Pamela Paul: Raising a Reader + Beauty in Boredom

you go by pam or Pamela Pamela. I'm a Pamela Great. I love that. Okay, so Pamela, A little bit of backstory. UM, my mother in law, who I'm very close with, came to visit and she had cut out a New York Times article and placed it on my desk should I so happen to see it? And the article was how to Raise a Reader, which became your book. My mother in law is an avid reader. I am as well.

My husband, who's her son, is not. I think we've been together thirteen years and I I think I've maybe seen him read one or two books maybe and probably Um, I think one was on back pain because he has a bad back, and then um one was I think Headache of the pelvis because he was also having pelvic floor problems. So, um, those are the only two books I've seen him read. He's an avid reader of his phone and the news and things like that, but he

has never read a book for enjoyment. And um, we have a two and a half year old son, and I I just your article really really spoke to me, and your work really speaks to me. And I I'm a New Yorker, so I'm a warrior, and I am already worried about how to raise a reader. And I was like, well, I gotta have Pamela on this podcast because I got some questions for her. Um, So first, why don't you tell me a little bit about yourself

and how many words per minute you read? All right, well, let's start off with the fact that I am also a warrior. Um. The book that I wrote immediately before this, My Life with Bob Flawed Heroin Seeks Book of Books. Plot ensues. The first paragraph is actually about everything that I worry about at night, and that if I can't find something, you know, if I don't have something sort of in the queue to worry about, I will find it. So we are on the same page there um and

on the same page in terms of being readers. But maybe you will be also like me, a slow reader, so words per minute like that kind of thing terrifies me, or pages per minute. I'm actually hugely slow and distractable reader. So I know, I know it's a huge defect in my line of work. And I also forget everything that

I read. Um, So you know I said, I don't forget, for example, when I meet someone, I Joe that I should have worked at like E Entertainment Television, because I remember exactly when I meet someone in the circumstances, but I do not remember what I read. The nice part of that is that rereading is like when I do it a total pleasure because it's like I'm enjoying it

for the first time. Does it seem at all? I have that too, where i'll read a book, I'll start something and I'll be like, I've been here before and I've been like, oh my god, i feel like I've totally read this, but I'm not one percent sure, so I'll just keep going. Yes, I you know, it's funny.

I the same thing happens with movies. And I remember once being at Lincoln Plaza cinema now closed, but you'll remember, as a fellow New Yorker, um the Great Upper West Side Our Pass Cinema and sitting there and watching a French movie and thinking, why does every French movie about the French Resistance have to start Julie Epinosh and Daniel O'ti And why must it always start with a nighttime scene of them bombing a train track? And it only you know. I was about thirty minutes into the movie

before I realized I saw this movie. I saw this movie when it first came out in France like three years earlier. UM, but I stayed so I can. I can enjoy it for the for the second time. It does become vaguely um familiar. But one interesting thing I think about reading is that every time you reread a book, you're at a different place in your own life, and your perspective has changed and what's going on around you has changed, and so every reading experience is different from

the previous one. And I bear that in mind, especially when you think about raising children who are readers, and if your son alb is um. We're about three years old. He's probably asking again again again for the same I hide them and is that bad? I literally can't today Thomas and friends. I was like, I was honest. I said, you know what, I'll be mommy's board of this book. I'm just going to give it a rest for today. We can come back to it tomorrow. But I can't

do this again. Well, it's it's interesting. So there are a couple of things that kids get from rereading. One is if you think about yourself and if you read a book, like let's say you read a book in your twenties, and I'm going to give it an example that maybe not everyone has read, but it's a good example. Anna Karenina by Tolstoy. That's a book that we I think we all know about an adulterous woman. If you read that in your twenties, right, and you're single, you

think this is so romantic. Anna has met the love of her life. This is amazing, I mean until we get to the sorry spoiler alert, but suicide at the end. And it's a love story. But if you read it when you're in your thirties, say, and you are newly married and you're very happy and maybe you have a child. You think she's terrible. Yeah, what a nightmare, Like a nightmare. She has abandoned her child and her husband. What kind

of mother? What kind of woman? And then though, if you read it again and like your forties or your fifties or your sixties, you're like, nah, I kind of get it, like she needed to. You know, she was having like life is long, and she was having a different experience. I guess I can sort of relate because we do as actors, like I like to see the same plays over and over again, you know, like I'll run to see Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? You know X amount of times, although I guess it's to see

somebody perform it. But I'm also always in a different place in my life, and I pick up new and different things and understand them differently. And so with kids, they're changing and developing so quickly that if a four year old reads a book and then even two months later once it read again, they're a different person by

that time. They're different interesting, and as they get older this is even more the case because like let's use Harry Potter as an example that everyone is familiar with if you read Harry Potter as some kids you know, do sort of precociously or have it read to them when they're in third or fourth grade, all that stuff about Cedric dying. Again, Sorry if I'm giving away plot points here, Come on, people, get with it. Read all the freaking Harry Potters it was. That was a decade

or more than that. Oh my god, I don't even know. No spoilers, go for it, all right. So at the end of book, for um Cedric who is a lovable character, um side character, but nonetheless he did nothing wrong. He's a good kid, and he dies. So for a lot of kids, at a certain point, they're too young, and they might not process it. Um. At a slightly older age, they might be like that's terrible, and like that's not you know, kids often see things in very black and

white terms. They be like, how can a good person die? That's not okay. And then as they get even older, they might be genuinely upset by it at an emotional level because maybe they're that age. And then when they get even older, they might appreciate it as a reader, as a literary device, they might be like Oh, that's so interesting. So he dies and that's when the novels J K. Rowling's seven Harry Potter novels shift from being books for children into being books for teenagers, which is

what happens in books five, six, and seven. They become books for teenagers. Um, and of course grown up like

them too, but little kids. A lot of this stuff that happens in those later books, it's teenage stuff because J. K. Rolling had the book's age and the character's age along with her readers, so that the people who originally joined in would sort of constantly feel like it was about them and like a little kid, you know, they're not gonna the love story and like the kind of middle school antics that happened between the characters where people aren't

talking to one another, like that's kind of just kind of glide over them. But for the reader who's eleven, twelve years old, that completely hits them where they're. Yeah, it's right where they are. What about when we're at this new phase right now where um, he just learned that things scare him. Um, it's like new in the past couple of weeks. So now there's just a lot of requests to skip certain pages or you know, like, oh,

just make sure you don't do the rocket thing. That's too even though the page just has rockets on it, He's like, no, that's too loud. I don't want to read that page. And like, I got it. We're not going to read that page. Was giving it, you know, or he'll he'll wake up. Sometimes there's a kid's book called the Gruffalo or oh things that have monsters or dinosaurs me to love. But like he was so into it for a week and then the next week he was like, it's too scary, and I said, okay, it's

too scary. You know. He had a night where he went to sleep in. An hour later he woke up and he said, Mom, I'm scared of the Gruffalo. Um. And I feel like these are all new emotions. Similarly, I was in nanny Forum like ten years before I was able to just be an actor, and I remember kind of on the flip side, I remember some of my older kids really getting obsessed with like very dark, dark books, um, things about death and and things that

and really leaning into that. Is there ever a time where you like, kids shouldn't be reading stuff like shouldn't be I don't know. I mean, I guess it's the same with movies, or maybe it's not. I don't know. This is your imagination, which is awesome. But um, I was reading something from your book My Life with Bob, which you brought up, and it said, like many other morbid kids with Jewish ancestry, I was drawn to Holocaust reading from the moment I asked the lessons seeking out

death and torture and deprivation and evil, which I totally get. Um, Now, my kid's not there, he's afraid and just doesn't want to process it. But is there is that right to to just follow his rules? A And then the second question in that is is there things that kids shouldn't be reading? Oh? These are two really great questions and

big questions. Um. And I want to say that it obviously had training as a nanny in parenthood, which is very good because you know, it sounds like you should what you're doing, what you should be doing, which is let your child take the lead. And that applies to you know, skipping over pages, slowing down, sadly often reading a book for the twenty time. And I'm going to note that and tell my husband that today that Thomas

and Friends is back on the pile. Yes, I know, it's it's, it's it's There are some books that are so terribly boring to have to reread. For us, it was the skip books that are just unbearable, and if you're not familiar with them, you can just put that on your do not go list. Um. And we don't have those unless you like to say wolf Wolf like ten times in this space of thirty two pages. Um. But reading it repeatedly to your child does actually have um,

really good pedagogical um sort of. It has an impact in that your kids are starting to memorize it, they're becoming familiar with it, they're learning in a way to read, and that in that they're beginning to recognize the world. They know the story by heart, and then they can quote unquote read it to themselves, which is very like, it's amazing to see he's like memorized. I can't believe it. It's crazy, he says, the book pages before I get there.

Yeah and so. And as part of that taking the lead, if they are scared of something, it's definitely a good idea to skip over it, because like we're not instructors, we're not teaching our child how to read. We're teaching them to love to read. That's our job as parents. And so why would you was your child through something that is not pleasurable to them or just bringing up negative emotions. So you definitely want to let them go

pass those scary passages. And perhaps because you're an actor, you'll fall into a trap that I too fell into, even though I can't act at all, which is sometimes you get very caught up in your own experience. That's right, you mean my performance of the Gruffalo. Sure, exactly what you're saying. Right, You've got voices for all those characters, right, Like the snake has its own little hissing thing. For sure.

You got me nailed, okay, And so it's kind of upsetting when your child would be like, I don't like the ogre voice, or like could you stop it with a hissing um. There were certain books that I liked to sing rather than read aloud, and I also can't sing, and my kids let it be known after a while that like, actually, could you just read that and not

sing it? You don't have to make up a little tune for bread and Jam with Francis for Francis and so, um, it's that that kind of stuff you have to let go of as a parent and really handed to your kids. And I think the same thing goes with your second question, UM, which is there's a lot to that question about you know, when is your child so too young to read something scary? Um. I believe firmly that one, kids kind of know what

they're ready for and what they're not ready for. And also kids are like kids will put things down, and they also will choose to see certain things. That goes back to what I was saying about Harry Potter. You know, like if you think back to some of the things that you movies, you saw books you read as a child, and you didn't quite get it, and then you see it again as a growing up and you're like, oh my god. You know, like I had no idea. Um,

I'm a little bit older than you. And when I was growing up in the seventies and eighties, you know, parents weren't as as protective or cautious about material, and there wasn't as much that was directly made for kids. They'd be like, sure, let's all go see terms of endearment or you know, let's go to watership down where there are bloody bunnies, you know, dying on fields and everything sort of you know, if it wasn't our sort of seem like maybe it was okay. A lot of

the times I didn't absorb that stuff. I mean I remember seeing terms of endearment, for example, with my mother, and she came out sobbing and was so apologetic, and I was like, I don't know what the problem is. Of course I saw it as an adult and I was weeping. Um, but kids don't necessarily see or absorb all that, and some kids are drawn to it and

some very much are not. And one of the fascinating things I find about, you know, viewing your child as a reader, as you really have this different lens into their inner life because you find out things that you wouldn't necessarily know. Like one of my three kids, um doesn't like sad stories? Does actually now two of them don't like sad stories. I love crying when I read. I love it so much, like if it if it

breaks me down, I'm like, this is the best book. Um. My kids really don't like that, and so they will shut the book. They'll ask not to get a book about a dying squirrel again or about like a you know, disabled box. Um. And you know, and then there were kids that really really want that and seek that out, especially when they get to you know, the teenage years. That's great. So really we're letting them take the lead. Were you a huge reader as a kid? Um? I

definitely was a huge reader as a kid. I um I felt like things were better in books than they were in real life. Um I. It wasn't that I was a hugely unhappy child. I grew up with though, with seven brothers. And some people will hear that, and they but like, you must have been so spoiled and so cherished, and it's like no, I was, you know, got the crappy eaten out of me. Like anything anything that was yeh, anything that was like remotely girlish was

like really not cool. Um And also it um I often had a situation where they would get paired off and I would be alone. So girlhood was sort of seen as a negative thing. I was also really shy, and I had no ills or talents whatsoever. So you know, other kids might go and have you know, violin lessons, or play soccer or do gymnastics and I was really, um unskilled at all of those things, and so for me, the default was always to read in books because things

felt better in there. Um. You know, there were sisters in books and everybody got along, and you know, parents made like homemade meals that weren't you know, steam broccoli and baked potatoes, and just like all these great things would happen in books. Or you could you know, be heroin like Meg Murray and A Wrinkle in Time. Yeah, did your um? Were your parents very like you said? They really were? They just leaving you alone and so

you were able to read whatever you so chose. Or were they encouraging of the topics and things that you were interested in? Well, you know, I grew up in the great era of underparenting. You know, it's like take benign to collect and like and multiply it. So a lot of the time they weren't all too aware. But I was also a very good kid, even though I'd like to read about dark things. And I remember, um,

I remember one time going and getting a book. Um, and now I was probably ten years old, and I, you know, would pick things out because of the cover. I didn't know what I was doing, and I realized as I got into it that it was a lesbian love story and fairly explicit, and I actually turned it in. I was like, I don't think this is appropriate for me. You're such a goody two shoes. I'm obsessed by the way. I can only call that because I would have done

the exact same. Although then fast forward about a year later, I was reading um, Bob Woodward's Wired, which was the John Belushi story, and you know, I think my mom saw it and that like confiscated it. Yeah, that should not that's not that's that's a lot. Yeah, I was. I think I was eleven. Oh my god. Yeah, she was like, you're not reading about a harmonatic. I meant this already, but so I'm a reader, Adam is not.

Are there any I'm not sure how it is in your household, but are there any tips on how to encourage partners to cross over the reading rainbow? So to speak? I mean, I feel, I mean, we have you talked about, like reading right now. In our son's life is very ritualistic. It's what he does first thing in the morning, um, when he wakes up, and you know, it's a good thirty forty minutes and it's what he does before bed and and he demands it, you know what I mean,

He's like, is it time to read books now? Like it's a it's a real thing. And I actually took this idea from Carrie Washington, but I didn't need I was one of the many perks of being an actor is for some reason, when you get pregnant and have a baby, they send you a ton of free stuff, which I then give to all of my other actor friends or my siblings or whatever. But I didn't need anything for my baby shower, so I just asked everyone

to please bring their favorite children's book and it was awesome. Um, And not to say, most of your mom is out there listening, register for whatever the hell you need, because it's the opportunity, and you spend a lot of time getting other people stuff, so make the most of it. But for me, the a great idea. I didn't need stuff.

Or if your mom out there who's had a ton of hand me downs and you don't need stuff, I have to say, like getting a children's book from each friend and having each person right in that it was from them is so great because not only does my son have this awesome library right now, and people were really cool. They gave books that were for all different ages. But then they also, you know, they when he Albi knows now when he opens the book, like, oh, this

one's from Carry or this one's from aunt Tera. So we have a really good um base right now. And again we read morning and night and my husband's really taken to it, which was great, Like he reads a lot because my husband is not a reader, but he's only two and a half. How do we keep this up? How do my husband and I keep encouraging reading in

our son? All right, I have a lot to say about this, but one thing I will say I think might influence your husband if he is prone to is he if he's easily influenced by research and by data. Here are a few facts that you can arm yourself with. One is that we know that modeling reading behavior is hugely influential. If you want to raise a reader, be a reader. Your kids should see you reading for pleasure.

They should hear you talking about the books that you love, so that books are not just seen as something for little kids, but books are something to aspire to. Books are something that adults choose to do in their spare time.

That that's how you know, and when you think about it, like, at a certain point, kids look at grown ups as like having all the rights and privileges of the world, right when they begin to realize that they're not the total center and that there are other things that parents are doing without them, whether it's like going out on a date night or drinking or whatever it might be. So you want to make sure that the things that they're looking up to, that they're aspiring to are things

that actually you would like them to do. And specifically with boys, there is some really interesting and kind of um,

I won't say alarming, but no, it is alarming. Let's go there, like I this is what I was going to bring up later, but like, we should definitely get into this now that studies seem to indicate that there's a gender gap, with more girls tending to read for pleasure than boys, and we see a ripple effect and higher education, which me is my warrior self scares the crap enemy, um and I and I know that to be true. I only had one brother, but my brother sure as hell wasn't a reader, and I was and

I am, and my husband's not. And you know, so I see, I hate to say, at the writing on the wall, um or the reading on the wall. And so, there are actual statistics out there that boys read less than girls, right they do. So boys read less frequently than girls do, They read fewer books, they are less likely to say that reading is a preferred activity. They're less likely to read for fun, for pleasure over the summer,

um and so. And then coupled with that, boys tend to read or learn to how to read, about a year behind girls. Now what's interesting is that, just as a little side note, that's also kind of comforting if you're raising a boy, because the age at what your child learns to read is not a reflection of how good a reader they will become. It's kind of like

tying your shoelaces. Like if you learn to tie your shoelaces at age four versus age seven, it doesn't mean you're going to be a better shoelace tier, you know, in your twenty one So you know, the age at which you learned how to read does not affect your performance later in life. If that were true, like women would be ruling the whole world because you know, we all learned how to read before the way earlier, earlier.

In general their exceptions. Um. That said, we do know that boys read less, we do know that they enjoy it less. And here to statistics where parents are a little bit responsible. One is that both girls and boys say they see their fathers reading less frequently than they see their mother's reading. So boys early on kind of get the idea of like, oh, like girl books, maybe those are for girls. You know, that's for women. That's not like a man thing, that's not uh, you know,

a guy thing to do. Um. And then interestingly, not to lay all the blame on the fathers. Both women and men. Both mothers and fathers read aloud less often to their sons than they do to their daughters. And there yes, but there's some interesting reasons why that might be. One is, and now you have a boy who assume

age three super active. Sometimes when you're reading to him, he might not be cuddling up on your lap, snuggling his lov e and like holding onto your arm in the way that you might have like imagined, you know, bedtime reading might be. He might instead be crawling off your lap, wandering around the ruling the teddy bear. It's like that's right. And you know, boys are just generally more active. They can be more kinetic readers, and there are things that you can do. You can get them

books that are more suited to boys. So boys like interactive books, they might like pop up books. They might like books that they can you know, that have lots of flaps. The other thing is, and this becomes even more important as boys get older, is that not every boy wants to sit down and read Pride and Prejudice. Like. They don't necessarily want to read a long novel. They don't necessarily want to read a block of gray text. They might be a fact seeker. They might want to

sit down. I mean, one of my kids who is now ten, we'll sit down with the science encyclopedia and he will read it. Now, I there's nothing I would want to read less than a science encyclopedia. Like I would never sit down and be like, I think I'm going to read the encyclopedia. Um, he will read a book about the periodic table Like that to me is that's not what I think of as like reading a book, but it is to him. So and a lot of other boys also are more visually oriented, so they might

like graphic novels. They might be drawn to comics, and those are really great ways to get boys and enthusiastic about reading comics. Hello occur to me because I mean not in my wheelhouse. You know, I don't even think about it. No, I mean, you know, comics are great.

They're great, And it doesn't mean that your child is never going to read serious books like I read tons of Archie comics, peanuts, you know, Calvin and Hobbes, like all of those are great ways for boys to get pleasure out of reading, even things like books of sports statistics or joke books, like, all of that is reading, and it's really important. Again, this is going back to letting your child take the lead, not to judge as a parent, not to be like that's not a real book.

That's prejudice or you know again, like if they're rereading, kids as they get older will sometimes reread their same book like twenty times. That's because it's become a source of comfort for them, right, Like the characters in the book might be people they sort of consider their friends, characters they like to hang around with. Like there's a reason so many people reread read Harry Potter it's because who wouldn't rather be at Hogwarts sometimes than in the

real world. Right, That's a fun place to be. So kids also want to revisit that world. So I would say, like not to judge the kind of book your kid is reading, how often they're reading it, like just to sort of sit back and remember, my kid is choosing to read. My kid is getting pleasure from it, and so I really need to back off because and here again goes to especially when Albi gets a little bit older, he has a lot of other choices and he's going

to have many, many more of what to do. He can go on Hulu, he can play Minecraft, he can play um Fortnite, he can text his friends. I know it's all gonna happen, and he'll be on TikTok. They'll be like ten thousand other new websites. They'll be World of Warcraft. Like. He can do all of those things. If he is picking up a book and it's a book about like, you know, the ten worst murders of all times, Like, be happy he's picking up a book.

Let him read that, Let him enjoy that. Um. So at this age that we're that, I'm that my child will at some point be it when they have all of these other options and they're now reluctant to read it all, how do we reel them in? Is it just the worst parenting in the world to incentivize them or reward them or something, or because now reading has become a big part of school, right, so like now we probably associate reading with our English class or whatever.

I can remember my cousins like when we would be on our summer family camping trip, they would have their summer reading assignment, you know, and they would be hemming and hawing and hating it and just complaining and the book is so dumb and they don't want to do it and blah blah blah, Like how what do you do? All? Right? So this is going to sound totally counterintuitive because as a parent, you're really used to incentivizing your kid with

rewards and negative consequences when they do something bad. Like you want your kids to eat peas. You're like, oh my gosh, the peas are so yummy. Here, just eat this one spoonful of peas and then you can have carrots and then you can you know whatever, this next sweet thing is um And so we're used to a system of like positive and negative consequences. But you really have to put a hold on that when it comes to reading, because you don't want your kid to read

in order to get something. You want your kid to read because the reading is the reward. Reading a book doesn't mean you get an extra hour if I've had time reading the book is the good thing in and

of itself. You want to build that intrinsic motivation to read, as opposed to giving them extrinsic rewards, saying like, if you read ten books this summer, then at the end of the you know year, you'll get your first phone or whatever it is, whatever incentive plan you have depending on the age of your child, or like, let's just finish, you know, just finish reading this one book. Let's say your child is learning to read, and then you can

have like a second dessert or whatever. Don't do it, because you're you're giving them a message that reading is work, Reading is the hard thing. Reading is the bad thing in order to get to the good thing. So again, fast forward ten years from now, when your kid's going to be able to make all those choices on his own, he's not going to read because reading is fun. He already knows that reading is work and reading is something

they have to do. Right, that makes perfect sense. Um, are there types of books that I don't know are like especially beneficial to certain developmental points? Like like you said, I know you had mentioned already. Um, like I remember when it switched and now he was like obsessed with the flip books. And you know like hide and seek books where you open up stuff and flaps and things

are in there. But are there developmental books that we should be putting in front of our kids or again just really sitting back and offering a bunch of different stuff and just see whatever they want to take the lead on. It's the latter, I mean for sure. Remember it's interesting we forget as parents. Right, You'll be like, my kid loves poppies, but maybe your kid has never seen a cat, or maybe your kid has never read a book about trucks. You know, like they only know

what they know. They don't know. If they don't know, you're introducing all that stuff to them, and sometimes you're introducing it for the first time through a book. So some kids they don't need to have been on a plane to read a book about a plane. Like everything is new to a small child, and so your job is to expose them to as much variety as possible because you don't know what your kid likes or doesn't like,

and he doesn't know either. So it's really exciting, I think, to see like what your child ends up gravitating towards, because you just you find out more about your child, You find out things that you didn't know, and because kids are so changeable and you know this too, three

months later it'll be something else. Yeah. It's like my husband and I never in a million we've been either thirteen years, I've never said the word excavator, back, eighteen wheeler, cement mixer, I mean, every single type of dang truck exists. And like that's just because all we do is read about trucks, you know, and it's like that's what he wants right now. Um, but two actors reading about trucks,

Adam and I sometimes look at each other. We're like this is crazy, like this, you know, we're we we love like, oh, we have all those baby Shakespeare books, like oh, the baby version of Romeo and Juliet, or like the baby version of Symboline. And maybe he doesn't want that he wants, you know, good night, gunite construction site or whatever, which is a great book. It's a great book. And you know an interesting fun fact about

that book. That was that author's first book, and it was found off the slush pile um, which I feel like is like the actor equivalent of you know, being discovered. You know you're working right at them all or you know, working at McDonald's. Like it just so happens, you know, to rarely. Um. And that's how that book came to be. And it's fascinating. You know. I had all these ideas

of what my kids to be interested in. Like I thought that my daughter would be, you know, the kind of girl who would like to read about like nature and would be chasing frogs like. She did not want to do that. And I couldn't blame her, because I wasn't that girl either, you know, out there in the mud with the bugs. Like she was not interested. My boys and my daughter, none of them could have cared

less about dinosaurs. I brought home tons of books about dinosaurs because my first job at the New York Times was as the children's folks at it Are, So I got all these books, um, and never, they never could care less about dinosaurs, like none of them. But then some kids are completely obsessed, obsessed, obsessed, So it's it is kind of fascinating, um to see what your what your kids end up being interested in in terms of

like the level and all of that. It goes back to my point of you're not there to teach your child how to read, so you don't need to worry too much about, you know, is this the right level. The thing at your child's age to think about is are they engaged with the story? Do they feel you know, you can you can gauge their attention and their interests when while you're reading to them, or is this too many words per page? Are they wanting to, you know,

turn the page to get ahead. When your child is three, they're actually reading the book, but what they're reading is the pictures while you're reading the words, and so as you're reading to them, they will be looking at the pictures and there's often a different story embedded in those pictures. Right.

Sometimes your kids will laugh and you'll be like, there was nothing funny in what I said, but they're laughing at some other little substrand of the story that's going on on the page in the pictures, and so you can gauge again if your child is sort of not looking at the book is wanting to close it. It's really funny too. I mean, I'm sure you saw this one. Albie was even you know, younger than he is now. The kids will just shook the book. Oh. He does

that all the time. If I try to pick, like, hey, can mommy pick a new book off the shelf? You know, which is like me dying a slow death that I've read the same fifteen books every morning and night for the past week. And I I go to get a new book, and if it's it's funny because if it is what I would deem like more advanced, there's too many words on the page. He's not having it, like he's just like, you know, he shuts it. He's just not he's like, you know, he or he doesn't like

the pictures or for whatever reason I don't know. Um, yeah, he decides um. And then I find it interesting when he goes back to books that he liked when he was really really little, like, um, oh god, what is that Path of Bunny Paul Paul and Judy Like Path the Bunny? Now you scratch your dad's scratchy feel like sometimes he'll request like books from when he was very little, or The Very Hungry Caterpillar, you know, which he was super into at one, but he hasn't really looked at

in two years, Like we're back on that. You know, that is that is totally appropriate, and that is great. That's great because it's funny, like kids are capable of kind of nostalgia and wanting that comfort from a very young age, and and sometimes it feels new to them, and sometimes it feels familiar, or sometimes they're seeing something

different in it. You know, books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar when they were really little and they seemed really into it and they were taking their little fingers and poking it through the teeny coles in the page. That may have been what they loved so much about that book then, but what they might love about it a year later is the words. You know, Oh yeah, he's what he's into about it now is that it says chocolate cake and cup cupcake and lollipop. Like he's into it.

He's like, oh, this is a book that there are treats and right right, and when you read it to him, when he was like fourteen months old, he just like putting his fingers and exactly didn't know what a lollipop was. Exactly. What do you think parents, I'm not there yet, but I'm sure it will come. The stress about when their kids have to learn to read, and are they reading yet, and if it's challenging or they're supposed to be at a certain place at school. Like I just feel like, ah,

that must just be very stressful. Yes, you will get that stress. It will come, But I hope that I can provide um some comfort because, as I said earlier, it truly does not matter the age at which your child learns to read. There are there are studies that show that the age at which your child begins to read has no bearing on how good a reader they become, how voracious a reader they become, how enthusiastic or sophisticated

a reader they become. Their other things that do have an impact on it, the agent which you start reading does not. And in fact, you know, it's like any other milestone we all know, we go to the pediatrician, we read the parenting books. You see the milestones. There's always a range, right, and sometimes you know you'll look at like another kid and you'll be like, wow, like, my kid can totally do a forward somersault and that

kid can't, So my kid is ahead. And then you'll see that kid like get up and use an extremely sophisticated sentence with like three adverbs with their parents and be like, oh, you're like, is doing this other thing that my kid maybe isn't. Like, kids developed different things at different times, and it really does not have any like long term implication. And with reading, it's a complicated process.

It's decoding, it's word recognition, it's like piniamic awareness. There are all these different things that happen in the brain, and not all kids are developed mentally. Their brains aren't developed necessarily at this, you know, at the same time to be able to do that. And that's one of the reasons why boys read later. Their brains aren't there yet. In Europe, in Scandinavia and I was going to braise up.

I've read about this, keep going. I love it. I'm fascinated. Yeah, they don't even start to teach kids how to read until there's seven, eight or nine years old. And what's smart about that is that if you're child is pushed to read at too young an age, and then they're

gonna hate it. They're gonna hate it because they're going to be frustrated and they're going to self label themselves as bad readers, and they're going to label books is something that's hard and that makes them feel bad about themselves because every kid who's in like group D on the leveled Readers knows that the other kids are in group N, and then automatically they're just gonna start thinking, well, books aren't my thing. I'm not a good reader, I'm

no good at that. I'm going to do this instead, maybe I'm a math person or maybe i'm, you know, a sports person or whatever it is. So the kids become frustrated if they learn to read or they're forced to read at too young an age. And what happens too is interesting. When kids do start to read, for the most part around age six, they are reading stories that go like this, the cat sat on the mat. Now, if you know any six year olds, you know that many six year olds are able to listen to the

first book of Harry Potter and totally enjoy it. They're ready for more sophisticated stories than the cat sat on the mat. So the book they're reading is incredibly boring. So one thing to do when your kid is that age is to remember, okay, what they're being for to

read on their own super boring. You don't want them to think that reading is all bad, So you want to remember as a parent what you can do as opposed to sort of sitting over them and making them sounded out and do all of that kind of quote unquote helping. Remember that's the teacher's job, hand that over to them. That's what they're doing in school. What you do is you continue to read them wonderful picture books

with stories they like, with beautiful illustration. And remember picture books are written for adults to read, so the words are much more sophisticated. They are, you know, the their books that that six year old could never read by themselves.

Keep reading to them. You don't want to send the message to them that now that you're reading on your own, that's all you get, you know, bedtime reading with mommy or on the mat and you're in group and like good luck in You don't want to like pull out from under them something that they love for years, which was like bedtime reading with mommy or Sunday morning reading in bed or whatever it is that you did, so you don't want to take away something and punish them

for learning to read. And then also, maybe you're reading to them a book at night that's a chapter book. Maybe you're reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate, or you're reading the Betsy Tasty books or A Little House in the Prairie or Harry Potter, whatever it is. They can still absorb that story while you're reading it, So you want to make sure that they're getting the full range of books so they know while they're why they're doing that really boring and difficult, the cats out

on the matwork. M this is this is such. You are just rocking my whole planet right now. And I can't wait for this podcast to be cut together. And I give my husband like the ones where I'm like this one. You have to listen to this, he has to listen to just quickly, Um, before we wrap up, I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about another article you wrote that really spoke to me

about letting children get bored again? Can we I want to talk a little bit about that, because I think this is I think this is an amazing reminder in general, but also during this time that we are in quarantine and where a lot of us are being asked to step back and stay indoors with our kids. Um And you know, as an artist, you know, imagination was a huge part of my childhood. And I feel the helicopter parent thing that your parents generation did not partake in,

but mind certainly did. And I feel that with all the over scheduling and all this stuff that we're constantly bringing our child and again I saw it with a lot of the kids I baby set for It's like you picked them up from school, they have a play date, then they have an activity. It's like unbelievable amounts of

shipped to do. And I just feel like my most of my memories from my childhood was being really bored and not being allowed to watch TV, but then being able to turn my like bird bath in the front yard into like a witch's cauldron, and all of a sudden, I'm getting dressed up in all this stuff where I had a chalkboard downstairs which was like endless amounts of hours of playing teacher and all of these things, and I feel like boredom is a really important thing, um

and also very beneficial to parents because sometimes I'm just like, just go play, Like like I don't, I don't have to put out, you know, right now in quarantine, all I see on Instagram is eight thousand activities. I'm supposed to be cutting and gluing for my child, and I just don't have the energy to do it. So talk to me about boredom. Boredom is not only a normal part of life, like no matter what age you are,

but it is a necessity. It has benefits, and it's something that we all have to learn how to make use of. And I think that anyone when you really think about it, you realize why this is even though the impetus for most parents is too when you see a child who's not occupied, is to kind of maximize the moment, like, oh we should do an art project, or like what you know, what are you up to?

What are you thinking? Trying to somehow get your child kind of optimize that moment or you know, maybe they're under stimulated, when in fact, when kids are bored, right, that's when they have to figure it out for themselves. That's how kids become resourceful, That's how they become, as you said earlier, imaginative, like that's where make believe comes from. When I was growing up, one of the most often spoken phrases from my mother was if I said I

was bored, she would say, then go outside. Now for me, that was like the most punitive things she could have said, because I was not an outdoorsy, sporty girl. So if the punishment, if the alternative was going outside, and then I really had to figure out something else to do. And this actually ties to what we were talking about earlier, which is reading. My solution was to go and to read, or to write stories, or to draw very bad, un artistic,

untalented pictures. But I was at least doing it. Um.

You had to kind of make do. When I was growing up, we had this room in my house called the sun Room, UM, which I think was just because it was I think, you know, had been like a terror us that was windowed in at some point and into it my sharans through like broken pieces of furniture, you know, old appliances, just like random bits of crap from around the house, like in complete sets, and my brothers and I would go in there and we would just make things now what we did not always safe,

Like I remember we used to play a game called jump the Roof where we would pile everything up into like as tall a pile as we could and sometimes put the cat in, you know, at the very bottom, and then we would find somewhere very high and leap on to the top of the pile of broken stuff and you know, fall to the ground. So but that's what kids did back before they sort of had, you know, something often a device at the ready that could constantly entertain them. You know, you just kind of did what

you had to do. And when you read. I love reading memoirs as an adult, um, and I loved reading them as a child to to read biographies to kind of for me, they were like life lessons, like this is how it's done, you know, like you want to become you know, Dolly Madison that was all that was available for girls back then, or color color or you know one of these that's what you or Florence Nightingale. Um, you follow these steps, and that's how I read them.

But I often like reading memoirs of an earlier age because you realized, like it was boring, Oh is it boring? Like you read books about like people um in the early twentieth century and the nineteenth century to go for a car ride, like in a car that was going god, huge, huge, fifteen miles an hour, just looking at the trees, or like you watch those you know, movies like Room with the View, any of the nineteenth century movies, and they're

just walking around because that was entertainment. Like people learned to play the piano because that's what you had for music. You didn't have Spotify, So it was like the onus becomes on you to create the entertainment. If you don't have something from outside that's that's always stimulating you and sort of prompting you to respond. You become the generator

so important. It's just so important. And I think, you know, I hope that that provides moms during this time with some you know, when we first went into quarantine about a month ago. You know, I I generally I am not a big TV watcher with my kid, and I really let up on those rules. It's okay at the beginning, which is okay, but then I have to say, I've been doing this experiment this week where I said, Adam, you know what, let's like, let's just like let him

be bored and like in the house. Like I mean again, I can do this right now because I didn't have a very heavy work week. If you have a freaking heavy work week and you're losing your mind, the kid can watch it. I don't care, you know what I mean, Like, whatever anyone has to do to survive and be happy and feel loved is the only thing that matters. But but this week I was like, let's just do a

few days with like him. He just isn't gonna watch TV, and he's been really bored and it's been so fascinating to watch what he's doing. Yeah, I mean it's like you see you see again your child like making the choices for himself, figuring out what it is that he's going to do, like imaginative play that's not directed. Right, all you need to do is provide like a few things.

I mean, one of the great things about and now I'm going back to screens but you know Toy Story four where they had um the great you know four key toy, Like anything can be a toy, right, anything can be a toy. It's all in the eye of the beholder. And so you don't even have to have a lot of stuff around. Like kids will make something into a toy. That's what they did before we had lots of plastic toys to provide them. They made their own toys, so they saw toys and things that weren't toys. Um.

Any final advice for parents, any last things? You feel like we didn't touch on or hit on or I mean I feel like I could talk to you for a hundred thousand hours and this is so helpful and so informative, and I just think you are doing such important work. Pamela, truly thanks. Here's my parting words, which are that you know, it goes back to that reading is the verbal word. Don't reward reading, because reading is

the reward. All the stress that parents feel around raising readers, around um, you know, raising their children to be productive, successful whatever that might be fulfilled people. You know, we all, I think, are motivated by truly understandable circumstances. We have a lot of economic uncertainty. People know, it's a competitive world. It's hard to get into a good college. Some kids

just sort of lose their motivation. So we are so eager to kind of plant everything into our child that will lead them towards success whatever that might look like that we forget to kind of take pleasure in it. And so specifically with books, I would say, you know, this is the fun part. This is you are introducing your children to something great. This is not broccoli, this is chocolate cake. You are opening up a world of like stories and a mad genation and possibilities and characters.

You know, when I think about myself as a reader and what it is that I look for in books, I look to be transported. I look to gain access to a world that I would otherwise never have access to, whether that's living on Mars or being a coal miner in nineteenth century France, or being it's always a British queen. For me, it's always a British queen. Might not be a British queen, even a British lady in waiting, Like

you know, any of that, that's your chance. I mean, that's what you do as an actor, right, You get to inhabit another person, You get to be in a different world, You get to actually like it's a whole new story that's opened to you. And so I would say to parents, like, remember, like you are you are opening up a portal to magic for your children. You are offering them away to to empathize, to see the world through others eyes, to no worlds that don't exist

or that once existed or will never exist. And so you're doing something great for your children. And if you remember that that mission and that sense of enthusiasm, that will come through as opposed to, you know, feelings of obligation and stress and pressure and like they don't need to they don't need any of that. They're going to get that from the outside world from you. When it comes to books, You're taking them to Disneyland. You know, you are giving them the magic key. This is so wonderful.

Thank you so much, Pamela for being on Katie's Crib. Thank you for all of your words of wisdom. I can't wait to jump back into the book I'm currently reading. Um uh, this is awesome. Thank you so much for being on Katie's Crib. Pamela. It was a total pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you guys so much for

listening to that awesome episode with Pamela. I learned so much and it makes me just want to jump back in my bed and read more of my book and hate what books are you currently reading to your kids? Are there any huge faiths that I got to know about. You can tell me by telling us on our socials or subscribing and following us at Katie's Crib or email me book ideas at Katie's Crib and Shonda land dot com. You all are awesome. Katie's Crib is a production of

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