When your child can read alone, should you still snuggle in beside them and read together?

The answer is ‘yes!’ according to Kevin Wilson, an award-winning American author and Associate Professor. He says reading together provides a shared experience that only becomes more important with time.

Kevin has written four novels and several highly acclaimed short stories, and he also teaches creative writing. Reading for many years with his teenage sons has allowed him to stay close and connected as a parent. And it’s allowed his children to believe in their own unique voices.

Thank you for joining me today, Kevin. It’s a real pleasure to speak with you.

Let’s begin talking about you. Looking back on your life, what have been the turning points that led you here?

My full time job is a teacher, but I’m also a writer. I write fiction.

That desire to be a writer goes all the way back to when I was a little kid. I grew up in a very rural part of the deep south here in America, in Tennessee, and the school library where I went to school was this un-air-conditioned trailer outside of the school.

There was only six of us in my grade and I could go to the library whenever I wanted. There was only a librarian once a week. I guess she started to notice that I was in there reading and she would start to leave books for me.

So reading was one of the first ways that I was witnessed by an adult, not because of who my family was, but because of me individually. She was choosing books that she thought I would like, so reading was this way for me to realise that books could allow me to connect with other people.

I was kind of a shy kid and we lived out in the country, so reading books – honestly, for someone who was a little scared of the outside world – reading books felt safe for me to go into these worlds, but also to really trust that I was in the care of the author or the artist, that they would help me get to wherever I needed to go in the story.

At a young age, to put your trust in someone and believe that they can do something for you, transform you, make you see the world in a new way, well it made the world less scary to me. I really did believe in the author-reader relationship in that way.

From a really early age, I believed in the transformative power of stories and it was what I wanted to do with my life, to figure out how to turn that love of reading into a love of writing.

How about reading at home? What do you remember about being read to?

I remember, and I think it’s really important, that my parents didn’t have an idea of good or bad literature. They never were like, ‘you don’t want to read that’, or ‘that’s for kids’, or ‘that’s too little’ or ‘this is too adult’. If I brought it to them and I wanted to read it, they would read it with me.

There’s something kind of lovely about bringing this book that looks interesting to you to a parent or an adult or someone that cares about you and to say, ‘could we look at this together?’. It almost felt incomplete if there wasn’t someone next to you to work through those early stories.

My parents just always believed that reading was this important thing, and it was time for us to be together.

What I remember about being read to as a child is never feeling like it was restricted and never feeling like it was a chore. It was a thing that was exciting and made me love it even more because my parents were excited about it.

So when you look back on reading, you didn’t feel alone?

Yes, one hundred percent. People think so much of writing and reading as these solitary things and sometimes they are. You can enjoy it in a solitary way. But almost any form of art can gain this additional power if it’s experienced with another person.

Reading books was like that for me.

I remember at the elementary school, our teacher would read a book to us every day, and one of them was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Every day we would read it. But I was sick on the day of the Mike Teavee chapter, and I came back the day after and I was finding it was this weird feeling of ‘oh no, I’ve missed out on this collective story’.

I could read it on my own, but it was still this weird moment because what’s so much fun is to be with all these other kids in the classroom and listen to it together.

When did you start writing?

I know it sounds silly, but I honestly didn’t know you could make a living as a writer. It didn’t occur to me. Where I grew up, that wasn’t something anyone talked about.

It wasn’t until I went to college that I started to read all these works and be around professors who were mentors to me. They told me that if I wanted to, I could give this a try.

Then I was lucky enough to have parents who, even though they didn’t necessarily understand it, they wanted me to try something. They supported me, and that was huge.

When I told them I wanted to try to make stuff, that I wanted to be a writer, well I think if my parents had been resistant that would have been really difficult. In my 20s, having my parents say, ‘If this is something you want to try, we support you’, was huge. I think they supported me because they knew how much reading had meant to me for my whole life.

Can you tell us a bit more about your job as a teacher?

I teach at a university in the same county where I grew up. It’s a small university of about 1500 students called the University of the South in Tennessee, and I teach creative writing and literature.

So my 9-to-5 life is reading books with these 20 year olds and talking about the books, and also encouraging them to develop their own voice. What I want them to constantly think about is how to take the words that were meaningful to them when they were growing up, and to think about what it would mean to share their own ideas, in their own words, and make it uniquely their own.

A lot of them are working off the stories they grew up loving, and it’s trying to help them figure out why did they love that, and then how can they make their own voice unique.

Coming back to your role as a father now, tell us about reading with your teenage children.

Our kids are now 17 and 12 years old, and we still read to them every night. We’ve been doing that since they were little.

And it’s not a chore. No matter what has happened during the day, no matter how difficult or stressful or how much work we have, there’s 30 minutes at the end of the day where we sit next to each other and we are sharing this story with each other.

It’s calming. It’s a way for me to say, even if me and my sons were having a difficult day with each other, if I’m frustrated with them because they haven’t done their homework or they’re frustrated with me because I’m not listening to them, at the end of the day for 30 minutes we have to come together and listen to this story.

It only works if we’re both there and listening to the story together as we read it. It’s the best part of my day, honestly, that no matter what else, we have this thing and I love it.

Literacy is important and obviously you want your children to be able to read so they can learn more at school and everywhere. But also reading books is just a great way to feel connected to your child.

By reading together, you now have this shared experience. So later when they talk about a character that they love, or they see something on TV, you’ve experienced that same story so you can say ‘oh look, they’re making it into a movie’ or ‘oh look, this situation I had today is very similar to that book we read.’

I just think it’s a way for you to feel closer to your child and have these shared experiences.

What a beautiful way to describe the power of reading with children!

But parenting is tiring, and you are also a writer and teacher. Are there days when you just don’t feel like reading together?

I guess one of the things is, even though we do pretty much read together every day, I think anything that you make binding can start to feel restrictive. So if there are days where we simply can’t do it, no one feels bad.

But for the most part, even if I’m really tired, even if it’s been a long day, even when my kids are stressed about something coming up in the next week or so, we’ve built reading into our lives in such a way that we can sit next to each other on this bed and for 30 minutes – only 30 minutes – we’re going to sit here and read. It’s a time for both of us.

Even if you don’t listen fully, you can still hear the sound of my voice, and even if you don’t think about it or retain any of what we read tonight, it’s just a way to prepare yourself or to wind down for the day. Whatever happens next, it’s going to keep going, we’re going to come back to this story if we need to, we’re going to read every night if you want to. So if there’s one day when it doesn’t work, it’s okay.

How do people react when you tell them you read to your teenage sons every day?

I think a lot of people are shocked. They are like, ‘How in the world does your 17 year old sit there and you read a book together?’.

Then there’s some people that say, ‘Oh I miss those moments, I used to read to my kids when they were really little’. And I can remember reading books to them when they were very, very little, so it has changed in some ways, but I would say I feel pretty lucky.

I’ve always been ready for my sons to say, at some point, ‘I just don’t want to do this anymore’. They have their own books that they’re reading at night too. But thankfully, in the same way that I look forward to it at the end of the night, for them it’s also calming.

It’s a routine that allows them to rest a little bit, to share a story, but also to prepare themselves at the end of the day to be ready for whatever comes next. As long as they want me to, I’ll read. I’ve never gotten tired of it.

The books that we read change over time and allowing them to choose the books, being active and not passive in this connection, is really important. I think part of what they love is being able to pick out a book that they’re interested in and know that we will share this experience. Someone’s going to be reading with them, which is still kind of exciting for them.

They’re active children of this modern world, but they’ve never felt that reading is a chore. They’ve never felt that it’s a childish thing to do. It’s just a part of their lives. In the same way that they love movies or video games, they love books. It’s just another way to experience stories.

Coming back to your writing, many of your stories revolve around children and young people finding their voice.

Why do you think it’s important for children to have agency and express themselves?

There’s just so many ways that kids feel they don’t have power, that they’re not listened to.

I think it’s really important for kids to know you can make art and it can be helpful for the way you feel, but you can also gain more confidence in what your own voice sounds like. I try to explain that hey, this thing that you love, watching TV, reading stories, playing video games with these narratives, think of what it would feel like if you put time and effort into that.

Even if no one else ever reads it, even if no one else ever sees it, there is this personal pleasure that you got out of the making of it, that this is for you.

It’s rare that people want kids to talk about themselves or to participate in the larger discourse, and I think kids are sometimes shocked that they have a voice at all, and what it sounds like.

Making art and telling stories to yourself is a great way to figure out what you sound like when you want to make yourself known to the world.

Well, those are a lot of wonderful reasons to read more with young children – and older ones too.

What are your three top tips for parents and carers to enjoy reading with children?

The number one thing for me, and that I’ve had to learn is, it’s okay if your child doesn’t like the book.

You don’t have to take it as a personal thing. Personally, I like to finish what I start, but if they’re not into the picture book we’re reading, I am okay to find another one. I will say ‘Let’s find a story that appeals to you,’ and not feel affronted or anything.

There were some books I loved as a child, but when I showed them to my kids, they didn’t really like them. Honestly, I actually thought, ‘This is a little more boring than I remembered’. Oh well! Things change.

So the number one thing is just to be flexible. Find out what your kid likes. That’s what libraries are for: they are this vast universe of books that you can try out.

The second thing is to try to make it a daily routine. Even though I don’t think you have to be rigid, it can be such a nice thing that your child sees that once a day, there is a time you’ve set aside for them.

If you can make it a routine, and not a routine that feels like a chore, but more as a way to say ‘I want to be with you’, it will make a difference – even if it’s just for 10 minutes.

Your child starts to think of the story-telling time not just as a story, but as a time where, no matter how busy you are, you can prove to them that just for a small amount of time – even 5 minutes – you’re going to focus your entire attention on them. You’re not going to be on your phone, you’re not going to be talking to someone else. It is undivided attention to your child.

They’ll recognise it, and it will help them to start to realise that this is special and important, and it’s tied to the reading of the books.

The third thing I would say is, don’t turn it into a lesson. There were times when the kids would read to us, but I didn’t want the reading time with kids to feel like a lesson. I didn’t want them to feel like this is when they practice how to read aloud, or practice their enunciation. I wanted them to know that this was time for us to share a story.

There are so many ways kids are being corrected all the time. If they struggle for a word or ask for help, you obviously jump in, but it really doesn’t matter if every single word is correct.  It doesn’t matter if they skip a word or a line.

For me, it’s not corrective. It’s fun.

Thanks so much Kevin for sharing your experiences and your advice.

For more about Kevin’s books and writing, visit his website.