And the future bodes...?

As a born observer and knee-jerk-to-mind-fuck crafter of perpetually-refining theories, it's always interesting to see how heredity dictates patterns and preferences in one's progeny... and not. Along the same lines, birth order and its ensuing behavioural consistencies is a source of endless fascination; time-allowing, I need to delve deeply into hypotheses I've been developing over the years, and to hopefully corroborate (but likely contradict) them with the plethorii of books I know must exist on the topic. But all of that is neither here nor there for what I'm posting about tonight. Necessarily.

Jeepers is not a natural reader. This is a fact I find almost mortally astounding as I can not comprehend anyone eeking out of me after a gruelling 75 hour labour to not possess a fanatical affinity to books. ArJay, on the other hand, my middle child and an almost emotional carbon copy of myself, can read on forever, and often forgets to eat because he is too ensconced in the pages of his tomes. And from toddlerhood, SiKay's existence was often forgotten because of her silence; she'd be burrowed into a corner somewhere, curled up under a blanket, her tiny body wrapped around a precious book.

Nowadays, as part of their literacy programme at school, each child is required to read at least half an hour a day. This, to me, is ridiculous, as half an hour meant ~ in my childhood, at least ~ one recess, and that barely got you anything in terms of reading time. Then there was the one hour at lunch time, the stolen hours in the evening when books were hidden in binders so, even though you were long finished your homework, you could still pretend to be doing it while reading instead so you didn't end up getting sucked into painful and dangerous (soldering wires for hearing-impaired volume control consoles at age six seems a little premature, I think) electronics work for the family business in the freezing basement until the wee hours. And, there was all that lovely overnight time after everyone went to bed to do "reading for school."

The fact that only two out of three of my kids like to read with such akin passion grieves my heart sore.

Thus, I have created a pact with the kids where for every minute they read, they earn electronic gaming time, whether it be online, on the XBox 360 or Wii, or ArJay's DSi. (This arrangement, needless to say, pertains mostly to elicit the reading fervour of one child, but hey. Fair is fair, and it's vitually painless for all around anyway. So now, when Jeeps isn't world-building on-line, he's reading. Loads.)

Also, in addition to their own silent reading time that gets logged first, my newest addendum includes that for every minute the boys read to SiKay books of her own choosing, they earn double playing time. It truly warms the cockles of the heart to hear them happily reading aloud to their little sister princess and mermaid stories, complete with cool voices and accompanying sound effects. (Unfortunately, they're having trouble identifying appropriateness of time, and are reading to her while she's still only half-awake in the morning.) As expected, she is detesting this attention and storytime most ardently. Poor girl.

But herein lies the tradeoff: This weekend, while Chef Boy and I were busy cooking, getting firewood, and doing all the usual cocoony-type stuff, the boys asked to borrow our camera. (This wasn't an unusual occurence; all summer long, I curbed game-playing and TV-watching to almost prohibitively-low levels, forcing them to play together as creatively and co-operatively as possible. As a result, they got busy and began producing several stop-action animation and live-action short films with Sharpied rocks, turtle candles, Legos, drawings, etc.) This weekend, with our camera, they holed themselves up in the library; unbeknownst to us, they'd figured out (entirely on their own) how to upload videos onto their own channel on YouTube. I didn't even know they had a channel on YouTube. Did I mention they are currently seven and nine years old? I haven't watched through all of them yet, but sincerely hope I can't be heard at any point tossing in any swear words while chatting in the background.









Ah yes. Credits. Here is Arjay, playing tourguide to a world he built in Minecraft in a clip entitled, "How to Make Flint/Bucket FAIL," with Jeeps in charge of cinematography. Personal favourite quotes: "There used to be a pig there, but died, so I had to make a gravestone. And the animals can *poop.*" Also, "I know how to make sheep naked."

I have a sinking suspicion this is only the beginning.