Benefits of Reading Together as a Family with Teens!
Every family has their own culture and things that they enjoy doing together. At our house, it’s reading together as a family and sharing stories. Even with two middle schoolers, a highlight of each day is bedtime stories where Dad reads to everyone.
Throughout the rest of the day, you may see the story of the week pop up in a variety of ways. It may appear in a writing assignment for school or a Lego build. The character names may show up in the backyard play. You might even find someone grabbing the book at a different time of day to reread their favorite part from the night before.
Stories are a part of our family and they influence our play as well as help us teach our kids about the world.
Reading Together Influences Their Play
It may sound like we are a family of bookworms and choose books over video games, which is false! We have our share of screen time struggles too. But what I do see because we are reading together as a family is that the stories pop up at other points in our day beyond read-aloud time.
They use their screen time to build the story they read in Minecraft (with their additions, of course). Or they will use their imagination to be the characters in the story we read to have their playtime adventures: Frodo taking the Ring to Mordor to destroy it or the Wingfeather siblings on their adventures to stay safe from Gnag the Nameless.
They may grab their drawing pad during the afternoon to draw Hogwarts castle when we are in the middle of reading the Harry Potter series.
Reading Together helps us have Important Conversations
I mentioned before being pleasantly surprised by the Ranger’s Apprentice series after thinking I wouldn’t like it. The events in book 3, The Icebound Land opened the door for us to have some very sobering conversations as a family. The main character Will unintentionally becomes addicted to drugs as a matter of survival, and two friends work together to get him out of the situation and then have to carefully detox him so he doesn’t die during the withdrawal.
Our kids had become very attached to Will and it was heartbreaking to watch the effect the addiction was having on him. It opened up the door to talk to our kids about the very real problem of addiction, drugs, and why a person might use them.
Let Stories Guide Imaginations
Stories expose our kids to new ideas and help them use their imaginations. They can discover what life was like before cell phones or cars when they read a story that takes place in the past. Reading medieval stories inspired my kids to want to build swords and battle in the backyard, and to explore more in other books about castles and the life of kids at the time. Stories can ignite new interests and passions in our kids as they hear about another person’s experiences in a book.
Trade Stories with Friends and Family
Another way we include stories in our family is in our family activities. We seek out opportunities to engage with the authors of the books we read and learn from them. We also trade books with our friends and family.
My husband’s family is a family of readers and every time we are together books change hands. Grandpa, Uncle, and Dad trade their favorite Sci-fi books so the next one can read it. We joke that giving bookstore gift cards at the holidays is selfish because after the other one buys and reads the book it will be passed around the group for everyone to enjoy.
Watching Stories Together as a Family
This may seem counterintuitive but one thing we do to include stories in our family culture is watching television together. We enjoy narrative-based shows together as a family. An episode of the narrative TV show is similar to reading just one chapter of a book. Afterward, we can have discussions about how a character reacted to something or what we think will happen next just like when we read a story.
Character development and plot structure are similar on the screen to reading a novel. We can also help our kids make connections between the way a story was portrayed on screen to how they might read a similar story in a book. Watching screen adaptations of books is another way as well. Written inner monologues of your favorite book character don’t translate well to the screen but we can see how the same information is conveyed differently to still provide value to the story
Reading Together as a Family doesn’t have to stop with teens!
I used to think that my kids would one day outgrow our read-aloud time. But they haven’t outgrown it, it is still a valuable part of our homeschool day and family culture to share stories. The stories we share have changed over the years. Picture books are less common but the stories that start conversations with our teens are even more valuable. Kids don’t outgrow storytime as long as the stories you share grow with them. Don’t stop reading together. Just read bigger stories together!
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