One of my friends who forecloses on housing has a saying it goes like this rich people have large libraries and poor people have large DVD collection’s. He says most of the time there are enough DVDs in their house. If you add up the money they could’ve made several house payments instead of being foreclosed on. When I was growing up, my adoptive, mother hated to read. However, she always made sure that I had books and a ride to the library. Luckily for me my adopted dad loved books. I will never forget one time I checked out the Dr. Seuss book it happened on Mulberry Street, my mother took me to downtown Austell Georgia where they’re just so happen to be a mulberry Street. I was about five years old and didn’t realize that almost every town had a mulberry street. 50 years later that is still one of my best memories. after she passed away right before Thanksgiving, when I was 21, I found a copy of Scarlet, wrapped and hidden in a toybox that she had stood in line to get autographed for me. I have never forgotten it.
We are very blessed that all of our children have overcome their disabilities and learned to read. We have one with autism , one with aspergers and one with dyslexia. Even though they are all adults now they all still love to read this was not always the case when they were younger reading was not high on the agenda list video games and movies were number one. This was before the days of the iPad and the cell phone I was determined that they would love to read that we just had not found exactly what they loved to read yet
My oldest son played a huge part in all of them learning to read. So did the autism therapist that told me turn the volume off and the closed captioning on the television. We turn the volume on super low. We always have the closed captioning on even today at 22 years old Justin will come in turn the volume down and turn on the closed captioning, my oldest son‘s advice was let them read comic books I was like no way that’s not reading. He said mom, anything they read from the back of the cereal box, to the comic book, to the street sign, even if they listen to a book on audio it’s all reading. The knowledge is all getting in there .
Sure enough, he was right. Don’t tell him I said so. we let each one choose their favorite superhero, and then we simply started buying them books about superheroes. Then we picked up on each child’s personality and bought the books that matched accordingly to their age Michael loved the David Shannon books called no David they are about the authors life as a child. He was in trouble more than not in his teachers favorite words were no David no.
Jace always liked the rainbow fish. He liked the story of sharing. They all like the story of stone soup and we made stone soup about once a month especially during the winter time. There was also a book called five Chinese brothers that they liked Justin‘s favorite book was the terrible, horrible rotten, no good day, my favorite book of course is always my brothers keeper a kindergartners view of autism. We still have several of these copies for sale so if you need one PM me. We are also working on the next two books in the series. The first one is called elementary, my dear Justin elementary .
When they got up in the teenage years, the favorite story was Reternity by Neal Wooten. I recommend this book continuously to the old and the young. They also like Steelheart series by Brandon Sanderson. One of my sons liked history, so he read a lot of autobiographies. One likes sports so he read all about sports even in today’s world where even two and three year olds have iPads, my grandson, Kolby loves for us to read him books. He knows where his books are he will go get one and get up in my lap and get all snuggled in to read. My grandson Tyson loves action and black panther so we send him those books. He is in Colorado. My best friends son Jett loves the farm and loves race cars. We have read. Good night tractor at least 100 times. Now we have a remake of it called good night lightning all about lightning McQueen from the cars movie while we are in the car we listen to books on audible.
My sons still like the bookstore and the library and we did the read a Thon every summer where you earn pan pizzas from Pizza Hut. Two of my favorite books for children right now are Ernestine‘s Milky Way by Kerry Madden -Lunsford and Wild Peace by Irene Latham. Make sure that books and letters and art have a place in your children’s lives. They are the only things that are timeless. One really good program for children with autism is called TV doctor Justin used it to learn to read remember readers are leaders and it’s up to you to make sure that your children are readers.
