My work here is done

To think, just a short while ago I wondered where we had gone wrong and whether Chubbocks would ever be motivated to read on his own. Right from the beginning, Chubbocks has been exposed to lots of books – as I may have mentioned before we have a home library of over 5000 books, and with A's and my noses always in a book, I figured he'd find out pretty early that books were 'in' in our household. But though he had learnt to read quite some time back, the only things he wanted to make an effort to read were books much below his reading level from his class library. Though he had received some Enid Blytons as gifts, he never seemed to want to read them on his own.

It was pretty disheartening for a while. I felt I had failed as a parent ( yup, my idea of parenting is teaching them to read). And then one day he came home with a Scholastic book list from school. Scholastic often offers books at discounted rates to his school and so far A and I had been selecting the books along with him. This time A and I were busy so before we knew it, Chubbocks had ticked off three books and sent away for them, demanding a cool Rs. 300 or so. And one day they arrived. Chubbocks got down from the school bus clutching his precious new books to his chest, beaming from ear to ear. As soon as he tumbled down from the bus he opened the one he was most excited about and started reading 'Silly Poems' (poyums). He was so distracted he went about his washing up and post school meal in a kind of daze and by six that evening, he'd finished the book – about a 100 pages long.

Now he's reading it a second time, selecting his favourites to read over and again and I can see his reading gene kicking in. Whether he's at the breakfast table or at a friend's place, he's constantly reading – books, magazines, titles from newspapers, labels on food packaging…He's always happy to entertain the Puddi by reading a short story out to her. He's even gotten excited about the Secret Seven which is his bedtime reading along with dad. And when I jokingly told him his birthday gift this year from us would be two books, his face lit up!