^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com February 22, 2014}

Today marks one full year since I started blogging at BabyCenter. My first official entry was about reading to your kids. Since then, my son has turned two and we’ve added a baby girl to the mix. Reading still remains important, and there’s a lot more I’ve learned over the past year.

Literacy is under attack. No, there’s not a formal war on reading, but good reading skills are harder to establish and maintain than they used to be. Reading requires concentration and an attention span, and everything in our society is geared toward providing the exact opposite of that. My son started watching TV other than Sesame Street and other educational shows over the past year, and the pacing of kids’ shows drives me nuts. Things can’t stay still and silent for more than 30 seconds at a time, like they’re afraid of boring the kids. As our children become groomed for a world where 140 characters counts as a complete thought and 6-second video clips pass for quality entertainment, it’s going to be increasingly important – and difficult – to give them the skills they need to focus on longer tasks that require patience and concentration.

Repeat readings are good. My son has grown out of the phase where he’ll let me read anything to him now. He now prefers books with pictures in them so he can describe what he sees. He also wants to hear the same books over and over again. While it can be tiring to re-read the same story night after night, doing so builds up a child’s confidence and allows them to interpret the literature better. It also makes for satisfying moments where my son reads along with me or, if I pause, he fills in the text for me. Lastly, reading something familiar gives me the minor enjoyment of deliberately reading it wrong, much to my son’s consternation – I’m kind of a jerk sometimes.

Oral tales are a lot of fun, too. Right now my son doesn’t understand the difference between somebody reading a story and telling a story. Whether there’s a book in front of me or not, whenever I start telling a story I’m “reading.” This is fine by me – I can only afford to buy so many books, and if my son is in the mood for a monster truck story when I have no monster truck books available, then I can make something up. In fact, he seems to enjoy these oral tellings more than reading, since my wife and I put more emotion into telling the story when there are no pictures to illustrate for him. The only hard part comes when I’ve made up a story and my son wants my wife to tell the tale before she’s heard it.

Reality need not apply. One of the reasons I love telling stories to my kids is that I don’t need to worry about keeping my scattered brain grounded in reality. One of my more recent stories involved a monster truck that ate other monster trucks. I don’t know how that works, but apparently my son does. Whether it’s because they don’t have much experience with the real world or that they have an unfettered imagination, a child is much more capable of going with the flow than an adult. I don’t think the words “That doesn’t make any sense” makes it into their vocabulary until they reach school age.

One thing remains certain after another year of reading to my kids: it’s still one of the best parts of being a parent. I get to see my kids’ vocabulary grow, their minds expand, and their creativity kick into high gear, all for the cost of a few minutes of storytelling each night.

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