Dear desi parents, let your kids fall in love with reading

Like all phone addicts, I am intimately familiar with nearly every irritating trend colonising social media. If you are on the hunt for the most nauseating thing anyone will witness online today, I have a winner: random advice threads. Be it Facebook or Reddit or Instagram, somewhere in the wilderness of the internet will be one proud user who will write “Let’s start a thread of random advice. No specific topic, just great advice.”

Excuse me, Mr/Madam Advice Procurer: normal people do not turn to the internet seeking random advice. Normal people go to the internet for very specific advice for a very specific problem. No one in the history of the world has googled “hit me with some random advice”. They google things like “firestick remote not working even though I put new batteries in”. Or “how to drain the water from a washing machine when the door is stuck”. A quick solution to a real problem: that is what advice forums should be about.

What advice groups should be telling you

When desi women-only groups embarked on the advice bandwagon, I naively imagined I might glean something useful from such a thread - perhaps something about how to cook a fool-proof biryani in five minutes, or a list of suitable comebacks to the wedding aunty who has rehearsed soliloquy on why you are such a terrible mother for not teaching your children proper Urdu. The desi groups, however, were infested with grave warnings such as, “If you were invited at the last minute, you were never part of the plan”, and deep lessons (“treat others how you would like to be treated”). It was either that or a lesson on Red Flags and the scientific ways of identifying them.

You know what I did not find? What to do with the children once you have procreated with the Red Flag. (Or Green Flag – some women claim to have those too.) If we are going to return to the topic of specific advice, I had to scroll down about a billion comments before I found the only useful parenting advice that applies to every single culture on every single planet in every single solar system: Read to your children.

Why does no one read anymore?

I am surprised that desi parents have such little interest in reading, because they are otherwise committed most passionately to their children’s grades and their relative heights. Not for a desi parent is the ignominy of a 7 at GCSE! For those who are lucky enough for this to not currently be a problem, the powers that be took it upon themselves in 2018 to rebrand GCSE grades from letters to numbers. 9 is an A**, 8, is an A*, 7 is an A, 6 is a B, and so on. One desi mother I spoke to related the sad tale of her son who scored only a 7 in his GCSE maths mock.

“I knew then that I had to get him a tutor,” she remarked in grim determination. “Can you imagine what will happen if he gets a 7 in his actual exam?”

To stave off such a horror, this particular mother did procure a tutor, although the tutor provided little solace, because he turned out to be a desi man in his seventies devoted to academia and even more obsessed with 9s than his fellow desis. “This boy will have to study at least five hours every day,” he informed the mother, who swallowed his words as if they were life-saving medication before placing a large order of Edexcel textbooks. The house was soon towering with books on circle theorems.

“What do you like to read?” I asked the budding mathematician.

“At the moment I’m going through this thing on proofs,” he explained.

I clarified that I was referring to something less to do with proofs (whatever they may be) and more to do with fiction.

“Oh that,” he said. “I don’t read fiction. It’s kind of a waste.”

“I tell him to read, but he just doesn’t do it,” supplied his mother sadly. “I don’t know why that is.”

Seriously, pick up a book

I may not be as familiar with proofs and circle theorems as I should, but I do know why kids aren’t reading: it is because out of the ten parents I asked, six said that they let schools take care of the reading. Three said they had to force their kids to read on pain of removing screen time. One said it was more important to focus on long division.

“If you don’t get your kids to master long division now,” she warned, “then they will struggle. For life.”

 As a book addict and a sub-par mathematician, I prefer to focus on the teachings of Psychology Today, which is at pains to tell us that reading for pleasure promotes a high vocabulary, teaches empathy, and increases concentration spans. However, parents today read Psychology Today as diligently as I study circle theorems and proofs, so goodness knows what manner of slippery slope we are headed on.

Of course, if we are going to play devil’s advocate here, then my three kids were read to since birth and are now avid readers, and I'm not quite sure how impressed Psychology Today would be with their vocabulary or empathy. For reference, I have a room containing four bookcases full of the works of Enid Blyton, Roald Dahl, Harlan Coben, Cressida Cowell, and JK Rowling. These are not books that sit prettily (and tidily) on a shelf; they have been devoured, repeatedly, for years. However, I learned this week that one of my kids thinks ‘attic’ has a k at the end. Another one has a casual relationship with coMMAs. Two of them engage in mortal combat over a usurped inch of sofa space. And all three craft mean (but tragically unwitty) insults to use on each other at the dining table. Whatever they are learning from books, spelling, punctuation, empathy, or gift of banter isn’t on the list. (And, obviously, long division.)

But I have hope. One teenage girl who saw my chick-lit bookshelf gasped and said, “Wow! You’ve read all these? You must be so intelligent!” I didn’t have the heart to correct her, but if you are still searching for a reason to bring books into your kid’s life, remember this: one day, they, too, will fool someone into thinking they are “so intelligent”. Have faith. Your work will not go in vain.

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