Parents, this is on you!

“What book are you reading?”, I asked a middle-school aged child. He said, “I don’t read.” And, returned his attention to his tablet where he was engaged in virtual gaming with friends at a distance. I persisted. “Summer is almost over. Surely you read one book this summer.” Without looking up, he said, “Nope.”

I wasn’t overly surprised. When I visit people in their homes, one of the first things I look for, after the amenities have been observed, are books. I look for the presence of books on shelves or end tables or coffee tables or stacked beside a chair or in a wall basket in the bathroom or sticking out from under a bed. In homes with children, books are a vanishing breed. Hardcover or softcover, they are hard to find.

“Ah”, I said, seeing no books laying around. “How many books do you have downloaded on your tablet?” He is, after all, a post-millennial.

“None”, he said. “I just have games and social media sites.” He did not miss a thing on his screen as his friend’s avatars advanced against his fortification.

“The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them,” Mark Twain said. I believe this to be true.

Call me a bibliophile and I won’t argue. I send my grandchildren books for Christmas and birthdays. They are never for want of toys or tee shirts or jeans with holes or running shoes. Little did I know that the books I presented had legs. They walked off to distant places never to be seen again. Now, I am advised not send books. “They won’t read them,” I am told by their parents.

I repeat myself. Parents, this is on you. Parents born of Generation X and Gen X or iGen, tell me “I am so busy with work and family and other things that I need to pick my fights. Getting my kids to read is not a fight I need in my life.” Truth be told, reading is not about a parent’s life, it is all about a child’s life and their life to come.

Still, I persisted with my young gamer. As I watched the activity on his tablet screen from over his shoulder, I could not help myself. “Nice flanking movement. That’s the kind of thing Stonewall Jackson would have done in the Civil War or George Patton would have done in World War Two.”

“Unh huh,” he said moving to counter the flanking.

“What if I give you an iBook gift card? Would you be interested in reading about Stonewall Jackson or General George Patton on your tablet?”

“Nope. I don’t read.”

That got me. I could not help what I said next. “Your tablet is a piece of junk, you know. I read in PC Magazine that the graphics are too slow to make the action life-like. Too bad for you, I guess.”

He paused. “I read that, but they were wrong. Wired said that PC Mag used information from last year’s model to talk about this year’s model that is so much improved. I have this year’s model.”

“So, you do read,” I said. “Do you ever talk with your parents about what you read?”

“No. They aren’t interested in what interests me. And, they never talk to me about what they read.”

And, there it is, Mr. Twain. I amend your timeless quotation.

“The parent who does not encourage a child to read is raising a child who has no advantage over a child who cannot read.”