Books are a source of knowledge, but besides this, they allow you to slightly open the soul of the reader, to get to know the one who listens closer. Especially if you are reading to your child. Reading is a way to build a bridge from a child to a parent, says children’s poet Masha Rupasova.
My son is nine years old, and the other day I thought that reading together as the child grew up acquired new meanings.
In early childhood, books were a fun and rewarding way to spend time with a toddler. A small child is always very busy. He studies the properties of things, and this is employment 24/7 with breaks for sleep. At first, the child sees the book as an object consisting of the same plastic parts, so he does not listen, does not listen to the end — he turns the pages, bends the cover in all directions. Gets valuable information. Then he matures to the ability to see the drawing and correlate the image with his mother’s words.
I remember how we comprehended the nature of things: this is a drawn ball — it is round, it does not sink in the river; yes, there is your ball on the floor — and here is a ball in the book too, this is a picture, an image. Reading at night performed a lulling function, it was not so much the work that I was reading that mattered, but my measured voice, my presence, my willingness to be present during the transition from reality to sleep.
Discussing books, we convey our values to the child
And with a nine-year-old child, reading becomes a very deep, meaningful process. By discussing books, we convey our values to the child. A. Volkov’s book «The Fiery God of the Marrans» served as an occasion for several conversations about power, about dictatorship and democracy, about tyranny and modern politics. The child suddenly grew up, and I have something to tell about this.
My son and I are getting to know each other better by sharing our thoughts on what we have read. I ask him questions — few, one or two per chapter; reading, of course, should not turn into an exam. I am interested in his opinion: “What do you think, why did the heroes do such and such? What do you think it will lead to?
I explain incomprehensible words, also infrequently, and if a seven-year-old child was not at all interested in the meanings of unknown words, then a nine-year-old sometimes asks himself: “What is a livery? What does a palanquin look like? Since I’m reading from an iPad, I show it pictures or short YouTube videos — about how a loom works or a trap, for example.
The book creates an area of peace and security where the child can share the vital
I read the last couple of chapters of the evening to my son, with little to no questions or explanations. Continuous narration leads to the fact that the child’s mind calms down, and fantasy draws and completes the images from the book, with which he falls asleep. Our readings are getting longer, and I noticed that neither he nor I have been trying to replace them with cartoons or audiobooks for a long time.
So I got to the obvious, in general, thought that a book at night is a way to strengthen attachment. Strengthen, restore, patch up the gaps that appeared in it during the day. The book creates an environment in which threads of contact grow from me to the child and, what is valuable, from the child to me.
The book creates a territory of peace and security, where the child can share the vital or talk about some long-standing secret grievance. And the parent in response will tell about something important for him. And if there is no desire to speak seriously, then who is stopping us from talking nonsense, making each other laugh, or just reading in the dark, firmly knowing that the other is at a distance of an open book and you can always ask him: “Well, how do you like this story?”