What I meant by that was that I wish you had been around when I was in junior school. I had a succession of teachers, plus my grandfather (a retired junior school deputy headmaster), who argued that because I was clever I should be reading 'classics'. But I had absolutely no interest in that sort of thing then (and to be honest, very little now). Most of what I read at that age was non-fiction (somehow that didn't count) and the only fiction I read was Doctor Who novels.
To be fair to them, my parents never thought this, and never made me read anything I didn't want to. Actually come to think of it, they never stopped me from watching anything on television, or limited the time I could spend playing computer games, or made me play a musical interest or take up a particular hobby. I wouldn't describe my parents as 'liberal', but when I hear other people say how they weren't allowed to watch more than an hour's telly a day or made to learn to play the oboe (or whatever), I think that they must have been more laissez-faire than most middle class parents.
One thing they did do was read along with me when I was very little, just like evilmissbecky described. Regardless of all the crackpot ideas that you hear of parents being told to make their children clever (play them music while they're in the womb, breast-feed until they're twelve years old, pay for extra tuition when they're three etc), I imagine the best thing parents can do for their children is just that - sit down and read with them.
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Date: 2008-01-22 06:42 pm (UTC)To be fair to them, my parents never thought this, and never made me read anything I didn't want to. Actually come to think of it, they never stopped me from watching anything on television, or limited the time I could spend playing computer games, or made me play a musical interest or take up a particular hobby. I wouldn't describe my parents as 'liberal', but when I hear other people say how they weren't allowed to watch more than an hour's telly a day or made to learn to play the oboe (or whatever), I think that they must have been more laissez-faire than most middle class parents.
One thing they did do was read along with me when I was very little, just like evilmissbecky described. Regardless of all the crackpot ideas that you hear of parents being told to make their children clever (play them music while they're in the womb, breast-feed until they're twelve years old, pay for extra tuition when they're three etc), I imagine the best thing parents can do for their children is just that - sit down and read with them.