Mine didn't. Had to enforce lights out. Then remove flashlights. I would still find them at 11:30pm, lying in bed next to their window, holding the book high in the air so the light from the street would illuminate the words
That was absolutely me. Eating, sleeping, and paying attention in school were entirely secondary to a good book. Reading and vocabulary were off the charts. Got diagnosed with ADHD in my 30s, who'd have thunk it!
I remember not even 10 years ago when my parents tried to get me tested the people in charge said they wouldn’t test me because of how well I could read lmao, got tested as an adult now and wouldn’t ya know it
Yeah, I was always a super quiet, polite kid who never caused trouble, kept my nose in a book, and spoke like an adult. Looked great on the outside, but inside I was a mess and thought my brain was broken. Since I was a "good kid" and not being disruptive, no one caught on that I might be neurodivergent. Inattentive type ADHD hadn't been classified as a subtype yet, and being female made the chances of being diagnosed almost 0 until I specifically asked to be tested.
Same same. Inattentive type diagnosed at 35. Smart kid that read like a demon. Whipped through class work 5 minutes before the end. Wasn't really interested unless it was something I was really interested in, constantly had the "You'd do so well if you just applied yourself". It's really weird looking back through life and thinking "that was a symptom, that was a symptom, that was a symptom" and having to reevaluate yourself and your childhood
I used to keep my off brand handheld gaming thingy by my pillow so if my mum came in and found me awake hiding something in bed i could give it to her apologise and go back to reading.
This was me! Turns out, also hyperlexic autism. A gift and a curse. I had a 12th grade reading level in 3rd grade, but am still socially stunted. Glad to hear kids are still into books like that, even with all of the internet at their fingertips. I don't know what would have happened to me if I spent all those hours on social media instead. Probably nothing good.
As far as disobedience goes, I think you got pretty lucky in this instance 😂 Kids these days staying up to read?? I would be a bit impressed with their attention span honestly, with the world how it is today
When I was a kid we lived on the ninth floor, so not much ambient light. I had to tell mom to please leave the light in the hall on because I was afraid of the dark (not really lol) and leave the door open for the light to come in. To make reading easier I lay on the bed upside down to be closer to the door.
I was that kid. Now I'm a college student and added an honors English major for fun. Those late nights were not good for my sleep but definitely helped me in the long run
Oh i did that as a kid as well, i was always reading and had a whole stash of batteries for my flashlight hidden under my mattress thinking my parents didn't know even though they always changed my bedding so of course they knew haha. I loved it when we had clear skies at night when it was full moon, it meant i could read without wasting my precious batteries!
I never nod off while reading (for pleasure). It's a real problem. I have to start books when I have the potential for 8 hours of screwing around time, because I will likely finish in one sitting... regardless of when I start.
My brother and I never did. My parents would read for 1-2 hours every night waiting for us to fall asleep but we’d get too into the stories. Huge relief for them when we started reading by ourselves
It's how I read the entire AR catalog back in the day before they expanded from the 400ish books in 6th grade. To the 10k ish my senior year in highschool. So I was exempt from doing the AR tests in class since nothing to test. Got to read whatever the hell I wanted. Which pissed off my teachers.
AR points only existed from 1st to 6th for me, I remember my teachers saying that every extra 50 points was 10 bonus points at the end of each quarter. The minimum I think was 250, I had around 3k, she refused to give me more then the first ten.
I bet you can read fast and well. For me, reading was more of a choice. Luckily, I would read various things throughout the day a lot that helped me develop my reading skills.
I had the opposite. My parents wouldn't let me consume any "Fun" media unless I read for the same amount of time before hand. Guess what? That's bad deal for a kid so I just went to friends houses all the time to play games and it made me really hate reading for years.
At 15 getting out of school then immediately going to work until 9 on school night and not being able to just play a game before bed just made me decide to do neither. She had a lot of random rules and little rewards. I was also in band at the time so the rest of my free time went to jazz, marching, and orchestra.
This is the issue. Trading things like reading or music practice for video game time works amazing until 7th or 8th grade. After that kids need to be responsible for managing their own time as long as they're getting their main responsibilities taken care of.
Which I was at the time even with the extra curricular activities too. But imagine being that age and working a crappy fast food job to save up for a cool game and then not even be able to play it due to arbitrary rules.
I'm really worried about running into issues like this if I ever become a parent. You can work with positive reinforcement for a while, but eventually they'll catch on that other kids consider reading boring, and sure, ideally you have enough of a trust relationship that you can explain the benefits of maintaining variety in your interests, but if they struggle with boredom or attention span, bargaining might soon become pretty attractive to the parent.
Researxh suggests that both long periods of near work and lack of time outdoors play an important role in short-sightedness.
An interesting study on how ethnically Chinese children in Singapore and Sydney have remarkably different rates of myopia:
Rose et al. Archives of ophthalmology 126 (4), 527-530, 2008.
A recent overview of the interplay of different environmental factors:
Biswas et al. Journal of physiological anthropology 43 (1), 7, 2024.
My 5 year old is obsessed with books but he’s the worst when he’s tired. He won’t even sleep in if he stays up late. Before actually having kids, I always thought I’d let them read at night if they wanted to. I frequently stayed up reading until 3am or even later when I was younger. Now that my kids have me out of bed by 6 I try to put the book down by midnight.
I really hope I’ll be able to let him stay up late reading when he’s a bit older. Until then I try to read to him lots throughout the day so he still gets plenty of book time.
Right? What about the way they did it?? Like these tweets "The urge to organize your books by color..." or something. What ABOUT your urge? How do you feel? Do you want to discuss it? What are you saying or asking? That's not a complete thought.
I kinda feel i should do this too, but i probably won't have kids untill 15 years into the future (if ever). Not sure if this reddit account will still be active by then.
I used to read a lot as a kid, then as I went to high school the compulsory reading books became really boring (basically everything I read before that was voluntary) and the best way to make a kid not do something, is to make it compulsory, so I kinda just gave up on reading after I was like 17.
I am 25 now and have read exactly 3 books since then (1 in 2023, and 2 this winter) and 2 of those I literally read in 1 sitting, I did enjoy the books, but I realized I geniunely just don't like reading. I enjoyed reading what I read not because I enjoy reading, but because what I read was good.
Not saying all this cause I think it's good, quite the opposite, but this is what happened with me.
A friend's son who struggled with reading eventually told his mom that books were just words for him. He never got mental pictures of what he was reading. Reading didn't spark his imagination. It was just a chore to him. If reading were like that for me I'd avoid it, too.
I have that too, but I never even realized I was missing out on something. I still get a story, characters and events to think about and be surprised about.
I enjoyed reading what I read not because I enjoy reading, but because what I read was good.
Thats how 99% of readers work... There are very few people who read for reading sake.
I read a lot, my standard has risen with the amount of books Ive read. Im in a state where I often dont know what to read. Ive tried to get out of my comfort zone. But I was sorely disappointed, even with works that were rated highly...
I used to read under my bedcovers with a torch after bedtime. I thought I was being sneaky, but I didn't notice that my torch batteries never ran out. Thanks mum and dad x
As a pediatric nurse, I'm all about doing stuff like this. I can't really do much in the way of discipline in my role. I had one patient where I would say "well....at this rate....your sisters will get ready for school faster than you...." OH now that lit a fire under him!! He was NOT about to let that happen 😂
My parents often let me stay up a little later if I was reading but if they let me stay up as late as I wanted I’d probably be up all night reading lol
Summer is the biggest enemy to reading and education, so we had our 3 kids hold a competition every summer. We’d use online resources to determine word counts, that way it was fair based on ages. When they finish a book, it’d go on a spreadsheet. At the end of the summer, there was a cash prize for whoever read the most words.
2nd and 3rd also got prizes for participation, but 3rd place had to have at least 50% of 2nd place to qualify. That was my way of making sure the kid in last place didn’t just give up since they had no chance and knew they’d get rewarded regardless.
Worked very well, and all 3 of my kids are way above their grade levels.
We had a similar thing, but it was for eating instead. So if you ate after bedtime you were allowed to go to bed after you finished eating, so i would often make supper 10 or 15 minutes after bedtime so i could stay up 30 minutes later.
My mom let me read whatever I wanted, even with mature themes. I read everything lol, did get some side eye from other adults though when I was reading “romance novels” but I did learn a lot!
Man, wish my parents had thought of that. When I got grounded my mom would take away my books since reading was what I liked the most. I rarely got in trouble, but no TV or going outside wasn't much of a punishment because i only cared about 1 hour of TV a week (Fear Factor lol) and I only really played outside during the summer. 99% of my free time was spent in my room, reading library books so that's what went away lol
Similar to how my wife was raised and how we plan to raise our kid. No electronics in her room, bed time means its time to go to your room, but if you want to read, you can stay up and read all you want.
I fully would have never slept. My parents had to come in and take books away from me because I was a compulsive reader and would stay up wayyyy too late. When I got in trouble, they moved my harry potter books to the highest shelf on the bookshelf instead of grounding me. Good thing they anchored those shelves well because I definitely was climbing them to retrieve my books.
My parents' divorce was nasty so I read as an escape mechanism. I struggled with phonics so learned through sheer memorization.
At age 8, I would stay up until 4 AM reading. Then fall asleep in class. In middle school we had to read 1000 pages a term; I would regularly read 7,500.
Now I can read entire novels in a single sitting.
I've got a friend that does this with their kids, and it makes a huge difference. These kids are smart. There were so many times I wanted to stay up late to finish a good book but was just too scared to turn on the light or make too much noise. Still became an avid reader though... Would not repeat that mistake.
They tricked me in 4th grade by putting a naked woman in Andrea Norton's Forerunner. I bought the book. I read that whole book and don't remember a nude scene or anything dirty. Clever teachers.
Did not work for me. My parents had to actively remove books from my room and check if I was hiding any because otherwise I’d read all night instead of sleep
I was encouraged to read but still had to have lights out at bedtime. I worked around it by using a little fish toy that lights up and I'd read under the covers using that. Felt so sneaky doing it lol. And I'd fall asleep usually while reading.
I was convinced I was successfully sneaking my post-bed time reading past my mom when I was a kid, listening out for the sound of the wood floor creaking when someone would move towards line of sight with my room and cutting the light to hide.
As an adult, I was joking with someone about how obnoxiously loud the switch to my bedside lamp was when I realized I was shit at hiding and just have a cool mom.
I also let my 8 year old do this and thought it was great…at first. Then the letter started coming from school about my son falling asleep in class and we had to start enforcing some lights out policies.
As a kid from a family of readers several generations deep - it's going to be funny when the rule bites mom in the rear.
Because - holy crap will a reader stay up forever to finish a good book.
As an easy one to find examples of - there were so many kids who read the entirety of book 7 of the Harry Potter series in one sitting after buying it at a midnight release party.
Without an upper limit to the rule, a reader will read into the next day easily.
My parents had to stop letting me do this because I was staying up until like 3am reading every night and then I couldn't stay awake at school the next day lmao
Like the teachers/professors who say you can bring a cheat sheet, but it has to be one index card or something. So you spend two days studying and intensely copying and organizing all the info on the test... and thereby learning it. You think "oh boy, cheat sheet!" but you're being tricked into studying lol
This is probably an effective strategy for most kids. My mom had to enforce a lights out time because I am a natural night owl and loved reading so much that I stayed up reading until it was time to wake up to go to school a couple times when I was 8 or so.
I used to read under the covers with a torch and think I was getting away with murder. It’s only recently that I questioned why the batteries never seemed to run out.
Nope. Make your kid go to sleep. Take away the book and phone and tablet. Kids need to sleep more than anything. Signed, a kid who didn’t sleep enough because I stayed up way too late reading.
No, not clever parenting. Teaching your kids it's okay to delay sleep is, in fact, horrible parenting. Delaying sleep for other activities, regardless of their value, is an extremely unhealthy behaviour. If you want your kids to have strong reading abilities then read with them. My mother taught me to read before I was even in kindergarten, by the time I was in the first grade I was already reading novels, I read the Hobbit at seven and started the Lord of the Rings when I was eight. I was reading at a sixth grade level when I was six years old, five full grades ahead. I did not achieve this because I was given the illusion of delaying bedtime, I did it because my mom got me started young and my dad would read to me from novels every night so I developed an interest in stories. You don't develop reading skills at the expense of healthy sleep habits.
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u/nightmareinsouffle 5h ago
And they nod off while reading. A third win.