Reading is incredibly important for mental development, it teaches your brain how to have the language tools to create abstractions of the world around you and then use those abstractions to change perspectives, communicate ideas and understand your own thoughts and feelings.
It’s never too late to start exercising that muscle, and it really is a muscle, a lot of people have a hard time getting started reading later in life because they simply don’t have the practice in forming words into images and scenes… but think about how strong that makes your brain when you can form text into whole vivid worlds, when you can create images and people and words and situations in your mind to explore the universe around you and invent simulated situations with more accuracy… I cannot scream enough how critically important it is for us to exercise this muscle, I hope you keep looking for things that spark your interest just enough that you get a foothold in reading and writing :)
Yup, it’s something I myself recently started to realise and have been forcing myself to read things that actually interest me.
While in elementary and middle school every 2 months we had a specific book we had to read and then would discuss it in class and would be graded based on our input.
Reading books and writing essays has been cemented in my mind as a boring chore that is forced upon me. It took years before it even occured to me that reading might be a fun activity, and a couple more before I actively started trying to read again. It’s difficult to break away from the mould I’ve been set to during my childhood, but I’m slowly chipping away at it.
Children SHOULD read, but how can we get them to WANT to read?
Reading is incredibly important for mental development, it teaches your brain how to have the language tools to create abstractions of the world around you and then use those abstractions to change perspectives, communicate ideas and understand your own thoughts and feelings.
It’s never too late to start exercising that muscle, and it really is a muscle, a lot of people have a hard time getting started reading later in life because they simply don’t have the practice in forming words into images and scenes… but think about how strong that makes your brain when you can form text into whole vivid worlds, when you can create images and people and words and situations in your mind to explore the universe around you and invent simulated situations with more accuracy… I cannot scream enough how critically important it is for us to exercise this muscle, I hope you keep looking for things that spark your interest just enough that you get a foothold in reading and writing :)
Yup, it’s something I myself recently started to realise and have been forcing myself to read things that actually interest me.
While in elementary and middle school every 2 months we had a specific book we had to read and then would discuss it in class and would be graded based on our input.
Reading books and writing essays has been cemented in my mind as a boring chore that is forced upon me. It took years before it even occured to me that reading might be a fun activity, and a couple more before I actively started trying to read again. It’s difficult to break away from the mould I’ve been set to during my childhood, but I’m slowly chipping away at it.
Children SHOULD read, but how can we get them to WANT to read?