y
  • Home
  • Booklists
    • Books for Adults & Teens with Characters with Disabilities
    • Children's Books Featuring Real or Fictional Characters with Disabilities
    • The Non-Inclusive Booklist
  • LD Librarian
  • Blog
  • Writing & Libraries
    • Tween Writing Prompts
  • Tech Talk
    • Developing Technological Literacy
  • Process Centered Art
    • Dress for Mess: The link between drawing & literacy
  • Early Childhood Math
    • "1, 2, 3, it's as easy as A, B, C": Teaching Toddler Math
  • Camp Connection
  • Untitled

FamilyFun Magazine August 2012

7/22/2012

0 Comments

 
In spite of the fact that my recent surgery was, after all, just day stay surgery, I have been absolutely run down and exhausted. I did, however, manage to read the article "Encouraging a Love of Reading: 7 Ways to Inspire Your Kids" in the August 2012 issue of FamilyFun magazine. I am absolutely delighted by the article! I wonder why, when I am so convinced that it is both unrealistic and damaging to try to force a love of reading.

I think that it is the matter-of-fact tone of the article that I find so delightful and inspiring. The article begins by naming the conventional wisdom on encouraging a love of reading and goes on to say that sometimes those methods just don't work. It was a relief to see admission of that fact in print, in a magazine that is both mainstream and popular. While my most recent version of "LD Librarian" on this site talks about the damage that insisting on always inspiring a love of reading can inflict on a child, the fact is that it hurts parents as well. I can't count the number of parents who have said to me over the years, "But I did everything right." My observation over the years has been that parents inevitably, on some level, harbor guilt of their children's disabilities--reading experts inflicting more guilt just isn't right. I am hoping this article will lighten the load for some of those parents simply by pointing out that conventional means of creating a child who loves reading don't work.

I also loved how matter-of-factly some of the parents wrote about their child's disabilities. To someone like me, who grew up ashamed of my disabilities and consistently warned to keep my struggles secret, seeing parents openly acknowledge their children's invisible disabilities in a national magazine seems, in and of itself, fantastic and miraculous. I am further moved that said acknowledgement is accompanied by neither shame nor breastbeating, but simply presents disabilities as a practical problem that can be addressed in a straight forward manner. The tone of the article suggested that not loving reading is a side effect of certain disabilities, which can be alleviated, if not eliminated, through certain activities.
I

























































matter how consistently
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    The content on this website mostly comes from my perspective as a youth services librarian with disabilities. The further I travel along life's road, the more entwined these two parts of my identity become. Librarian: I have an MLS from Rutgers University and have working in public libraries for nearly 20 years. The focus on my career has always been youth services. Disabled: I've been disabled more than twice as long as I've been a librarian. My experience started at birth when I was immediately diagnosed with cleft palate. Also present was a non-verbal learning disability (NLD) for short. This was not formally diagnosed until I was 19, leading to years of frustration. My Tourette Syndrome was not present at birth, but surely started young as I don't ever remember living without it. The Tourette was also not diagnosed until adulthood, further compounding my frustration. Coincidentally, I was also diagnosed with IBD (more commonly known as Chron's\Ulcerative Colitis) at the age of 19. That was another easy diagnosis--as with cleft palate, they look and they see it.

    Archives

    September 2015
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    February 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012

    Categories

    All
    Biographies
    Bullying
    Children's Books
    Common Misconceptions
    Common Misconceptions
    Disclosure
    Discussing Disabilities
    Famous And Disabled
    Health Information
    Josh Hanagarne
    Little Critter
    Medical Information
    Mercer Mayer
    New Website Content
    Njla
    Reference
    Role Models
    Role Models
    Sharon Draper
    Tourette Syndrome
    Web Information

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.