Did you like my cartoon from last week (posted here again today)? Maybe it made you feel a bit uncomfortable, after all we’ve all been guilty of looking at our phone and ignoring the children sometimes? Are there more occasions when you could model reading a book rather than having your head in your phone?
Just plain, old-fashioned reading – getting lost between the pages of a book – is highly beneficial to our health and one of the best forms of escape. In our attempts to get away from the stresses of life and the pressures of a constantly moving culture, all we need to do is put down our smartphone long enough to read for a while. And for our children who will be experiencing increased screen time due to the nature of distance schooling, this is just as important.
It’s been proven time and time again that reading relaxes our brains in a pleasurable way. Being attentive and present in the reading experience helps us to overcome stress and lower our blood pressure and heart rate. It also develops our empathy skills. Instead of worrying about our troubles, we can be transported temporarily to an imaginary world where we meet and engage with new people and observe them dealing with conflicts until a resolution is reached. It’s a therapeutic form of escapism that helps the reader to disengage for a while. Most stories are about a protagonist dealing with a crisis situation that always forces change in some way (something we are all too familiar with at the moment). As a reader, escaping into a book helps us to see the world from a different point of view, relate to characters, feel connected to them, and see how they deal with the curve balls life throws at them from the safety of our own sofa.
Imagine being a writer though, the person who has to put their own imaginings on paper, something our children often find themselves being asked to do. Is that as therapeutic as just reading? According to Gustave Flaubert: “It is a delicious thing to write, to be no longer yourself, to move in an entire universe of your own creation”. He makes it sound amazing, like a gift, but interestingly Hemingway has quite a different take: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” I think I’d rather stick to reading myself.
Whether you are a reader, or a writer, wouldn’t it be nice to focus on modelling great reading habits for our children?
Mrs Emmett, Librarian
