As a Librarian, I often hear from parents who are corncerned that their children don't enjoy reading and don't read enough. My own reality is far from that as my 4 children, and my husband and myself, are all avid readers.
Our kids are given 30 minutes from bedtime to lights out time to enjoy some final reading for the day. Unfortunately my 13yo has trouble falling asleep and will read through multiple books in bed until very very late. At some point he may also go and make a snack in the kitchen - sometimes a noisy and messy process. In order to get enough sleep to care for my other children and to function at work I had to stop trying to stay awake until he fell asleep.
We are receiving some valuable guidance from our sister-in-law, who is the Director of Curricula & Assistant Clinical Director at a global organization that works to resolve the behavioral, intellectual, social, emotional, cognitive and academic needs of individuals and families. She is very generously working with our son on his social skills, as well as supporting us emotionally and helping us to develop more advanced parenting skills.
Since we've identified that reading is a stimulating activity at bedtime, tonight we took the extreme (to us) step of removing the approximately 100 books he had in his room and put them behind locked doors in the basement. The plan is to allow him to only read in the living room, so that his bed is a place for sleep. For the first week we'll allow him to have three books a night - it sounds like a lot but is fewer than his norm. Two books the second week, one book the third week.
Hopefully we don't see this backfire at school, where he may end up reading through all his classes. We'll keep the teachers informed and tell him his online gaming time will be reduced if that happens.
This has gone well the past two nights.
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