A DAD'S LIFE: Reading to the kids is better than doing the washing
IT’S MY job to read to the kids. The way labour has divided over the years in this house, I consider this a result. It’s more enjoyable to cosy up under the covers with Roald Dahl and my daughters than wash clothes, of that there is no doubt.
I wasn't always so keen. The elder loved being read to long before she understood what was being said. To calm her sometimes I would sit and read The Very Hungry Caterpillar, the hard card version. Never just once – we could go over and back up to 10 times. If I dared walk away I'd have a very hard hungry caterpillar brought down on my head. She brought that determination into her bedtime reads. One book was never enough. The Gruffalowas invariably followed by Charlie and Lolaand maybe some Alfie and Annie Rose picture books.
As a result, bedtime took forever. Bedtime still takes forever. At an age when they should be able to get into their bed gear, wash and settle themselves with little intervention from their parents we still have to follow, to the letter, the procedure that’s developed over the years. This used to bug me terribly. I’d watch the minimum hour it would take to get them down with mounting panic, realising the grown-up time available to me was slipping away. Time when I could watch something bloody and violent, maybe mix myself a Cosmopolitan, or just engage in lively political debate with my wife about the day’s events.
The thing is, I never do any of those things, apart from maybe the bloody and violent. I’ve come to realise that grown-up time is overrated and now tend to stretch the story reading for longer than is strictly necessary. The format is established and rarely deviated from. It is generally successful but can occasionally lead to consternation if the formula is broken.
Reading each child a story of their own is important. A single tale for both is unacceptable as any given story has greater resonance for one child over the other and is therefore seen as “that child’s story”. If only one story is read, the child who does not have ownership of the tale feels hard done by. She will invariably sabotage the telling of the story, often resulting in parental and child meltdown causing the bedtime ritual to descend into chaos. I learned long ago to read two stories.
Being read to first is important, for no other reason than to taunt the sister. Both do it, both react to the taunting, both are quite mental. I try to alternate nightly who is read to first but due to my increasingly severe memory lapses sometimes I get it wrong. When one succeeds in being read to first, two nights in a row, she tends to miss a lot of what is read through crowing at her sister behind my back.
Position is important. The single beds are pushed together and I lie in the middle. The child who “owns” the story has first dibs on where to sprawl on me. The other one has to wait until her sister is settled before crashing on wherever is left exposed on my prone form. The two then switch positional importance when one story segues into the next. If ground is not granted at the appropriate time, skin and hair may fly. No consideration is given to me, the reader, the human beanbag being bounced into submission beneath them. I have learned to read with toes forced into my nose, a child sitting on my head, balancing another with my legs as a suspension bridge. It’s easy really. And most of all, it relaxes me.
There is something immensely pleasurable not only about the act of reading, but also watching your children adopt it as a habit. They both love to be read to and the older one now will quite happily bury herself in a book wherever she is. It has made long journeys bearable; she even reads to her sister in the car. It sounds idyllic and sometimes I catch myself beaming with pride at them, but this is usually just before the book morphs into a lethal weapon and they launch at each other.
They haven’t killed each other yet. In fact, they’re both preparing to be involved with the MS Readathon. In its 23rd year the Readathon encourages kids to devour as many books as possible and in doing so, to raise money for those suffering with multiple sclerosis in Ireland. If you, your kids or their school want to get involved, take a look at the MS Ireland website, ms-society.ie, for details.