How to Raise Boys Who Read | Hacker News Reader

How to Raise Boys Who Read

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140 pointsgrellas119 comments

How I raised two boys who read:

1. Start reading to them pretty much as soon as they're born.

2. Read a lot - both frequently and as long as their attention holds. Their attention for stories will get longer as they get older if you keep reading to them.

3. Get comfy and make reading time a time to cuddle.

4. Read really well-written books - engaging plots, smart dialogue, solid exposition. Even young children are sophisticated and discerning enough to know when an author is condescending to them.

5. Perform when you're reading. Don't just read in a monotone: recite the book, with intonation and voices and accents and everything.

6. When they interrupt you to ask questions, take the time to answer them. By doing this, you help children to engage the story and build their own listening comprehension.

7. When they start to show an interest in reading, start teaching them how to do it. Get into the habit of taking turns reading to each other.

Edit - one more thing:

8. Be seen reading a lot yourself.

We've done all these things. It's a great list and I would only add one more item, to be used sparingly, and that is to give 'em a small dose of familial culture motivation. Saying things like, "Pearces learn to read, and read a lot. You will. It's the only way to be smart."

The purpose is just to cover all the motivational bases. Usually they'll want to read for fun or due to their inquisitive nature, but sometimes, my kids would give me lip about how they never wanted to learn to read or how they can just listen to audio. At those times, I just gently plant the cultural seed and let it go to work in their head, motivating them with a sense of duty.

>Saying things like, "Pearces learn to read, and read a lot. You will. It's the only way to be smart."

I'm a reader, at least when I've time for leisure I'll read pretty much anything but gravitate towards international espionage and SciFi. My mother reads fiction vociferously.

However, "it's the only way to be smart" seems too much; the suggestion that 'members of this family read a lot' seems too much like undue psychological pressure. As if you'll disown them if they don't read as much as you.

If my sons choose not to carry on reading at the pace I've set them off at I won't necessarily think it's bad. One can learn as much from people IMO. If they dissociate from all avenues of learning then yes it'll be a major problem.

Indeed, there are many subjects where, wrt books, direct interaction with people and materials are far better for learning.

>"motivating them with a sense of duty"?

Huh? Duty to whom?

We'll probably say something like this to our kids two or three time in their lifetimes.

Listen, a family culture exists whether you acknowledge it and actively try to create it or not. What I'm saying, is that one of the many tools available to a parent is to motivate their children by encouraging them to be a part of that culture. Obviously, it doesn't work or is psychologically damaging if the culture sucks. There are plenty of examples of this tactic being abused, which is why I state it has to be used sparingly, and I'll add by parents who've really thought it through, love their children, and are training them to be independent thinkers. I'm raising kids who will tell me, at an early age, if they think our family culture sucks.

Duty to whom? To the family and their way of thinking, of course.

>Listen, a family culture exists whether you acknowledge it and actively try to create it or not.

>Duty to whom? To the family and their way of thinking, of course.

I think that our family "culture" is simply emergent out of the interplay of our individual characters; the kids are obviously part of that culture whether they're pulling in the direction you want/hoped/prefer/demand or not.

I'm in for a chat over a couple of cold ones on these things but it's a bit too OT for here I think. Thanks for the thought-fodder I'll find a proxy for you and see how it all goes.

How my parents raised me to read:

1. Got me a library card and took me to the library often.

2. No Nintendo during the week. (And in fact, they did not buy me the system at all, my grandparents gave it to me as a gift several years after all my friends had one)

edit: Also, I spent time with cousins who also read a lot. Having peers who read and can recommend books is great encouragement.

I have no idea why parents don't buy their children Kindles instead of a Nintendo DS.

Two reasons, both invalid but sympathizable:

1) Everyone else is buying DS's for their kids. I almost feel like I'm judging people to not get one for our kids.

2) Parenting in America is playing defense, reacting to kids boredom, whining, and manipulating. Defense only lasts so long before surrender.

Wow, I must be a terrible parent, because I can't sympathize with either of those.

My son's been playing the same PS2 for years. If he's bored, I tell him to read a book or go run around outside or he can help me with something. If he doesn't want that, well I can find him some chores to keep him busy. If he whines, I tell him I don't want to hear it: go do it somewhere else. Attempting to be manipulative e.g., playing one parent against the other generally gets whatever he wanted taken away for a while.

He (almost 10 years old) absolutely loves to read and we happily feed that habit. Video games/cartoons are a privilege rationed out carefully and taken away when behavior problems arise.

I worry a lot more that I don't have time to take my son fishing than whether or not he's got the same toys his friends do.

I learned at a young age to never ever tell my parents I was bored. My children have learned the same lesson.

We also limit our kids to one hour of video games a week, only to be used on Saturday or Sunday. After homework and chores are finished.

They all love to read and the local librarian knows them all by name.

I have always liked my parent's approach to "I'm bored". I wasn't afraid to say I was bored; I just knew that they'd tell me "Being bored is a choice. Find something to do." and refuse to help me.

As a result, I have never been bored for more than about 5 minutes at a time for nearly a decade. (well, besides classes. But even then I don't think of myself as bored)

I do - because many parents weren't raised to read themselves.

Great advice. I grew up seeing that my dad always had a book with him. When he'd take my mom shopping he'd sit in the car and read. Wasn't long before I wanted to sit with dad and read too.

Also, while we had Atari/Nintendo/etc, that was limited to 30min a night. Reading was unlimited. Both parents took me to the library often and I got my first Library card in kindergarten.

I grew up to love reading and plan on using the same tactics with my own children.

Exactly the same formula worked for us: 3 boys; all stellar performers.

I added: ban game boxes from the house. No great loss - the boys never missed them, thought they were stupid compared to what they had (books, board games, family).

>I added: ban game boxes from the house. No great loss - the boys never missed them, thought they were stupid compared to what they had (books, board games, family).

Do you have a TV?

We have a TV for DVDs only but I let my eldest play games occasionally and imagine that both lads will play their share of Nintendo (or whatever) as they grow up. I find games less troublesome (depending on theme) as they are interactive usually involve consideration of tactics or puzzle solving and are fun. They don't have commercials either.

Presumably they don't play games on a PC either as that would be functionally equivalent (wouldn't it?)?

I think computer games can be different. Depth of play, size of universe, and an online community.

Yes, we had a TV while they were growing up. A small set in the family room. The boys never used it - it was for my wife.

Sure they played their share of console games - at other people's houses. That was social.

What's bad is having your own console in your room for instance. No need to share, no social interaction, no reason to come out of your room for 13 years in fact. That's sick and disfunctional.

We are in fact a heavy computer-game-playing family. We have over 100 titles on a shelf. But we played them at appropriate times, WITH one another, either networked or all sitting behind the keyboard and collaborating. Some of the best family times that they remember.

Another motivator we've used for our older boy: give him reading time before bed. Now he's allowed to stay up a bit later (a benefit of homeschooling is there's no pesky bus to catch the next morning), as long as he reads. He really looks forward to this time now.

I'll add another - try getting a book on a subject that holds their interest. My 5 year old recently spent every evening of a 2 week trip getting his grand-father to read him his cherished "Big Book Of Bugs".

My son is 5 and has proven to be a total scientist. His current favorite book: H A Rey's The Stars, A New Way to See Them. We take that, a red flashlight, and binoculars out back before bed. He insists on learning the stories. The "kit" of the book, binos and red light sit on the coffee table by the back door, ever ready.

http://www.amazon.com/Stars-New-Way-See-Them/dp/0395248302/r...

Here's a new topic, please tell us about great books you recommend for boys: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724596

To add to the great comment above, especially for the parents here considering instructing their children on the formalities of reading, make sure your children learn the sound-symbol correspondences of English (or whatever language's) writing system and skills for pronouncing unfamiliar words first seen in print. All four of my children, now avid readers, got a lot of help from the book Let's Read: A Linguistic Approach by Leonard Bloomfield and Clarence Barnhart.

http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Linguistic-Approach-Leonard-Bloom...

I like the stories in that book, too, especially the very last story.

I have one boy that reads constantly. I too used a lot of the points here and seems to have worked, thinking about it my parents did the same with me.

I will, however, chime in and mention that we also have a PS3/Wii/PS2/Gamecube/N64/NES & 2 DSs that are all in use, and often played, so the systems being around has not impacted his love of reading. He'll often put his DS down and pick up his most recent book. My daughter is the same way.

I think that point #8 is likely the biggest reason for this, as although I like to game, I often will be reading instead.

My Dad was a big reader so 8 was probably the big motivator. Although I grew up in the 3 TV channels/no game box era so the inside distractions were pretty low. We were pretty poor for a while (Dad went back to school) and I went from Dr. Seuss to whatever Dad was done reading (War/Action/Sci-Fi). I will say 1st edition AD&D probably did a heck of a lot for my and my brother's reading comprehension.

It's posts like yours when I wish that HN had a "save" feature.

It does, sort of. If you upvote a story, it is added to the "saved stories" link on your profile page.

I use Devonthink Pro: http://devon-technologies.com/products/devonthink/index.html , which has a handy bookmarklet so I can highlight text, click a button, and have it automatically saved to my main database, along with the URL where it came from.

I use DTP as described here: http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/0002... .

I used to be one of those 'boys who read' (still am, just not so much of a boy I guess, maybe). I would read anything that had letters on it, packaging, comics, stuff that was way over my head and stuff that made sense to me.

There was a second hand bookstore near my grandmothers house that I had a deal with, if I brought back a book the next day after taking it I could exchange it for free. The little hacker in me didn't take long to figure out that for the price of one book I could technically read through the whole store.

Long nights with the flashlight under the blanket to avoid being discovered :)

It never really stopped, I still read, pretty much all day long, unless I'm coding or doing something else.

If you have a kid that likes to read, make sure they don't have to do it in secret, they'll do it anyway and it helps to have everybody on the same page instead of having secrets about your 'habits'.

The internet is changing our reading habits, and I think that those 'electronic media' that are to be kept under control according to the author are really the new books.

Another decade or so and you'll be able to find all that good stuff online and on mobile devices. To deal with the distracting element of that is going to be the real problem, but forbidding their use is to throw out the baby (that vast library out there) with the bathwater.

Project Gutenberg and Wikipedia are accessible through the same medium that leads to major sources of distraction.

Given youngsters' propensity for rebellion I wonder if furtive nighttime reading by flashlight actually encourages the behavior.

I think you're probably right. Probably best to keep up the illusion of furtiveness!

I'd like to add that I strongly recommend that kids read only with sufficient lighting. I'm no opthalmologist, but I do believe the primary (sole?) reason my eyeglass prescription is as strong as it is is because, as a youth, I read with poor lighting at night.

I was another kid reading by flashlight hidden under a blanket after bedtime.

Having raised two "boys who read," (and three girls as well), I think that the secret here is, like many aspects of "how to," simply lead by example.

Read to your kids when they are very young, let them see you read, make sure that there are plenty of interesting books around, and do your best to instill them with a sense of curiosity. From time to time, drop a book on their bed or desk and say "you might find this one interesting."

Also, my secret policy is to always buy my kids whatever books they ask for, without consideration to price or budget. My younger son (20) almost literally eats advanced math books for breakfast. I am happy to keep him well-fed.

Net-net: Well-informed kids who love to read and a house stuffed with books.

Just an aside: Shouldn't your son be studying mathematics at a university at this age?

He is studying Applied Math and Physics. He took 8 math textbooks with him when we went to South America for "summer break."

My younger son (20) almost literally eats advanced math books for breakfast.

I'm not sure I understand what it means to almost-literally eat advanced maths books for breakfast.

I understand what it means to do it figuratively, and I understand what it means to do it literally, but I'm afraid that almost-literally has me puzzled.

edit: Wow, modded down to -4 for linguistic pedantry? That's unusual.

Hugh, he attacks the books with such vigor that they are sometimes almost destroyed in the process. Perhaps I was exaggerating a bit, but not by much!

The definition of literally has changed over time. Now a commonly accepted definition is: "used for emphasis: used with figurative expressions to add emphasis"

So "literally" is one of the few words that keeps its traditional meaning and means the opposite as well (like "bad" :-))

I'm not sure where the dividing line is between "has changed its meaning" and "is commonly misused", but I'm pretty sure that "literally" is still on the commonly-misused side of things.

Very few words come to mean their exact opposites via misuse. (I am assured that "bad" meant "good" in some brief period of the 80s in which I was too young to know the cool slang, but it wasn't because people were confused about which meant which.)

As an editor I'd correct it if it was in a very formal context but it's a perfectly acceptable colloquial usage for casual communication including emails and online forums.

Language is living, breathing and constantly changing. Words mean what people intend them and understand them to mean, not necessarily what they mean ... uh ... literally.

It's an auto-antonym, a word that has two opposite meanings.

Wikipedia used to have a good list of them, but it looks like they just deleted it. Thank god for revision history: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=List_of_auto-anton...

I'm going to start using autoantonyms in completely ambiguous ways in email. I love it!

From American Heritage below. They seem to indicate that this has been "misused" for a long time. I use ding people for this, but now I think its overly pedantic, and now I think I'm technically wrong to even ding them.

"Usage Note: For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherency of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of "in a manner that accords with the literal sense of the words." In 1926, for example, H.W. Fowler cited the example "The 300,000 Unionists will be literally thrown to the wolves." The practice does not stem from a change in the meaning of literally itself -- if it did, the word would long since have come to mean "virtually" or "figuratively", but from a natural tendency to use the word as a general intensive, as in They had literally no help from the government on the project, where no contrast with the figurative sense of the words is intended."

> a commonly accepted definition [of 'literally'] ...

Really? If so, that's worse than "impact" used as a verb, or some of my relatives' apparent belief that certain prepositions no longer take objects ("we're going to the movies; ya wanna come with?")

[/old-fart-mode]

Funny, in German the literal translation "Willst Du mitkommen?" is perfectly fine ("mit" means "with").

But we do not normally strand our preposition (i.e. put them at the end of a sentence).

So some people don't use "literally" literally anymore.

I think the real fail of this thread is that the actual substance of the comment was lost amidst a pedantry pissing contest.

...the real failure...

Sorry.

Literally no one uses "literally" literally anymore.

I'm not sure I buy the argument that you have to eliminate other media habits in order to become a reader.

When I was younger I watched loads of TV, beat Zelda and Super Mario Bros, honed my Gameboy Tetris skills to near Woz-level, watched skateboard videos over and over again to analyze the moves, futzed around with Amigas and Macs and PCs for hours, ran up my dad's phone bill with long-distance BBS charges, etc. I also read 2-5 entire books per week, got a perfect score on the verbal section of the SAT and the reading comprehension portion of the ACT and subsequently got a full ride academic scholarship to college.

I'm also not convinced that reading a bunch of junk books is actually a great use of one's time. I have a lot of nerd friends who never read anything other than HOWTOs and they are much better at their mathematical software jobs than I am. I can read a 300 page crime novel in about 90 minutes, but what's the point?

I agree with you 100%. Trouble brews when people are illiterate, but unless you're pursuing a literary career, there isn't too much use for reading fiction. Nonfiction has its own benefits that attract anyone who wants to learn in general, or has complex goals.

Remember the phrase 'bookworm'? It wasn't always a cute alternative to the word nerd. I know about it, because I wasted years of my life reading crap fantasy novels, hardy boys casefiles, etc.

You mentioned an interesting point. Is the time spent on reading crap books really wasted? I wouldn't say so. It helps telling good books apart from bad ones. Reading wide variety of books makes one's taste more sophisticated. Also, mere familiarity with some books can be helpful in some social settings, when we want or need to make friends with people who read those books too.

True, I wouldn't say wasted, but I believe there are sharply diminishing returns for the classes of books I was referring to.

My Mom loves movies and TV, so we always had the TV on. I still learned to read and keep reading. I always figured love grows out of a desire for something not the limiting of something else. When the kids get to an age and place where they get to make the decisions, such restricted items might take over.

In my unproveable anecdotal experience, the tendency towards gross-out books identifies the problem but misses the solution. The problem is that reading curricula tend to focus nearly exclusively on literature (novels, short stories, plays) and target the choice towards the students' reading comprehension level rather than their emotional comprehension level.

For example: Most 10th graders can read "Of Mice And Men," but how much are they getting out of it? Conversely, "Romeo and Juliet" has much harder words, but at least works at an emotional level they can understand.

Beyond that, there's usually a token 'biography' unit in a reading class or a short section on comprehending a science article, but almost never a full science, engineering, history, current events, etc. book assigned. Kids who have acquisitive minds are left out in the cold by reading Jane Austen -- in their minds, they're learning nothing useful at all.

"The Pearl" was required reading in high school. If that had been anywhere near my first book, I would have stopped reading for recreation forever. Love of baseball doesn't begin with the workout, why should reading.

// my book report was the subject of a parent / teacher conference

When I was a teenager I used to coach kids who had reading problems. My first action was to get them a library card and let them pick out something they were interested in; snakes and adventure stories were common choices.

And my advice to parents since has always been to encourage them to read anything they wanted first, the better a person can read the less difficult tedious books (school work, etc) becomes later. Reading is a skill, and like any skill it requires practice. The more enjoyable the practice, the more they'll do.

Anecdotal evidence: my father raised me exactly that way.

No TV (that was in the 80s), no newfangled Nintendo thingie (I got one when I was ten, and was allowed only during the weekends)

And an all-you-can-eat collection of books, by an Argentinean editorial that included books by Jack London, Mark Twain, Jules Verne, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens and Emilio Salgari and many many others.

Plus, my mother re-married and her second husband is a huge science fiction fan, so I got acquainted with Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and others also from an early age (it also set me into my career path, so maybe it wasn't that healthy :) ).

The result: I'm about the fastest reader I know of (whenever they offer me a fast-reading course I see the benchmarks of what you can supposedly archieve are a bit lower than what I already do archieve), and when I moved I had to leave 14 boxes full of paperback novels (about 300 books) which I had read - add to that a few thousand I've borrowed from family, friends and libraries or read as e-books, and I'd say that my father's experiment turned out a success as far as book-reading goes.

On the other hand, I'm often "out" when it comes to discussing movies or old TV shows and other shared cultural experiences, which makes me think I missed out some things as well.

Anecdotal evidence:

I've owned every video game console made in the last 15 years or so (While I was growing up). I had a TV in my own room and my own computer with broadband as soon as it was available in our city. I skipped classes to play video games in high school. I played video games into the wee hours of the night for all of high school and college. I've seen all the latest movies and TV shows and enjoy critiquing them with friends.

On the flip side, I have some 20 or so boxes of books I've completely read... I average maybe 2 books a week and have done so since I was old enough to find what I wanted at the library. I read faster than anyone I know. I read books from all genres for fun, and always have. I managed to do well in college which got me into grad school with a stipend.

The point: anecdotal evidence is not very useful. Also, the article and your comment seem to take a very naive view of human development. There is a lot more to this than just "video games made my son stupid".

I had a computer or some other electronic gadget since I was 7. I also played insane amounts of computer games (sometimes they had to take away computer from me).

But just like you I read insanely a lot - I had whole school library read by the time I was 10 - literary everything. When I had reading streaks I'd just pack my schoolbag chock full of books and bring them back in 2 weeks (I read the whole LOTR trilogy in 2 days! when I was 12!!!).

Computer games only gave me the chance for greater immersion. I also learned English all by myself just through trying to hack the computer and by playing games.

How it all came to be? Our home was full of books. My parents both read a lot (newspapers, novels, poetry...) and they were both formally uneducated. I also "inherited" boxes of 80's pop-tech magazines form my older brother and lots of novels from various people. My parents always showed that they were proud of me for reading a lot. I was also lucky that the dude who stocked me with games (pirated I must say!) had excellent taste - so I started my gaming career with Ultima Underworld 2 (not knowing English at the time), Colonization, TIE fighter,...

So if somebody were asking me for advice - I'd say: 1. Stock your home with loads of quality literature. 2. Commend your kids on reading. 3. Your kids WILL play games (else nowadays they will be considered dorks) - so you better stock some quality video games (RPG and strategy if possible). 4. Do not own a TV!

There.

"The point: anecdotal evidence is not very useful."

Indeed, I'm not arguing that, I just wanted to share my anecdote because it was relevant to the article.

"Also, the article and your comment seem to take a very naive view of human development. There is a lot more to this than just "video games made my son stupid"."

Sorry if it sounds that way, I didn't want to imply that (though my father does believe it). I'm pretty sure there are lots of people that played video games a lot and turned out well.

Also, all I have to show for it is an improved reading ability, I don't think it made me smarter or anything(1). I'm extremely bad at personal interactions, communications and other stuff, which is why I'm still programming and not in a managerial position.

I will try out doing a startup on my own, but I doubt I'd climb the career ladder in a "traditional" way - I'm always being overtaken by the arrogant, self-confident, usually way less technically capable people-talkers on the way up, at least on the big corporate environments I've worked in (finance and insurance).

(1)Edit: see these two other posts by maxawaytoolong and awakeasleep which seem to agree on it not being that useful:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724089

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1724269

>I'm pretty sure there are lots of people that played video games a lot and turned out well.

Not only that, there are lots of people who had access to video games restricted and ended up worse off for it.

anecdotal evidence is not very useful.

Which is probably why the article mentioned a study that examined the link between access to video games and academic performance?

Sorry, I was mostly referring to the parent comment and not the article. Inreference, to the article though... The bit about the study doesn't really have much meat.

"Boys with video games at home, he found, spend more time playing them than reading, and their academic performance suffers substantially. Hard to believe, isn't it, but Science has spoken."

There is a lot left unexplored here. Was the problem the video games or the fact that they didn't read? Reading vs playing video games is a false dichotomy. They aren't mutually exclusive and the problem probably just indicates parents aren't taking an active roll and doing the sorts of things other commenters are suggesting.

I had a very similar experience. Video games were not allowed in my house, but my neighborhood friend had 4 different consoles and tons of games. Many an evening was spent playing nintendo; my parents joked about my friend's family adopting me because I was over there constantly. I turned out just fine, and said friend scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs.

Yeah wow, same here. I wasn't allowed to watch TV in the family house until age 14 (minus the random Nature/Nova special.) I am also lacking pop culture knowledge from the late 1980's and early 1990's. That was a (self-created) "big deal" in early education, but now I think it's a benefit.

Ontop of the no tv, we were also raised with only creative toys. Instead of GI Joes we got kickass (really they kicked ass) wooden blocks. LEGO instead of nintendo. Shit LEGO was my life.

I can't thank my parents enough for that decision as the effects are clear: I am thankful for the skills I have with my hands and mind.

But dammit, there were many times I wished I could join into the discussion about what happened on 90210 last night without faking it.

I also had Legos, you're right :) - I loved LEGOs, both me and my brother used them, but it seems we had different inclinations from a young age, I loved building things while he used them as a stage and made them act :) (now he's into the publicity business)

Yeah!

I doubt I read as much as you did - I spent much of my unsupervised time taking things apart that I shouldn't and building really silly shit in my dad's shop. The effect is in the same vein as your reading abilities: I feel confident in my abilities to repair or build almost anything, even with no previous domain experience.

Did you consciously train speed reading? I read a lot too when I was a kid, but I still spend hours on a book, and a lot more for non-fiction.

Do you have nay indicators on your retention? Do you feel it's sufficient or not, or do you have a feeling on how you compare to others?

I have pretty bad retention, I usually can remember the general plot but not much else - heck, I very often re-read the books (I re-read the Wheel of Time series about 8 times, every few years when a new book came out).

The computer helps my boys to read. I have an 8 year old who's desire to read stemmed from his wanting to be able to play online games like Club Penguin. He needed to read the instructions. The same is true for the Leapster video game console and the Nintendo DS.

Now he reads all the time. Has complete the Percy Jackson series, read several of the Harry Potter books cover to cover, etc.

His younger brothers are readers, but not like he is. I think it is in part because their older brother showed them how to play the games.

Then again, it is likely that my kids are somewhat self-directed learners like I am.

Still, I don't think technology should be vilified as an obstacle to reading. Especially interactive technology.

Anecdotal : move to a really far away country (the remote outskirts of Indonesia, in my case, but I imagine the highlands of Cameroon or tea plantations in Eastern Bhutan would work just as well), bring nothing but your father's (!) old children's books (on account of which I know to this day that to operate a home built radio receiver one must "scratch" at a "crystal" until one gets a "signal") and wait what happens). While there is enough to do there in the way of outdoors-y activities ("let's climb that there volcano!"), intellectual stimulation will have to come not from the internet, computer games or even television (you would not believe how little worthwhile there is to see on television channels aimed at the remote parts of third world countries) but from good old fashioned books. As a result, if you (that would be me) have been subjected to such a regimen in your childhood, you will always, always, continue to hold good old fashioned books as belonging to a quite, quite dear portion of your heart.

To make it a little less anecdotal, by the way, I've seen a similar love of books in others who have grown up in this way.

I can confirm this worked for me, although the outskirts of Indonesia were not that remote in my case.

WARNING: RANTING AHEAD

"Everyone agrees..." No support evidence for this claim. Furthermore, the entire premise of the argument relies on looking at number of boys below a certain level. That's fine in it's own right, but they seem to assume this means boys are overall worse at reading, when no evidence has been presented to support this claim, and every study I have read about male intelligence indicates that it has higher variance than females.

This man seems obsessed with imposing his arbitrary and unnatural social views upon boys. He denounces the natural desire for boys to be active, negatively calling upon the properties of 'squirminess'. And we sit to wonder why America is expected to be 75% obese people in a few years, when activity is denounced?

The author then reveals his complete ignorance when he cites one study demonstrating correlation between media consumption in boys to academic progress as Scientific Fact that his claims are accurate. To quote, "Hard to believe, isn't it, but Science has spoken." Yet, he ignores two very important parts of Science - experiments must be repeated, and correlation != causation. He steps through magical logical leaps that somehow playing video games makes your children illiterate and that the solution to illiteracy is removing anything interesting that is not a book, when there are in fact several simpler explanations supported by much more repeated research reflecting child development patterns. I am sure he does not want to accept this 'barbaric' view, but boys have a tendency to learn more effectively through trial and error, and develop their analytical (as he might call it, 'civilized') language skills later. Boys are learning about the world around them by pushing the boundaries to see how it reacts - no matter how much it upsets this author's view on how civilized people should act. Those boys not held back by imbeciles like him will grow up to become Engineers and Scientists, spending a little time in their day to use their superior literacy and reasoning skills to retort people such as the author here.

A boy raised on the stimulating electronic media of infinite possibility, will imagine - and create - the future that narrow-minded president's of publishing companies could never think of, but take for granted anyway.

Everyone agrees that statements proven by appeal to majority [consensus] are logically fallacious.

Dungeons and Dragons, while not quite a gateway drug into books for me, was sure close. I read before D&D, but I read after D&D.

I know exactly why I read newspapers: my fourth grade English teacher taught me the joy of political cartoons, and to have the context for the jokes you need to know most of the rest of the paper. Dad and I read together at the kitchen table.

"I know exactly why I read newspapers"

Then I assume you read Japanese newspapers, which makes me curious, which one(s)?

Asked because I never quite got to the level of Japanese newspaper reading, I'm curious about which Japanese papers are any good, and wonder how they're different from American papers.

Sadly, I do not read much Japanese other than technical documents, transactional correspondence, and the odd manga. I just learned the other day that I can understand an insurance policy.

Short answer, from the article: The secret to raising boys who read, I submit, is pretty simple—keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

Also known as: "How to raise boys who hate their parents". Possibly also "boys who are shunned at school", since they won't be able to take part in a huge fraction of the conversations going on in the playground.

The best way to raise children with good habits is to have those habits yourself. If every day after dinner both parents retire to the lounge room to listen to some music and read a book (each), the children will quickly get the idea that's what people do. If they go and watch TV instead, they'll get that idea.

One more point: childhood habits don't always bleed over into the adult. From age 13-17 I probably barely read a single novel that wasn't assigned for school. (I read plenty of non-fiction for pleasure.) But once reading novels stopped being "schoolwork" I started doing it for pleasure, and have since read... a lot.

Repost of a comment I made a few days ago:

Excuse my language, but give me a fucking break. I was a teenager not that long ago, my siblings are in their teens, and I know other teens who have zero interest in video games. Aside from the fact that I think the claim of impending ostracization for non-gamers is bullshit, if your friends shun you because you don't play 20 hours of video games a week, get some new friends. You could easily make the same arguments for drugs and promiscuous sex, which I understand are popular among some groups of teenagers. I'm sure there's a lot of people that would argue that it's a "huge social disadvantage" to not being into sports, but I've lived in many places were sports seemed to be all most people cared about and I managed to maintain plenty of rich friendships, despite not giving two shits about any professional sports.

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1707083

> "boys who are shunned at school"

Oh boy, where to begin? OK, let's get the kids the video games and let them watch the TV shows. Hopefully they are wearing the right jeans. That's OK, we'll buy those too. Hopefully they have the right hair style. That's cool, there's a Hair Cuttery right down the road. Hopefully they are good at sports. That's OK, we can hire a personal trainer. Hopefully they are not too ugly because all of this other stuff will be moot.

Oh give me a break. Not playing video games and reading lots of books growing up never made me shunned on the playground and never made me hate my parents (and I’ve never heard anyone say they hate their parents for video-game deprivation). Playgrounds are for running around, kicking things, messily digging in the dirt, and generally making mischief, not analyzing video games.

Swear on my life, I love my parents for video-game deprivation.

When was the last time you were on a playground? Let's assume you're only in your 20s, it's been almost a decade. Perhaps you don't know exactly what is happening on the playground. Not that I do either.

'Possibly also "boys who are shunned at school", since they won't be able to take part in a huge fraction of the conversations going on in the playground.'

If the environment is that toxic and hostile to spending time wisely, perhaps your children should not spend so much time in it.

Possibly also "boys who are shunned at school",

If this is a measure of success when evaluating your parenting, you are doing it wrong.

Another answer is to stop treating reading and video games as mutually exclusive. Maybe the real answer is a new genre of media that includes interactivity, game-play dynamics, and lots of text.

Like old fashioned interactive fiction and point and click adventures?

More seriously, I fully intend, when I have kids, to filter the games they play and try to introduce them to games like Civilization, Secret of Monkey Island, The Longest Journey and so on... I'm not exactly convinced that letting young kids play GTA and Stalker 2 is that great an idea...

Did someone say MUD?

I'm a little late to this discussion, but I have one more suggestion for boys over the age of 13. Get them around girls who find boys who are artistic and literary attractive.

I know, anyone who watches glee thinks that jocks and cheerleaders run the high schools, and I know that my experience (a small private high school in san francisco) probably isn't representative... but still, if you can find an environment like this for your kid, go for it.

He'll look back with mild embarrassment at how oh-so-suave he felt hanging out in north beach cafes reading beat lit, but hey, at least he's reading, right?

(ok, fine, that was me).

> "One obvious problem with the SweetFarts philosophy of education is that it is more suited to producing a generation of barbarians and morons than to raising the sort of men who make good husbands, fathers and professionals. If you keep meeting a boy where he is, he doesn't go very far."

> "Whom would you prefer to have shaped the boyhood imagination of your daughter's husband—Raymond Bean or Robert Louis Stevenson?"

I'm surprised how the article emphasizes being a 'good husband'. What if it said "good wives, mothers and professionals"?

Umm...it's an article about getting boys to read and the long-term effects of meeting boys where they are. I'm guessing they didn't emphasize being good wives and mothers because boys rarely grow up to be wives and mothers.

That is clearly not where I'm coming from. I'm just trying to point out how an analogous article today that would make such emphasis would probably strike most people as inappropriate or chauvinistic. Don't you agree?

That's because people associate 'good wife' with a subservient wife. Feminism has encouraged women to act in their own interests rather than their families interests for some time now and the values have sunk into the culture.

'Good husband' doesn't have that connotation and for better or for worse, people still think that husbands should care for their wives and children and be respectable people themselves.

I had the same reaction. It seemed adorably quaint, as if I was reading something from the 50s. In fact the whole article gave me that impression: "It's all them new fangled gadgets I tells ya"

I don't feel enlightened having read that. The "here is my anecdote and it proves everything that I am going to say" aspect struck me wrong.

>keep electronic media, especially video games and recreational Internet, under control (that is to say, almost completely absent). Then fill your shelves with good books.

The problem with these books is that they interfere with the more traditional crafts of conversation and oratory.

This was a good bit of wit that seems, alas, to have gone largely unappreciated.

why?

One trick that's worked for us:

If your kids want to take a toy with them to bed, instead let them pick out a few books. This way they think of books as toys and therefore a sort of privilege (i.e. fun!).

An issue with any reading-related arguments is that the definition of "reading" is so loose. Here are at least three different definitions commonly in use:

1. A person can look at a page full of sentences and translate them into appropriate sounds coming out of his mouth. An add-on to this definition is the ability to answer basic comprehension question questions about these sentences.

2. A person can reason upon, expand upon, interpret, or otherwise think about the words he has read.

3. A person can read fiction and appreciate it in some way.

#1 seems like an obvious necessity for life in a society where so much is communicated via written language. #2 seems like necessary skill for someone to be a high-functioning adult. But, why do we couple our discussion about why Johnny can't "read" with our concerns that Johnny can't think? Isn't written language simply an (important) input method for ideas upon which one may reason?

As a guy who hasn't read a work of fiction in a long time but still considers himself a regular "reader", I consider definition #3 to be ill-conceived. Why is it more important for a person to be proficient in the interpretation of "written word" art than visual art, performing arts, cinema, etc.? What's so darned special about literature? I spend a lot more time observing others' photography (in an attempt to improve my own) than I do with other art forms. Am I un-cultured? Un-intelligent? In college, when I had lots of time on my hands, I enjoyed sitting down in the afternoon with a Guiness and reading large swaths of the Wall Street Journal. Does this count as reading?

The lack of definition around the test "is a reader" results in many mushy arguments. Shouldn't those proficient in Definition #2 be able to detect this?

PS, Does this make anyone else want to read such titles at "Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger" and "The Psycho Butts of Uranus"? I never read books like those, but I can easily see books like this getting young boys into the habit of reading.

Oh wow, those are real books? From the titles, they sound like they were written entirely via mad libs.

If I had children, I would absolutely forbid them from reading books like Sir Fartsalot Hunts the Booger and The Psycho Butts of Uranus. Then I would smile to myself, because I'd know they'd be reading them behind my back, and the effort they'd be going to in order to hide it from me would prevent them from getting into any worse trouble.

Unfortunately, my advice is useless for English speakers.

I was raised in Russia, and my mom tricked me into learning to read. Russian is very phonetic - if you know the alphabet, you can sound out words and understand them (compare this with "daughter" - good fucking luck, kid.)

So she would start reading a book, wait until a really exciting part of the plot was coming up, and then put the book down next to me and excuse herself for a moment - she had to stir the pot on the stove, or help my dad look for something, or whatever sounded plausible to me - and being impatient, I would pick up the book and struggle to read, because I wanted to know what was coming next.

While I agree that video games are compelling to the 11-14 year old boy scouts that I've spent a lot of time with over the last few years, I know of a few who are prolific readers as well as being competent gamers (we have video game nights every once in a while, too :)).

I think the author is well meaning, but probably not entirely on base. The author must certainly also know of the golden mean (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_mean_%28philosophy%29). As Aristotle professed, moderation in all things (including video games and reading).

How I became a boy that reads:

My parents read to me alot. I would find a book, walk up to mom and say, "Book." I loved them. Then once I learned to read I read everything, you name it, I read it. Books, magazines, billboards, cereal boxes, coke cans, if it had letters, I read it. Simple as that. I have read nearly every book in the house, twice. I just ate up books.

Now I read HN articles, programming articles, free books on Kindle, iBooks, and real books. They are the single most influential part of my life.

Reading is a very fulfilling addiction. I caught the bug. I hope you did too.

I think more than anything, is to encourage your children to learn, and help them to find passions early in life. I used to read a lot when I was a kid because I was really interested in our founding fathers, so I read a lot about Ben Franklin, Jefferson, etc. I lost that for a while because I didn't have any books available that interested me. Near the end of highschool, I was forced to read a few books that really got me going and I've been reading fiction ever since. I found a passion for it.

This seems appropriate. I didn't really start "reading" a lot until I was in my mid-twenties and wanted to know more about global issues and international affairs, and I could find books on those topics pretty easily in the best-sellers list.

My dad would have me read classics like The Lord of the Rings. I appreciate them now, but they had little relevance to me as a boy.

The internet was probably the best thing for me because it allowed me to quickly find more information on topics I actually cared about.

So I'd say the way to get anyone to read, not just boys, is to facilitate the link between their interests and books. So when someone shows an interest or aptitude in a certain hobby, show them a bunch of books in that area.

It's not quite so obvious to people that there is a ton of information out there on the things they love.

Also I think it's funny to read comments on hackernews saying that kids shouldn't have access to video games when a lot of us grew up on computer games, BBSs, MUDs, etc. and are now hackers/coders.

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That same level of accidental discovery was never, and perhaps is never again going to be, quite as available as it was when paging through a book meant you HAD to see things that weren't AT ALL related to what you were looking for.

I think that the internet is about a billion times better for this than anything else. With an encyclopedia you can just find information about random stuff, but I think the random button on Wikipedia is just as good, and you can dive deep through the sources and learn as much as you want. The home page itself is a great starting point.

Further, the Internet as a whole is a tremendous source for information that you wouldn't be able to easily find information about in traditional sources. I've researched everything from the history and functionality provided by different types of water towers (a clever hack), to the reasoning behind building different roads out of different kinds of materials, as it related to one particular highway near where I live. It's great to be able to take a random, obscure topic, and learn a lot about it.

Yes and no. It's very easy to end up with a tab bar jam-packed with pages on topics only peripherally related to what you're interested in... that's how people get lost on Wikipedia for hours. Or tvtropes or encyclopediadramatica, to take more frivolous examples!

Is there an implication that reading means reading books? Because I'd think that it's harder to raise a child who doesn't read in the internet age.

I think one of the best things my dad ever did for me was read to my brother and me as children. And I'm not talking about stupid kid books. These were classics. Books that you might be assigned to read for a literature class.

Hell, he read The Road Ahead to us at one point. Don't ask me why.

But as a result of him reading to me, I took an interest in reading for myself, and learning in general. I think I can say, without trying to be immodest, that it improved my life enormously and allowed me to get through school with ease. I have never had trouble writing either, though this was probably because my dad was an English major. Up until high school, he would personally proofread and comment on anything we had to write.

Even today, my first draft is always my final draft.

So read to your kids dads. It will prove to be an invaluable experience.

I volunteer for an organization called Raising a Reader, a non-profit literacy organization that teaches families the importance of reading to a child from birth to age 5 in order to have them reading-ready for school. This is a very worthwhile cause.

When my own children were born I took reading to them as a given and read to them every night, enjoying the cuddle time. When they became competent readers themselves, I would read the first chapter of a juicy book to them and they'd be grabbing the book from me like it was a piece of candy.

The screens are ok, as long as you don't use them as a babysitter. We're in a technology age, so we can't ignore them. As parents, we need to teach our children a balance between screen time and other stellar activities like reading.

Watching and reading are both quite sedentary - don't forget to mix in some 'fleeing from rampaging space-monster-vampires' and associated activities.

The author's argument that what worked well for the elites of 50 years ago should be good enough for everyone today is unlikely to be correct. What worked for the elites of 50 years ago probably works just fine for the elites of today, like him and his kids. However, what has changed over 50 years is that we're now trying to educate all kids, not just elite kids. It's likely we'll need different approaches to reach all kids today, just like we would have needed different approaches to reach all kids 50 years ago - if anyone back then cared about all kids.

I would rather raise my (hypothetical) child as someone who is open minded, who can listen to suggestions and choose what they'd like to read themselves. I'm not into the idea of raising a closed-minded elitist who's only allowed to read the books his father loved as a child.

Incidentally, I can say firsthand that the Captain Underpants series is wonderful. If you have a child (or are one), I highly recommend checking it out.

My 5 year old son is significantly ahead of his peers in terms of reading. We do play video games together in moderation (Minecraft!), but we also read together _every_ night. Fortnightly visits to the library, and modelling good choices by reading ourselves instead of turning on the TV, seem to be cultivating both love and respect for books.

Don't watch TV.

My father never watched TV. He finally put a tv in the living room of his home long after all three of us were out of the house. Growing up, I'd be doing homework while my father read and smoked his pipe, the tv downstairs off.

He'd unplug for a week/month as punishment for even the smallest mistakes, but he would always bring us to the library.

Can't remember who it was, Bradbury, Heinlein, possibly Spider Robinson, who gave the advice:

Make your kid the deal that they can stay up as late as they want as long as they're reading. Kids will fight bedtime by any means necessary.

Entirely anecdotal as well, but how many of us got into computer science/engineering/programming because we played lots of computer games?

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