On Becoming Irrelevant

I have always loved to read. Books – real books; not the digital kind – have been an escape for me from as far back as I can remember. I love the feel of a book’s pages between my fingers. I love the smell of a book. I love the weight of a hardcover book on my lap (my aging eyes can’t ‘do’ paperbacks anymore, although I loved those too). Books got me through a challenging childhood and opened up new and exciting worlds for me. They have always been my ultimate escape. I spent a huge – and very happy – chunk of my youth at the local library, which was housed in a beautiful old historic Victorian house in my home town.

When I joined the workforce, I started out as an English Second Language teacher but tumbled into adult literacy just a few short years after. Sharing the gift of reading with adults who could not read or write was very rewarding: I could think of no other gift quite as precious as being able to read. I worked in adult literacy as a project coordinator for 25 years and a huge part of the work that we did was to mentor to parents the importance of instilling a love of reading in the home. When my son was born, a friend posted a note in a literacy newsletter, expressing her congratulations and making a note of the fact that my son would surely be ‘a very early reader’. I distinctly recall getting a sick feeling of panic in the pit of my stomach at those words: what a lot of pressure that was, knowing it was my responsibility to raise him ‘right’. In case you weren’t aware, they call a language your ‘mother tongue’ for a reason… children with educated mothers tend to do better in school. The father – at least in my day – had little impact on a child’s education.

Ironically, both my children would get off to a rocky start learning to read. I strongly suspect it was because they were raised in a French milieu and for the first five years – until they entered English kindergarten – I was their only consistent link to the English language. I recall crying my eyes out – at the end of my firstborn’s grade-two year – because he still couldn’t read. I was at my wits’ end: I knew I was doing everything right; I was sure of it. I had been reading to him – and his sister – since I carried them in the womb. I had filled the house with every possible medium for them to express their creativity; to practice their small-and-large motor skills. I never talked baby-talk to them and we talked constantly: I never tired of their questions. And our house was filled with books: both my children were practically on a first-name basis with Dr. Seuss, Robert Munch, Sheree Fitch, Roald Dahl, J. K. Rowling, you name it; we had it. How could my son not be able to read?

This early experience turned out to be very helpful and extremely humbling: when I delivered family literacy workshops to parents, I never presented as an ‘expert’ but always, as a fellow parent who had experienced the same issues these parents were going through. I would always share the difficulties my son had had (I am happy to report that both he and his sister are avid readers today). And invariably, before I had gotten past the introduction, as least two Moms in the audience would be in tears.

I have lost count of the number of workshops I delivered to parents and teachers over the years, but I spoke to probably hundreds of parents about early-reading tips, learning styles, study skills, homework tips, the influence of the media on our children, and the like. And for ten years, I read children’s stories on our local CBC Radio network, always followed by reading tips for parents. It was a wonderful and enriching time of my life.

I gave my very last workshop back in the early-2010s to a small group of new Moms with their very small babies in tow. By this time, I had changed career paths and was no longer working in the field of adult literacy but nonetheless, still happily volunteered whenever I was invited to. The ‘workshop’ was very informal – we were sitting on mats on the floor – and I had foregone the fancy PowerPoint to make the whole thing as laid-back as possible: just one ‘experienced’ Mom (if there is such a thing) talking to a small group of brand-new Moms as their babies crawled happily about from lap to mat. I had arrived at the point where I was stressing the importance of keeping television and computer use to a minimum: “I strongly advise you to keep the TV and the computer off during the week and have them available only for a limited amount of time on the week-ends,” I cautioned, “And start NOW. That way, by the time they start school and have homework to do, it won’t be an issue if they have never known anything else.”

There was a prolonged silence as – I assumed – the young Moms absorbed this pearl of wisdom. “But…” said one of the Moms, finally, in a small voice, “If you didn’t let your kids watch TV or use the computer, what did you DO with them?”

And just like that – I realised that I had become a dinosaur. No warning; no letter in the mail. Just that long silence and the blank look of five young mothers staring back at me as if I were speaking in a foreign language. Somehow, between changing career paths just a year prior, the I-pad had been introduced to the world and phones – once only used to make actual calls – had become an integral part of every human being’s life (the I-phone was actually introduced in 2007; the I-Pad in 2010: I looked it up).

Once a font of knowledge and useful personal experience for parents who were struggling with the same issues I had been, these mothers could not see the relevance of what I was saying. This generation had access to laptops that could go anywhere, children’s games on I-pads, cars with DVD players and phones that could be used to distract a child anytime, anywhere. I sat there, feeling hopelessly old-fashioned and outdated.

My time was up; I never gave another workshop…

Source of photo

Patti Moore Wilson/© wednesdayschildca.wordpress.com

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