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All four of our children are published authors. It was never our goal to create authors of books. Yet, it was our goal to give our children the resources for brain food, feeding their imagination with what was good, true, beautiful. We trusted that if we had invested excellent ideas and truth in their brains, they would, out of the treasure-chest in their hearts, pursue a life that would flourish.
People have often asked me what I did to build Sarah into such an excellent writer. How did you give Nathan, your adhd child the ability to write a blog? To write a book? Why can Joel ghost write for you and no one knows the difference? How did Joy develop her skills as a speaker and writer, so that she is so articulate on her own blogs?
I was not a perfect mom and rarely in one year accomplished all my educational goals with my children. But almost every day, we had devotions and read-alouds--sometimes at night, sometimes in the morning, sometimes at tea times, but I kept baskets of books everywhere--in every room, in the bathrooms, in their bedrooms. And each year on birthdays and Christmas and other holidays, they all received books as gifts and I helped each of them build their own libraries.
"In the beginning was the Word (Jesus's name--the word) and the Word was with God and the Word was God." John 1
If God's name was "word" then words and foundations of words are so very important.
So, if you do one thing right, read, read, read to your children. It is what was the foundation of the minds of all of my children.
There is so much pressure today, (as always), to conform to cultural norms--and to try to keep up with the Joneses and all the blogs and articles that everyone else writes about what kind of curriculum to use, when to put pressure on your 5 year old to become academic.
But really, really, really--the key to giving your children mental muscle power and an advantage in any kind of education, is to read aloud to that child. All research complies with this, all teachers and writers say this, Clay and I say it emphatically in our own book. Read first--read daily---turn off media and put away work books and before you do anything else, read out loud to them--and read out loud to them until they are 30! Do not think that just because they can read at 6 that you should make them read to themselves and stop reading out loud. Read to them because you get to share in mentoring, discussing ideas, your vocabulary is bigger and you can explain things and they develop better skills in thinking and writing and communicating when you read out loud.
Sarah provides another peek into the benefits of reading:
“Consider that for every children’s classic written, there are countless versions of it to be found within the minds of the children who read it, and no two of them are the same. The imagination of each child is unique, creating a new image to fit the words he or she reads. Because of this, to read a story is to set in motion a swift growth of new images within the mind of a child. Every book read adds to that stock of inner imagery so that a child who is a great reader has a mind crammed with landscapes and people, trees and fairies, castles and mountains unique to his or her own thought.”
― Sarah Clarkson, Caught Up in a Story: Fostering a Storyformed Life of Great Books & Imagination with Your Children
Go read a great story today, and enjoy as your brain and your children’s brains grow stronger just by enjoying the tale.
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