I am about to give birth in five months, and as soon as I found out that I was pregnant, I pledged to train my child to read. It is not true that children learn to read, eventually. They learn to speak… eventually. But to read? Ask how many children, especially these days, who read.
No, I am not making a future anti-social like what some people I know think. Training my child to read doesn’t mean I want him to bury his head in faceless pages of books all the time (that is a different story). Reading, in fact, does more: the more someone reads, the more he knows. And the more he knows, the more places he goes. He may even beat Amelia Earhart. And I have always known facts about books, about reading that is, that I won’t let my child miss. Things that most parents nowadays take for granted. I am not good in giving advices but please, do your kid a favor, if you are bearing that miracle in you, once you give birth…please, train him to read.
So let me go back to why I’d let my kid read: I know that a person who reads may innocently divert and pleasantly entertain himself that in time will develop my child to think more individually without the fear of rejection to the point of solitude. He will know how not to depend his happiness on others which all of us should learn. Plus, we all know how most equate solitude to melancholy thus how it transforms people. Many people underestimate and exaggerate this both at the same time. One time I told a friend that I will teach my kids to read more than watch the boob tube. He raised his eyebrow and looked at me disgustingly- like he was trying to tell in my face if I am trying to create a nerd. Maybe a Bon Vivant… But a nerd, seriously? Why can people spend so much time putting on make up and why cannot they spend so much time in reading? Can someone honestly no matter how brutal, tell me what is wrong?! (I just theorized that this person just doesn’t know what it is to read, thus for his total ignorance about the subject.) Also, I learn how to judge a person through the books he reads. (If the person reads, you will know, if he doesn’t, he will not matter. Drop the subject. Disclaimer: this is applicable iff one has access to any form of reading material. But who hasn’t? Or literate.) A person who reads begins to talk like the characters he finds on the pages of those books. He incorporates the story into his own life making it his. It seems like he is rewriting the history. He finishes what the writer started. When a person reads he becomes an interesting companion, and when one is a reader, he recognizes readers alike. I have always believed that one should never stop learning. If one does, it too is the end of life. And how we all know that a little knowledge is surely a dangerous thing. Lastly, I know that reading makes someone more confident about who he is. I have to charge this too to my experience. The more I read, the more confident I am in facing people and to not be deprived of having fine conversations with them. I am not intimidated because of social economic status, of academic achievements nor of beauty. Reading makes me go to places I have never been before and can never afford to go to. I’ll bet that I can talk more about the Himalayas than some local pilots or airhostess here.
I have to thank all my books for that! Plus, my professor in college told me, when one time that I asked him why the Greek philosophers were great… And Professor simply said, “because they read.”
