5.16 Instruction - My Reading Journey

Bestest Friend and I are doing a blog project. Each day we will write a blog post on a pre-determined theme chosen by a random noun generator. The theme for the sixteenth day of the month is "Instruction."

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Birchie wrote a post about her reading journey and I thought it was fascinating and super interesting how our reading lives wax and wane. I'm going to share mine because I want all parents of young children out there to know that who your child is when they are young is not necessarily who they will become as they get older.

I was really bad at academics when I was young. I was almost held back to do another year of kindergarten and again in first grade because I couldn't figure out how to tie my shoes and I couldn't memorize my phone number and address. I couldn't figure out how to tie my shoes because I was spatially unaware AND I just didn't have the fine motor skills. Neither of those things has changed. The reason I couldn't memorize things, though, was because I was really struggling with reading and writing.

As a child who desperately wanted to please, I did all the things asked of me. I completed the worksheets, I sang the songs, I listened to my older sister and my parents read me stories. I colored, I watched far more of The Letter People than was necessary, and I tried. But I never could understand why we were learning individual letters because writing wasn't made up of individual letters. I struggled with reading. My mom started me on sight words long before it was popular (the emphasis on phonics was strong at my school), but it was not until second grade that I truly understood "the cat sat on a mat" meant that a four-legged creature was sitting on a rug.  It truly was not until halfway through my second grade year that I started to actually comprehend the words that I was reading.

But once I figured it out, I never stopped reading. 

A random bookshelf in our house. This is what happens when you live with a Catholic, I guess.

I drove my parents crazy by always reading at the table and on car rides and staying up late to read under the covers. I was a teenager who didn't want to go out on dates, but wanted to read Harlequin romance novels and dream about the day I met a rich, handsome banker/business owner/engineer who would save me from my life of boring drudgery and my terrible flat in London. Just one more chapter. Just one more book. 

Part of the reason I read was just escapism. My life wasn't great and it was wonderful to be able to immerse myself in these faraway places with people doing exotic things, never worrying about how the bills were going to be paid, whether the car would break down, or if the school bus would make it down the road without getting stuck. 

But even when I left home and started making my own choices, I still dove into books because it's one of the few times I can force myself to sit still and concentrate. I tend to have a million billion thoughts racing through my head and my anxiety manifests itself in a tendency to shake my legs and pull at my hair and pace, but when I'm reading a book, I'm still. 

I hear that a lot of people stop reading for pleasure in college and grad school, but that was not true for me. As soon as I stopped reading my textbooks or journal articles, I would reach for something completely different to read to give my brain respite from the "hard stuff" by reading light, fluffy romance novels or young adult books.

And here we are. I don't watch television much or movies really at all. I spend my spare time reading. Even on a day when I'm crazy busy, I'll read for twenty minutes first thing in the morning before I get out of bed and twenty minutes before I go to bed. 

Tell me something about your reading journey. Were you a late reader? Did you only read books about dinosaurs until you were fifteen?