Louisa Kiernander, mum of Kaya, 12, and Jack Wilkins, 10
Louisa has always encouraged reading at bedtime. ‘Mainly because I love to read and it’s a habit that I really cherish,’ she says.
Kaya and Jack have always read and their mum has gone out of her way to help them find books as their tastes have developed and grown. But Louisa says while most parents encourage reading when their kids are young, there is a point where kids can fall out of the habit and not make the progression from reading with their parents to reading on their own. And while she doesn’t think reading is absolutely necessary for imagination, she thinks it’s key for relaxation, self–soothing, bedtime habits and ‘remembering that there is more to life than screens’.
While on that topic, she also doesn’t believe that screens are the devil, instead saying they are a necessary part of life. ‘The kids both love screens – Kaya loves messaging friends and Instagram and Snapchat, and listening to music. Jack loves games and messaging friends. They both love YouTube and they both instinctively turn to their phones as a natural extension of their own minds and information resources when wanting to know about something – whether it’s a fact, or just cinema timings. Screens just need to be controlled – like anything else that is addictive.’
But the kids don’t choose screens for reading. Kaya prefers paper books over e–book readers ‘because I like the smell of pages’. Jack echoes this, saying he doesn’t want to be on a device all the time. ‘And I enjoy reading more with a book. It takes me into the book more.’
Louisa says she gets the children to read more by not allowing phones at bedtime, allocating half an hour of reading time every night once they are in bed. And they don’t seem to mind it – in fact she says most nights they beg for longer.
She uses the Waterstones website for book ideas – a great resource for researching books for tweens. ‘But at this age, they choose books themselves,’ she says. ‘There are so many great fantasy series for children now. They often find a series they like at the school library and then we follow it up at home with more books from the series – especially from the second–hand book shop The House of Prose.’
While Kaya likes horrors and action stories, Jack is now reading a series about the ancient Greeks. ‘I like it because it’s not just that the first page is exciting. All of the pages are exciting,’ he says. Both say they don’t need a parent to push them to read – ‘we actually like books.’
Kaya prefers reading at night ‘in relaxing tones’. And while Kaya and Jack both reach for books more than they do a newspaper, they also like magazines. ‘For the pictures of clothes,’ chimes in Kaya.
Louisa says when she was growing up, her mum took them to the local library at least once a week. She knows their kids don’t have that liberty. ‘So it’s important that the habit of reading doesn’t fall out of the next generation’s daily life,’ she says.