I read to my kids every night, and now that there are three of them, often it takes over an hour. I have always held reading to them to be a very important part of our bedtime. Over the last three months or so, I’ve read through nearly the entire Harry Potter series with my oldest and almost always acquiescing to the request of “one more chapter.”
I have very few memories of actually feeling disappointed from when I was growing up. However, I have one core memory of my childhood when I was in bed and I asked my mom to read to me. I must have gotten the idea from school that parents read to kids at bedtime. So one evening, I found a Chinese book with a story about a purple police cat, put it in her lap and asked her to read. I don’t remember exactly what she said, but she didn’t read it. I felt like I was missing out, like all these kids in my class were being read to and here I was not.
Because of this, I may very well over-read to my kids. In my attempt to never have my kids feel that disappointment, I have gone the complete opposite extreme. I find parenting is so very much this oscillating pendulum swinging from one extreme to another.
