Cool, xtien. He sounds like a great kid (I’d love it if our kids got a chance to meet sometime… Not to mention it’d be fun to hang with you!) and I bet he’ll handle it responsibly.
On the reading front, the part that kills me is that my son will read books for school and say he loved them. But between friends, performing and rehearsing, gaming, drawing, and his phone, it just doesn’t hit his list.
I’ve been rearranging the books on my bookshelf since my soon-to-be-ex moved out and I realize I’m going to need to double my reading time somehow to get through all of these before I die. Om the bright side, if I make it decently far into the 80s, I should know all the facts about airplanes and space. (And let’s not even get into the fiction shelves…)
My 4-year old is telling. She begs for TV, and we give her enough. Weekdays 0-1 episodes, weekend days 2-3 episodes. About half the time we can get her to stop in an ok mood, but the other half of the time it’s a fight.
Then when forced to read, she really enjoys it. She will read a half dozen books on her own, in a row, picking out a couple words but mostly imagining her own narrative by looking at the pictures; it’s really fun to watch her and listen. Also we’ve started her on the lowest level of chapter books, and she will beg us to read the next chapter. But it’s all a distance second choice to TV.
Personally I try and make a point to read two books each year; pathetic.
Mine (about to turn 9) loves to read, and always has a book open when driving to an activity or walking to class. Of course, she’s too young for social media to be available as a distraction, but I’m hopeful that it will continue.
Jumped in just to say that my ultimate arbiters of cool are my nieces and nephews, ages 10-20, and unquestionably right now Instagram seems to be where they are at for any kind of posts they want to make that have any meaning. While Snapchat seems to be more for ephemeral thoughts they want to share.
Facebook proper, is truly dead to anyone under the age of 25 it seems.
What’s really cool is that my son and I sat down together and he helped me set up my account. He set it up so I was following him–I’ve made it very clear that I will never post anything in his feed–and showed me his privacy settings and helped me with mine. I can do all of this, but since his friend showed him how to do it, I wanted him to show me how to do it.
It seems to be working out pretty well so far. Pictures of his soccer team and him with his dog. We’ve had to put the kibosh on a couple of his followers for obscene content (racism, misogyny), but he gets that. And we make it clear that we’re being the bad guys so it’s less awkward for him. Hopefully.
Glad to hear positive results w/ your son, Christien!
My nigh-10 year old daughter has been clamoring for Instagram but it ain’t happening earlier than 13. We put the kibosh on her Music.ally (now Tik-Tok) account a few months ago. Her use had been harmless and innocent fun, making lip sync videos, and she’s funny! However there are too few controls and a lot of sketchy content on the service. Also, she was just too enamored of the public interaction. A couple of years ago, a pic I snapped of her got re-tweeted by Patton Oswalt and was liked about 5 thousand times or so w/ a 1/4 million impressions. She’s been searching to go viral gain ever since! I prefer she continue reading the Wrinkle in Time series.
My kid just finished reading The Kite Runner for English. It was a tough read for him, not just because he had to include annotations on every page, but the content of that book…ugh. I’m trying to get traction with the “Incarnations of Immortality” but only with limited success. Point is, it’s really hard to get him to read on his own with how easy and rewarding screen time is.
I need to find something new for him to read.
Also, I went to school with Patton Oswalt. I always wondered why he wasn’t ever around for theater stuff at school. Never auditioning for shows. Never at performances. Never at parties. Turns out he was spending all his time working his tail off traveling and performing.
I feel your pain on the reading. My son enjoys it when he reads good stuff for school – just discovered he’d read 1984 last year – but he’ll rarely choose to read on his own given all the alternatives.
Incarnations of Immortality might backfire when the series starts sucking a few books in. :) I remember buying those when the were coming out new and loving the first two or three and then slogging through some increasingly bad books until I finally didn’t even read the last one I purchased.
(Plus there’s the creepy stuff that’s come out about him that makes me hesitant to create new Anthony fans.)
I don’t know what you’re referencing here, but I was never a fan of Anthony’s humor. I do puns now because I’m a dad and much older, but as I kid a lot of the stuff in his work just turned me off. I liked On A Pale Horse and the next couple of books so much, because I really bought into the concept. So when I found that book in the used book section of my library, I got it for my son. It was a Hanukkah gift, which should be small things that are thoughtful, and there’s a day for getting books. So I went to the library to buy used books for people for that day. He ended up liking it a lot, but it’s almost been a year and he hasn’t finished it. Because life and screens and soccer and school and friends.
I’d like him to finish it but I’m not going to push him to continue the series, I think.
I’ll consider something like this, since I’ve no experience with it and it might be fun to see him get into something about which I know nothing.
Also, I don’t think he’s ready for Thomas Covenant yet. Which may be, weirdly, my favorite series of all time.
Jesus, big jump from Xanth to Thomas Covenant! Creepy kids books are one thing, but the protagonist is a rapist for F’s sake. It’s incredibly dark. I read it myself at age 12 and really didn’t like it.
Discworld is brilliant, funny, and entertaining. I’m rereading the entire series right now. I treasure it, honestly. It is written for adults but not like, adult. No rape, no leprosy. Well, there’s a zombie and stuff falls off him, but he’s played for laughs.
For some unknown reason, my Dad let me read his copy of Lord Foul’s Bane when I was in the fourth grade. It really blew my mind, it was the first exposure I had to the idea of an anti-hero.
Yes. I know. Absolutely. I will never forget the sensation of reading it the first time. First just disliking him because he’s a dour, unfeeling dick. Then getting to the rape and going, as a kid, “Wait. Did that just happen?” Considering dropping it, but then sticking with it as the world of the book came alive to me. It still has one of my favorite characters in all of literature. Saltheart Foamfollower. There are moments with him that made me cry every time I read the books.
Then going into the second set and feeling like Covenant felt. The Land has changed! I was looking forward to getting back there and it’s so weird and grossly different. I resented that at first. Which is how he felt, in a way. It’s a clever turn.
I love a lot of books. These books I cherish in a different way, though their darkness and ugliness are notable, as you suggest.
I would generally recommend Googling (or asking here) for good Discworld starting points. The first couple-few books in release-order are. . . not up to the quality of later work, and are basically just straight up bad-70s-fantasy parody with occasional glimpses of what Pratchett’s really capable. I know I’ve bogged out of starting the series multiple times on account of The Colour of Magic alone. It’s not bad, it’s just kind of not really funny enough to be worth the eyeball time.
