{30 Days of Thanks~Day 7}

Today I'm thankful for the ability to read, the desire to read, the time to read...for me and for him.

Joshua struggled a bit, ok, a lot with the ability to read.....this really hinders the desire to read. You cannot know what joy it was for me Friday night when he said, "I miss D.E.A.R."

D.E.A.R. means "Drop Everything And Read". One of Hannah's teachers did this sometime during the week every week. He would just say, "It's DEAR time" and no matter what you were doing, you would scoop up the latest book you were reading, get comfortable anywhere in the room and spend at least 30 minutes reading...HANNAH. LOVED. IT!! So, this summer in order to encourage all of us to put the technology away I would call for DEAR time everyday. Hannah, Joshua and I would drop what we were doing (usually, I would choose the time when I was cleaning or doing laundry---hey, if it's DEAR time, you HAVE TO STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING---IT'S MANDATORY) and pick up a good book---or a bad one, but we had to read. Since school started back, it's been hard to fit the DEAR time in. We still read every night---often I read to him, but he needs to be reading on his own too.

I had been looking for a book series that Joshua would enjoy reading this summer---one that would help him develop a LOVE of reading, so I bought book after book---none were interesting to him, until I found the series Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney.

 I had heard about it from a few of my students, and while we were desperately trying to find something this summer, I saw one and picked it up---it took! Now, trust me, I know it's no Chronicles of Narnia or even Harry Potter, but MY. SON. IS. READING! He begged me to go get him the last two so he'd be ready when the new one comes out on Tuesday. I came home from Barnes & Noble today and he hasn't moved except to eat a quick dinner. He has devoured the third book in the series and has started on the fourth.

Today I'm thankful that he is learning to love something that will be a love for a lifetime. We sat and had our DEAR time tonight and I smiled as I thought of all the joy I've gained hiding away in a book for a day, or a week. I thought of how much I've learned while reading....about myself, about history, about others. But mostly I thought of the joy it is to see your child wrapped up in a book and begging for "10 more minutes". Oh, OK---if you have to. (BIG GRIN.)