As Dominique Bostic-Arrington’s three children have grown, the family reading routine has evolved right along with them.
Gone are the days of all being on the same schedule, replaced by the whirlwind of drop-offs, pickups, sports, and activities that accompanies three children, ages 5, 7, and 12.
“We’ve got so much going on that a regular routine wouldn’t work, so even eating dinner isn’t at a set time,” Bostic-Arrington said.
But reading is still very much a part of their routine, even though it looks different from one day to the next.
“If my oldest has volleyball practice, we might read at the volleyball game,” Bostic-Arrington said. “Or we’ll come outside and read together in the hammock or in the gazebo. It just fluctuates based on how our day is going.”
Bostic-Arrington said she tries to keep books on hand for times when a window for reading might open, like a particularly long carpool line or while dinner is in the oven.
“I just try to find those five or 10 minutes and fit it in whenever,” she said. “Even if you’re cooking something and it has to bake in the oven for 30 minutes, you’re like, ‘OK, well I can spend this time and we can read.’”
She takes her kids to the library weekly, to keep new books in rotation and allow them to pick books that speak to their interests. While they each gravitate toward different topics, Bostic-Arrington said nonfiction seems to be the overarching theme right now. Her oldest loves science and Guinness World Records books, and her younger two like reading facts about animals. They like fictional stories as well, though; so much so that some of them have sparked a new family activity.
“They’re into graphic novels,” Bostic-Arrington said. “After we read, they like drawing the characters afterwards. Even the 5-year-old, she loves competing with her brother, so if they’re doing a character then everybody has out their sketchbooks and they’ll quietly draw for like an hour or so before bed. I think that’s one of our new best moments right now.”
She enjoys the moments that reading together creates, and describes their reading time, wherever and whenever it might fit into a given day, as a time for mindfulness and togetherness.
“The reading time is a good time to bond and kind of wind down, since they have been at school all day,” she said. “That’s our focused time where we get to all be together.”
