I have received some criticism in regards to a previous post on the Diary of the Wimpy Kid book series. Due to this, I began to doubt my first impression of this book series…perhaps I had jumped to conclusions, perhaps I didn’t read enough of the book to make an accurate assessment, perhaps I didn’t take the necessary steps to research other reviews on the book. Even though my HH had reviewed the book that day it came to our house, and agreed with my passionate opinion of it, I now see, that I need, myself, to be better armed having done my own research.
So I did my homework. I looked up many reviews on the Wimpy Kid Series, and found many parents who reviewed the book series to find them perfectly acceptable reading based on two consistent themes:
First, parents who noticed their child not fond of reading, became extremely interested in reading after beginning this Wimpy Kid series, and parents were overjoyed at this success. It was more important to them that the child was reading at all, not necessarily what they were reading.
Secondly, parents saw their child’s peers reading the same material, and felt the sting of peer pressure, thus allowing perhaps questionable material for their child, but giving the justification that the issues in the books allow for great discussions on right and wrong.
These two motives are absolutely understandable.
Thinker has always been an avid reader, self-motivated and interested in reading story after story without much poking or prodding. Carefree, as his name suggests, wasn’t as interested. I don’t really believe that to help a child be motivated to read, we must give them whatever happens to cross the path as motivation. With Carefree, my HH dedicated many nights before bed, reading to him, and having Carefree read some as well, stories that would interest him. They began with George Washington. HH would read some, then Carefree would read some, and then they’d talk about the life of George Washington, how interesting some of these facts were, how he must have felt, and so on. It encouraged Carefree to read more stories of people’s lives that were interesting, inspiring, about soldiers, battling good and evil and all the boy-related topics. This time that HH gave Carefree wasn’t the easiest to give. Things were busy, and he had to dedicate at times a whole hour to this endeavor. It was worth it. I began to realize I didn’t have enough ‘boy’ books in the house that would interest him. So it was work on my part as well to make sure that for every girlie book i.e. Little House on the Prairie, I had a boy book for his reading level. This type of investment into children takes time. It takes being there, paying attention, evaluating what might motivate your particular child to acquire a skill, or improve one.
If this kind of logic is acceptable to motivate children to read, no matter the content of the reading, then let’s look at an extreme. Playboy magazines have articles to read as well. Would you ok this reading material, because your son suddenly expressed an interest in reading and he needs to acquire a love for books? Of course not.
A poster to my past post on this topic suggested it was sad to see parents ‘banning books’, as if all books contained literary genius and our child was somehow being deprived of her personal freedoms. I responded to her, that we don’t ‘ban books’, we allow age appropriate material in our home, that support our method of responsible parenting.
In my research I’ve read that so many topics discussed in the Wimpy books relate to actual, real events that middle school children can absolutely relate to. FYI, Thinker is in 3rd grade. 3rd grade is not middle school. That’s in THREE YEARS! However, the reading level of these books is 3-4th grade reading! Talk about an author introducing JR High themes to elementary school aged children!
Never the less, these real and true topics in the world are good topics for discussion when the age is appropriate. However, there are an abundance of books that deal with the exact same topics, ie kids who bully, tease, struggles to fit in, find friends etc…however, I would prefer to direct my child to read books that cover these topics, and give real solutions, practical ways to deal with these issues with virtue and with some semblance of character. I guess I am just not satisfied with talking about a serious issue in our schools, without much recourse on how a child should deal with it. I like to give my kids a shoulder to cry on when life hurts, of course, but I wouldn’t be doing my job, if I didn’t give them tools to handle the every day life hurting situations. I digress.
Next, peer pressure was named as a reason to allow this series for reading material for young children. Peer pressure can be good, can be bad. It depends on what is being pressured upon them. I thank God we send our children to a Catholic school where the peer pressure is to attend the Communion Service and skip recess for it, rather than the pressure to do unacceptable behaviors. Not all schools are like this, I get that, however, if we never give our children the methods to conquer negative peer pressure, then we set them up for a life time of comparing themselves to their neighbor…..
Overall, I believe we are teaching decision making. When there are so many great things to read, why spend time on something that dilutes the conscious. I titled my post “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” vs “Diary of a Delicate Conscious” and at the time, it rolled off my fingertip typing without much thought. Now, I see that title says it all.
As parents, we see our job is to form the conscious of our children to be able to see quickly what is good and what is not good. I read one poster comment that in this world there is a lot of “grey area” in terms of right and wrong. And I couldn’t disagree more. In forming a delicate conscious, in teaching children to know instinctively what is right and wrong they won’t see the world in shades of grey…they’ll know clearly, this is right, this is wrong.
Let’s put this in here for good measure. Did Christ himself ever discuss the "grey area" of right and wrong issues? No. He knew for sure, what was right and what was wrong....
I enjoyed these two following sites among many others, but these two were interesting reading in regards to this book series.
http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.com/2009/01/diary-of-wimpy-kid-third-book-in-series.html
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/diary-wimpy-kid
Finally, I am really glad that I did get some critique. It forced me to examine throughoughly the whys of what we do as parents. I look forward to more discussion. I'd love to hear from you!
So I did my homework. I looked up many reviews on the Wimpy Kid Series, and found many parents who reviewed the book series to find them perfectly acceptable reading based on two consistent themes:
First, parents who noticed their child not fond of reading, became extremely interested in reading after beginning this Wimpy Kid series, and parents were overjoyed at this success. It was more important to them that the child was reading at all, not necessarily what they were reading.
Secondly, parents saw their child’s peers reading the same material, and felt the sting of peer pressure, thus allowing perhaps questionable material for their child, but giving the justification that the issues in the books allow for great discussions on right and wrong.
These two motives are absolutely understandable.
Thinker has always been an avid reader, self-motivated and interested in reading story after story without much poking or prodding. Carefree, as his name suggests, wasn’t as interested. I don’t really believe that to help a child be motivated to read, we must give them whatever happens to cross the path as motivation. With Carefree, my HH dedicated many nights before bed, reading to him, and having Carefree read some as well, stories that would interest him. They began with George Washington. HH would read some, then Carefree would read some, and then they’d talk about the life of George Washington, how interesting some of these facts were, how he must have felt, and so on. It encouraged Carefree to read more stories of people’s lives that were interesting, inspiring, about soldiers, battling good and evil and all the boy-related topics. This time that HH gave Carefree wasn’t the easiest to give. Things were busy, and he had to dedicate at times a whole hour to this endeavor. It was worth it. I began to realize I didn’t have enough ‘boy’ books in the house that would interest him. So it was work on my part as well to make sure that for every girlie book i.e. Little House on the Prairie, I had a boy book for his reading level. This type of investment into children takes time. It takes being there, paying attention, evaluating what might motivate your particular child to acquire a skill, or improve one.
If this kind of logic is acceptable to motivate children to read, no matter the content of the reading, then let’s look at an extreme. Playboy magazines have articles to read as well. Would you ok this reading material, because your son suddenly expressed an interest in reading and he needs to acquire a love for books? Of course not.
A poster to my past post on this topic suggested it was sad to see parents ‘banning books’, as if all books contained literary genius and our child was somehow being deprived of her personal freedoms. I responded to her, that we don’t ‘ban books’, we allow age appropriate material in our home, that support our method of responsible parenting.
In my research I’ve read that so many topics discussed in the Wimpy books relate to actual, real events that middle school children can absolutely relate to. FYI, Thinker is in 3rd grade. 3rd grade is not middle school. That’s in THREE YEARS! However, the reading level of these books is 3-4th grade reading! Talk about an author introducing JR High themes to elementary school aged children!
Never the less, these real and true topics in the world are good topics for discussion when the age is appropriate. However, there are an abundance of books that deal with the exact same topics, ie kids who bully, tease, struggles to fit in, find friends etc…however, I would prefer to direct my child to read books that cover these topics, and give real solutions, practical ways to deal with these issues with virtue and with some semblance of character. I guess I am just not satisfied with talking about a serious issue in our schools, without much recourse on how a child should deal with it. I like to give my kids a shoulder to cry on when life hurts, of course, but I wouldn’t be doing my job, if I didn’t give them tools to handle the every day life hurting situations. I digress.
Next, peer pressure was named as a reason to allow this series for reading material for young children. Peer pressure can be good, can be bad. It depends on what is being pressured upon them. I thank God we send our children to a Catholic school where the peer pressure is to attend the Communion Service and skip recess for it, rather than the pressure to do unacceptable behaviors. Not all schools are like this, I get that, however, if we never give our children the methods to conquer negative peer pressure, then we set them up for a life time of comparing themselves to their neighbor…..
Overall, I believe we are teaching decision making. When there are so many great things to read, why spend time on something that dilutes the conscious. I titled my post “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” vs “Diary of a Delicate Conscious” and at the time, it rolled off my fingertip typing without much thought. Now, I see that title says it all.
As parents, we see our job is to form the conscious of our children to be able to see quickly what is good and what is not good. I read one poster comment that in this world there is a lot of “grey area” in terms of right and wrong. And I couldn’t disagree more. In forming a delicate conscious, in teaching children to know instinctively what is right and wrong they won’t see the world in shades of grey…they’ll know clearly, this is right, this is wrong.
Let’s put this in here for good measure. Did Christ himself ever discuss the "grey area" of right and wrong issues? No. He knew for sure, what was right and what was wrong....
I enjoyed these two following sites among many others, but these two were interesting reading in regards to this book series.
http://thethinkingmother.blogspot.com/2009/01/diary-of-wimpy-kid-third-book-in-series.html
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/diary-wimpy-kid
Finally, I am really glad that I did get some critique. It forced me to examine throughoughly the whys of what we do as parents. I look forward to more discussion. I'd love to hear from you!
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