RAR #154: When Your Child Doesn’t Love Reading

Sarah Mackenzie (00:08): You're listening to the Read-Aloud Revival Podcast. I'm your host, Sarah Mackenzie, homeschooling mama of six and author of The Read-Aloud Family and Teaching From Rest. As parents, we're overwhelmed with a lot to do. It feels like every child needs something different. The good news is you are the best person to help your kids learn and grow and home is the best place to fall in love with books. This podcast has been downloaded seven million times in over 160 countries. If you want to nurture warm relationships while also raising kids who love to read, you're in good company. We'll help your kids fall in love with books and we'll help you fall in love with homeschooling. Let's get started. Hello. Hello. Today, we're going to talk about what to do when your child doesn't love reading. A lot of us are in this boat and from what I've heard from many of you, it's a real concern and worry. (01:13): Honestly, I feel like it's a valid worry. We know that reading is crucial to our children's future success academically and otherwise and so we want to know what we can do to make it more likely that our kids like and enjoy reading. Right? The good news I think is that there are simple steps we can take as parents and educators that will make it as likely as possible that our kids will become voracious readers, that they don't just have the ability to read, but they also have the desire to do it for pleasure. That is going to be what we're going to talk about on this episode. I also have a great related question from Amy that I'm going to answer. Before I do that, I want to make sure you know that you're not too late to join us for WOW: Writers on Writing. These are weekly writing workshops for your kids that will help you get a big win in a core subject right here at the end of the school year. (02:08): Our first workshop, Getting Creative with Nonfiction taught by Miranda Paul is available to watch on replay now. You can also download the corresponding writing prompts and all that good stuff in RAR Premium. Those corresponding writing prompts help your kids practice this specific writing skills they learn in each workshop. We did nonfiction writing with Miranda Paul and the writing prompts will help your kids keep working on that skill. Our next live WOW workshop will be taught May 19th, because we're doing this every Tuesday for six weeks this spring. Our second one is by one of my own very favorite authors, Maryrose Wood. She wrote The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place Series. We are big fans of that series at my house. She's teaching a class on writing the hero's journey, that fascinating shape of a fictional story that will empower your kids to write all the stories they could ever want. (03:01): Once they have this tool in their pocket, their creative fiction writing will go to another level. That one just like all the others will be available on replay as well if you miss the live recording and you can get those writing prompts from the class too. Everything's going to keep on going every Tuesday through mid June. Join us. You're not too late. Replays and writing prompts and all the good stuff is in RAR Premium. If you need a big win at the end of the school year, we want to help. Join us in RAR Premium by going to rarpremium.com. Okay. Now let's take that question from Amy. (silence) Yeah. Thanks for your question, Amy. Here's the thing. Loving stories matters more than loving reading. If we think of reading as the act of your eyes taking in words on a page or your ears taking in words through the ear, the actual stories, those matter more than your child loving the act of reading. We're going to talk more about all of this today. (05:10): This episode is perfect for you. We're going to be talking about the need to let reading become easier before we expect our kids to love doing it. It's very, very likely that your daughter, she'll enjoy reading more on her own when it's become easy for her. But I have a couple of suggestions for you. One is graphic novels. We have a great list of graphic novels in episode 137. The distribution of visuals with text in the graphic novels and the way they're broken up into panels, that can be really helpful for a lot of readers, especially those who are intimidated by a lot of text on a page. There are some excellent graphic novels that I'd highly recommend. You can see our list at episode 137. There's a lot happening in your child's brain when they read a graphic novel. If you listen to that episode, 137, you'll hear me talk about something called multimodal reading. Really, that's just reading through various forms or modes at the same time. Check out that list. See if anything there sticks. (06:11): If your daughter likes The Vanderbeekers, maybe start with the Anne of Green Gables graphic novel. That might be a good fit for her. Another thought that I had is that she could be an auditory learner. I'm one of those. Even now as an adult reader who reads quite a lot, actually, I still prefer learning through the ear. I still prefer getting most of my information auditorily if it's possible. I will read long books, classic books, books with fewer paragraph breaks, did I mentioned long books? I will prefer most of those on audio. I'm just not likely to grab a doorstopper of a book when I'm picking something up to read with my eyes so audio books are a good fit for me. I process the information better auditorily than I do with my eyes. I just know that about myself now, but that might be true for your daughter. Another idea as I was saying that, this just popped into my head, but maybe consider letting her try to read on a Kindle Paperwhite. (07:12): I have one and I love it. You can control how big the text is on a Kindle Paperwhite, therefore, you know how much shows up on the screen. Why I'm saying the Paperwhite is because it really mimics that book reading experience on the eyes so it doesn't have the same impact on the brain and the eyes as a screen does, it's more like a page of a book. I love my Paperwhite, but anyways, you can control how big the text is and how much shows up on your screen. That can be really helpful if you have a child who's intimidated by a lot of text on a page because the screen is smaller. There's going to be fewer words there. You can make the font bigger and therefore there'll be fewer words to contend with on each screen. That can just reduce the overwhelm of feeling like, oh, there's all these words I have to slog through to get to the end. More in this episode right now is going to help so let's get right to our episode because I think this one is going to be applicable to you. Thank you so much for your question, Amy. (08:31): What do we do if our child doesn't love reading? Like I said, at the top of this episode, it's something a lot of us are worried about and I think for good reason, because we know reading is crucial to our children's future success. We're always talking about the tremendous impact of reading and stories on our children on this podcast. Of course, if you have a child who doesn't love reading, you may start to worry. We're going to talk about why that is and why it's important for our kids to love it, what we can do to make it more likely that our kids will fall in love with it, and then troubleshoot a few specific situations. For example, if you have siblings, one sibling who loves reading and another one who doesn't, I think there might be something we can do about that. (09:16): Anyway, we're going to talk about all of that today. First let's talk about why we want our kids to love reading. Well, according to The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research, a book by Stephen D. Krashen, "No single literacy activity has a more positive effect on comprehension, vocabulary, spelling, writing ability, or overall academic achievement than free voluntary reading." The National Literacy Trust says that those who enjoy reading are better readers, more confident readers. They spend less time online. They're more motivated by interest and achievement, and they're less motivated by approval. All of those things are really good, right? Those are things we want for our kids. I think the big thing to notice about both of those pieces of research that I just stated for you is the word enjoyment, voluntary, not analysis, not the Socratic method, not writing curriculum, not spelling curriculum, not reading comprehension, essays or worksheets or not assigned reading. (10:23): Free voluntary reading is the power player here. Free voluntary reading is what boosts your kids' comprehension, their vocabulary, their spelling and writing ability, their overall academic achievement. It's what makes them more confident readers, better readers, helps them spend less time online and be more motivated by interest and less motivated by approval. Free voluntary reading, simply doing the reading or reading because it's assigned doesn't confer the same benefits as reading for the sheer pleasure of it. We have grounded reason to want our kids to enjoy reading and to do it for leisure. In Raising Kids Who Read, Dr. Daniel Willingham, he was a guest on episode number 43 so you might recognize his name. He says in his book, Raising Kids Who Read that reading during your leisure time makes you smarter. Leisure readers grow up to get better jobs and make more money. Readers are better informed about current events and so make better citizens. (11:25): Now, of course, all of these things I'm mentioning don't even bring in the research that says kids who read a lot of stories tend to grow into more compassionate, kinder adults. There are a lot of reasons we want our kids to read for pleasure and enjoyment. I think knowing those right out of the gate is important because it solidifies the reason why it's useful for us to take some time to set the stage, to actually do whatever it takes to make it more likely for our kids to love reading. I think what you're going to find in this episode is that they're actually just a few simple steps. They're probably less work than you think they are. They're probably more delightful than you think they are. One of the things I think we need to talk about before we talk about how is we need to think about why, why are our kids not reading for fun? (12:17): Well, the first reason that comes to my mind is simply that the books they're reading are boring. We're allowed to say that. Sometimes the books that they're reading for school are boring. Yes. Sometimes your kids will have to read books they don't enjoy just like you as an adult. Sometimes you have to read things you don't enjoy or love to read, but most of your kids reading should be books they love. In fact, I would argue that if most of what your kids are reading they aren't enjoying, then some serious tweaking needs to be done to flip that around. Because if most of the reading your kids are doing are books they love, then reading books they don't love won't damper their love of reading. They will still associate reading as a practice or as an activity with delight because most of the time when they sit down to read, they're enjoying themselves, right? (13:15): Just like if you were to watch a boring show or documentary or a terrible movie, that doesn't mean you now hate all movies. But if all you watched or 80% of the time you were watching a TV show or a movie was terrible or boring, or you fell asleep during it, or couldn't keep your mind on it, you wouldn't probably want to watch TV or shows in your free time. Right? Same thing. Now we have of course recommendations. Of course, we do. If you've yet to take our quiz where I ask you three quick questions and then give you a book recommendation, actually, I give you a couple. Go do that now. It's free. Just text quiz to 33777 to get started. It's very fun. It takes just two minutes or something and you get two custom book recommendations for your own particular situation. (14:09): If this sounds like you and you think, yep, I think most of the books my kids are reading are boring or they're not enjoying them. We can fix that. We can find some books that might be a better fit. Laura Martin, when she was on a previous episode of the podcast, I can't remember which number off the top of my head, but we'll put it in the show notes. She talks about the importance of helping your child dig around to find the right jelly bean. She says, just like if you were to hand a child who's never had a jelly bean of any kind, a black licorice jelly bean and they didn't like it, she would eat it and then think I don't like jelly beans. Well, the problem is not actually that you don't like jelly beans because you haven't tried the rest of the jelly belly flavors, which are delicious, right? (14:50): The problem is it's the wrong jelly bean. What Laura Martin says is dig around to find the right jelly bean for your child. There is a book your child will enjoy. Sometimes it takes a little bit of finagling, a little bit of working, a little bit of trying this and trying that, reading aloud this, reading aloud that, trying some audio books. It takes a little trial and error to find the right book for some kids. I want to mention right here earlier in the show, I said that if you have a sibling who loves to read and a sibling who doesn't and you think, man, why doesn't this child just love to read like their brother or sister? One thing I would suggest is that you help the second sibling, the one who doesn't love reading, whether they're the older or younger one, help them find some books in a genre their sibling is not reading. For example, my oldest daughter loves historical fiction and was reading lots and lots and lots of historical fiction growing up. (15:46): When her sister who's less than two years younger than her became a reader, she really got into fantasy. But I think part of what we see is that our kids are especially they've got brothers and sisters, they're trying to figure out who they are. They're trying to differentiate themselves, right? They want to be unique and different and they don't want to just be a repeat of their older sibling. I think this happens especially with younger siblings. If we can just help them find the books that are unique to them, they won't feel like reading is the thing that my older sister does or my older brother does. I'm not a reader. I do X. We're all readers. Everybody gets to be a reader, but maybe you can help them differentiate themselves by choosing a different genre and saying, you know, I'm really into mysteries or I'm really into nonfiction or I'm really into historical fiction or fantasy or I love this author that my sibling has never read before. (16:41): Just help them differentiate themselves, not as reader and non-reader, but as the kind of reader they are. Does that make sense? If that is your situation and you have two kids, one who's a reader and one's not, try that. Especially if the younger child is the one who hasn't decided they love reading, because I think that's a very, very common situation. Okay. Another common reason I think kids are not reading for fun is that they've been taught to associate books with school. Remember, the goal is for your child to love reading, not for your child to have read a certain list of books or a list of the, "right books." Think of it this way, God willing, we have our kids for the first 20%, 25%, I don't know, of their life at home. If they are leaving our home when they're 18, 21, whatever, they're going to live the majority of their life, 75 to 80% of their life outside of our home. What that means is that our goal needs to be helping our kids fall in love with the act of reading and fall in love with stories, not necessarily to have read all the right books. (18:07): Now, the reason this comes to mind for me is because so often when our kids are associating books with school, it's because we as their parents and educators are worried about them getting the right books in before they leave home. We're worried about them getting lots of books in before they leave home and so we're cramming them down their throats. We're pushing them and giving them really long extensive book list. That's a major red flag. A long extensive book list does not leave your child the room that they need to become a human who reads for pleasure. A human who reads for pleasure rereads the books they love best. If you're giving your kids long extensive book list, they're not going to be able to reread the books they love best. We have a whole episode on how rereading is probably the best kind of reading, a deeper, way more intellectual advanced kind of reading than a first pass. But if all you're doing is giving your kids big, long stacks of books or reading list to read or their curriculum is, or they're doing it for school, they're not associating reading with pleasure. (19:09): They're associating reading with getting things done, getting through this book. There, I've done it. I finished it. I read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, I've done that one, right? That's not what we want to give our kids when it comes to their reading life. Remember when I said that if most of your child's reading are books that they don't love, we need to rethink that. If the majority of your child's reading is done as a part of their school, that's equally concerning. Because what that does is it sends a very clear message that books equal school, not books, equal life or books equal delights or books equal enjoyment. We don't want to send our kids the message that books equal school, and that there's something to check off a list and to get done. Let's think about how to remedy this. What can we do if our kids don't read for fun and don't love reading? First, I want you to know that any person can fall in love with reading at any time. (20:07): If you have grown children who don't love reading, I do not want you to listen to this episode and despair. The wonderful gift about reading is that it can sweep us off our feet at any time of life. If you've still got kids at home, and most of you listening to this show do, then we have the opportunity right now to make it far likelier than our kids will become readers and will become people who love to read. Our kids are not projects. We don't have the ability to make our children become any such way no matter how much we want to. There's no way for us to make our children be virtuous, right? We just can make it really likely that they will want to seek and live out virtue. Okay? Same way with reading, we can't turn our kids into readers, make them readers. That all sounds very driven, but I think we can make it more likely that they will become people who love to read. That's the charge that we can take on with both hands. That's something we can do. (21:17): First and foremost, think about the adults you know who are avid readers. You've got somebody in mind? It might be yourself, but it might be a friend of yours, might be a sister. Are they assigned most of their reading or do they choose most of their reading? Now, especially if the avid reader is an adult, the likelihood is that they choose almost all of their own reading or a large percentage of it. Now, we can help our kids choose their reading, certainly, and we should, but giving them freedom to make a lot of choices in their reading life helps them get their sea legs when it comes to finding books and choosing books. That's a practiced skill that they are going to need as adult readers. If they are going to be people who read, think about the people you know who read, they have the ability to choose books for themselves. (22:13): We want to be giving our kids practice choosing books for themselves. Choice matters, and your kids will very likely enjoy reading more if they have a lot of say in what they're reading. Also, another thing to keep in mind here is that taste is personal. What you love isn't naturally going to be what they love. Right? I have a child, I have six kids and one of them loves Amish fiction, another one loves historical fiction. Another one loves epic fantasy. I have a child who's consuming his body weight and business books written for the adult market. Meanwhile, I'm reading for fun on my own at the very time I'm recording this, I'm reading Emma by Jane Austen, My Man Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, a historical fiction novel set in London, World War II era. I'm also reading E. B. White's Stuart Little. I like to have a lot of books going at once. That's a topic for a whole another show, right? (23:06): What I'm trying to say here is we have a wide variety of personal taste and it takes time and experience to cultivate our own. There are not right books that your children should love. Just like there's not really right food for your children to love. It's okay that we all love different vegetables. It's okay that we all love different desserts, and it's okay that we all love different books. I think if we give our kids a little more room to get in the habit of choosing books and have their own personal taste, we're going to see their enjoyment of reading improve. Now, here is a technique that I've used in my home because of this very idea that we want to give our kids a lot of choice. I schedule time more than titles. Okay. For example, I will say we have a quiet reading hour. For the sake of this podcast, ours is changing and our schedule is changing currently. For the sake of this podcast, let's say your quiet reading hour is from 2:00 to 3:00 PM, or maybe it's from 8:00 to 9:00 PM. It doesn't really matter. It can be any time of day. (24:11): At our home, there might be a quiet reading hour. Everybody who's capable of reading on their own for that length of time will be reading on their own for that length of time but they'll get to choose what they're reading during that time. I mean, within your family's value code, of course, right? Not anything, but you know what I'm saying here. You're letting them choose from what's appropriate for them. Okay. This makes a big difference because what you're doing then is you're saving this space, you're making a space for your child to be a reader but you're not micromanaging them and telling them exactly what they have to read during that time. Now I'm not saying I don't ever assign books. I assign books in our homeschool for history studies and a few different situations, but the vast, vast, vast majority of the reading my kids do is not assigned. It is chosen by themselves. I think that makes a huge difference in how much buy-in they have and how much they're looking forward to what they're reading next. (25:02): I mean, I am an adult who reads a lot, who loves to read. It's my very favorite hobby and still when I think I have to read a book by a certain date or something because it's assigned to me, there is something about that that makes the book less appealing. Alan Jacobs said this in his episode, he is a literature professor and he says, there is nothing that will make him despise a book more than to put it on his reading list. Choice matters. It matters in how much we're going to enjoy the books. Again, that doesn't mean you can't ever assign books. It means that the majority of books your kids read shouldn't be assigned. Okay, because then they're loving reading, they're enjoying reading and then when you assign books and they are dud and they just cannot get into it, or it's a boring book for history or literature that your kid just can't get into, that's okay because it doesn't encompass so much of their reading life. It's a small part of their wider reading life. Does that make sense? (25:58): Schedule time, not titles. Doing that in your home can make a big difference in the enjoyment your kids have in reading. Now, when you let your kids choose their reading, there's another thing we have to talk about, which is the importance of not snooting down our noses when our kids pick lighter fare. Right? Tell me this. If you were reading a cozy murder mystery and someone started mocking you because it's not A Tale of Two Cities or Jane Eyre, would that make you like A Tale of Two Cities or Jane Eyre more? Would it make you like your cozy mystery less? Not really. All you'd feel is a sense of shame, but it wouldn't really help you love the classics better. A lot of us fall into this trap where our kids, especially at a certain reading level, and we'll talk about this in just a second. They'll start reading really easy series books that are below their reading level and they inhale them. (27:04): That is a very, very, very good thing. For your child to get better at reading, they need to read a large quantity of words below their reading level, because that is how they increase their comprehension and get better at the act of reading. That's how reading becomes easier. We like to do things that are easy. We don't like to do things that are hard. One of the keys to helping your kids love reading is to make it easy for them. That means that if they're dyslexic or having reading issues, this is not the time for them to get their love of reading through reading with their eyes. That means if your child is dyslexic or having reading issues or slower to become a fluent reader, they should get most of their enjoyment in reading through their ears. That's a read aloud and that's an audio book, right? (27:55): Same thing here. Once your child can read, let's say Encyclopedia Brown or Cupcake Diaries, or Boxcar Children, that kind of level of reading, they're going to want to read lots and lots and lots of easy books. That's something to be encouraged because the more that they read those kinds of books, the faster and better readers they'll become and then the more they'll enjoy reading and they'll be able to move on to other fare. The last thing we want to do is snoop down our nose and look down on our kids like, I can't believe you're reading this book. I can't believe you like that stuff. Like I said, I have a child who loves Amish fiction. I do not read that. It just doesn't appeal to me. There's nothing about those books that appeal to me. She loves them, but she's not going to feel loved, seen or cared for if I make fun of her reading any more than I would, if let's say my husband was making fun of a book that I was reading, right? (28:46): We want to be careful. Personal taste matters. It's something that we actually do want our kids to grow into. It's going to take a little more humility than some of us might naturally have. Okay. I want to give you another strategy that's like schedule time, not titles. It's just a little more refined. It comes from Donalyn Miller in her book, her excellent, excellent book, The Book Whisperer. I will put this book in the show notes. It's written for classroom teachers, but there's lots of good stuff I've pulled out and sort of tweaked for our homeschool. She is a classroom teacher who uses a system of requiring a certain number of books to be read and then she assigns a variety in different genres. For example, I think her number is 40 books in a year. (29:31): A certain number of them have to be nonfiction, a certain number have to be biography. A certain number have to be historical fiction. A certain number of poetry or verse, right? That kind of thing. That way you're not assigning titles, you're assigning a number and you're assigning genre, which helps your child read widely and get a really wide taste in books and probably helps them find new books they love in genres they didn't realize they would like so much. Right? I think this is a fantastic idea. In fact, I am planning on tweaking that a little bit and using it in our homeschool in the coming year. I would probably be talking about that idea more in a homeschool setting later this year on the podcast. I think this is a brilliant way of helping your child develop their sea legs in choosing their own books, read widely and still have that choice and enjoyment in reading. I mean, it kind of hits all of those things, right? We can talk about this for a long time, but I want to give you one more strategy today that may be useful right away and that is to read yourself. (30:34): This topic warrants its own episode, actually and we're really deep diving into how to find more time for your own reading, how to become a better reader, how to really enliven your own reading life so that it's one of your favorite parts of your own rich inner life as an adult, as a mother. We're diving into that more deeply in RAR Premium and we'll probably talk about it a bit here and there on the podcast too. Consider this quote from that same book by Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer, here's what she says, "My credibility with students and the reason they trust me when I recommend books to them stems from the fact that I read every day of my life and that I talk about reading constantly. I am not mandating an activity for them to do that I'm not doing myself. I do not promote reading to my students because it is good for them or because it is required for school success. I advocate reading because it is enjoyable and enriching. (31:36): When my students think about me in the future, I want them to remember me as a reader with a book in my hand and a recommendation on my lips." Wouldn't you love for your children to look back on their childhood someday and remember you as a mother or father with a book in your hand and a recommendation on your lips? So would I. Here's what I want you to remember after this episode and we're going to have good meeting notes on this episode in the show notes at readaloudrevival.com/154. If you want just the takeaways, you think, oh my goodness, there was one part of that that I wanted and I didn't write it down. Go to readaloudrevival.com/154. We'll have some notes there for you. We'll have timestamps so you can jump to different parts of the podcast to relisten to them. (32:32): Of course, we have the complete transcript. This is what I want to leave you with today. Remember that no curriculum can teach your child to love reading. Only books can do that. Let's give our kids the very best chance possible to leave our homes as people who love to read. Now it's time for let the kids speak. I love this part of the podcast because kids share the books that they've been loving lately. Speaker 2 (33:16): Hi, [inaudible 00:33:17]. I'm three years old. [inaudible 00:33:21] Bend, Oregon. Sarah Mackenzie (33:25): What's your favorite book? Speaker 2 (33:26): Frog and toad. Sarah Mackenzie (33:27): Frog and toad. Rachel (33:29): Hi, my name is Rachel and I'm six years old. I live in Bend, Oregon. My favorite book is Mercy Watson and there's a collection of books. My favorite one out of the collection is when she dresses up as a princess, it's really funny. Melanie (33:52): Hi, my name is Melanie and I'm seven years old. I live in Nebraska. My favorite books are American Girls because I like their survival stories. Speaker 5 (34:01): Hi, my name is [Kay 00:34:02]. I live in Alabama. I am eight years old. My favorite book is EJ12 Making Waves. I like it when Emma finds out Miss Tenga is actually a Shine agent, and when Emma sees a dolphin named squirt. Alex (34:16): My name is Alex. I live in Alabama. I am eight. My favorite book is The Candymakers and the Great Chocolate Chase. My favorite part is when you find that there's a [sidekick 00:34:27]. The first book is The Candymakers. Please read that first. Lucy (34:31): Hi, my name is Lucy. I live in Alabama. I am 10 years old. My favorite book is EJ12 Time to Shine. At home, Emma, also known as EJ12 is sad because her best friend is moving to London. She remembers when she started Shine, which is a spy agency, as EJ10. At the end, EJ finds out a solution to her problem. I've read this book on a Kindle because they didn't come as a book. This is part of a series. Chloe (35:02): Hi, my name is Chloe. I live in Alabama. I am four years old. My favorite book is Bliss. My favorite part is when Aunt Lily shows up, but you cannot trust her. Evan (35:17): My name is Evan. I am from Calgary. I am nine years old. My favorite book is The Chronicles of Narnia: The Horse and His Boy. The reason why I like it is because the book makes me feel involved and it's really adventurous. Speaker 10 (35:33): Hi, my name is [Jayhu 00:35:36] and I'm from Alaska. I'm seven years old. My favorite book is Nathan Gray because he solves mysteries. Olivia (35:45): Hi, my name is Olivia. I'm five years old. I'm from Wasilla, Alaska. This is my favorite book. It's called You Are My Cupcake by Joyce Wan. Sarah Mackenzie (35:58): Oh, good recommendations today, kids. I always love hearing the books that you're enjoying. If your kids would like to leave a message to be aired on the show, we air them in the order they're received. Go to readaloudrevival.com, scroll down and you'll see where you can leave a message. We'll air it on a future episode of the podcast. Speaking of readaloudrevival.com, we just got a brand new completely beautiful website. If it's been a while since you've come and gotten any of our free resources or checked out our recommendations, it's time. We've got a quiz there that you can use. You just answer three quick questions, takes usually less than two minutes. We give you a couple of book recommendations that we think would be a good fit depending on your kids' ages and how much time you've got and what you're looking for. (36:50): Of course, like I told you, at the top of the show, you are not too late to join us in RAR Premium for our WOW writers on writing workshops. Come join us. It's so much fun. Your kids are going to learn a lot and even better yet, you will get a great big win right here at the end of the school year, which is something that all of us could use, I think. Find that at rarpremium.com. All right, well, that's it for today. I'll be back in two weeks with another episode for you, but you know what to do in the meantime, right? Go make meaningful and lasting connections with your kids through books.