You Can Keep Reading To Them
As teenagers, your children need to hear your voice more, not less.
Many parents embrace the call to read to their kids when young. The more the better. Reading to your kids, starting at the earliest ages, has so many benefits that it feels like a cheat code to parenting.
But for some reason, this activity gets lumped into the category of activities reserved only for younger children. Like piggyback rides or using a booster seat. Once a kid gets old enough, they have outgrown “reading time.” After all, they can read to themselves. Why do they need Dad to still read to them?
This mindset is a huge mistake.
Reading time doesn’t have to stop. It shouldn’t stop. Children should hear the voice of their father at regular intervals, a predictable cadence, as long as they’re in the home. They should hear him saying beautiful words and telling wonderful stories and imparting the wisdom of Scripture.
People pay other people to read to them every day.
But isn’t it a little bit silly to expect teenagers to sit down and listen to their father read? This question betrays the spirit of the age, which thinks it’s silly for teenagers to listen to their fathers, period. About anything. It does everything it can to divide and conquer, to separate the influence of parents, to segregate into generations.
Have you ever listened to an audiobook?
Have you ever listened to a podcast?
You’ve probably done one or the other (or both) this week. It’s a regular habit.
The audiobook market is $7–11 billion, and expected to contintue to grow at a rate of 10% per year. That’s a lot of people who pay other people to read to them.
Over 500 million people will listen to podcasts this year. That’s a lot of people who spend time listening to other people talk, often telling them stories.
The idea of a father reading to his almost adult children is not absurd. Don’t buy into the lie.
But what if they don’t want to?
Children don’t want to do a lot of things, like brushing their teeth or mowing the lawn. Do you just shrug your shoulders and give up and let the chips fall where they may?
As long as you keep the habit up and make it a regular expectation, it’s amazing how easy it is to keep rolling with it when your children are older. It wasn’t your children who gave up nighttime reading. It was you.
Confront that fact.
Build the habit again.
If necessary, apologize for your apathy and laziness and say why your are kicking things off again. Be sure to start small. Everyone needs to build the muscles back up. Don’t dive into reading the entire book of Romans in a monotone voice, where everyone’s miserable, including you.
Make it fun. Keep it light. Read something you know everyone will enjoy. Start small. Five minutes is better than nothing.
Just like any habit, it will be harder to start but easier once the momentum gets going.
