How do we know this? Because when we show him letters, he says, "Look at the numbers! What numbers are those?" or if we show him, say, a C, which he SHOULD know, he says, "It's a . . . twelve?") Wade was a little freaked out about this until I pointed out that Henry, who DID know all his letters at four, REFUSES to read. He CAN read, but will often cry--CRY!--if we ask him to read something.

Either way, I am the mother of two illiterate children.

So last night we made a Plan: we (okay, I) would take the boys to the bookstore and let them each pick out a book. Henry's would need to be a Level 1 reader; Charlie's would be an alphabet book. When Henry had read his ENTIRE book, out loud, to one of us, he could get another book; when he had read that one, he could get another, and so on. He could chose superhero books if he wanted, but HE would have to read them, not us.

Charlie just needs to learn his letters. That's it! Just learn his letters. And then I will buy him a pony. Or something. (His plan is a little more vague, because he's not the one I worry about.)

It sounded like a good plan! Until this afternoon when I told the boys about it and the crying started. At one point they were both saying, "We don't want ANY NEW BOOKS! EVER!" And I was all, "OH NO, WE ARE GETTING NEW BOOKS. YOU WILL PICK OUT A NEW BOOK RIGHT NOW, BOTH OF YOU."

What the hell???

By the time Wade came home, Henry had read 11 pages of Danny and the Dinosaur Go to Camp, and Charlie was totally in love with his Leap Frog alphabet book, and BOTH of them were all about learning to read. So I guess we're through the worst part.