Pressure Cookers and Reading

When I was a young girl growing up, I spent many an hour at my mother’s side in the kitchen preparing meals for our family of six. Meals took time. A lot of time. There was no microwave or instant meals to zap and serve. But my mom did have her own kind of appliance magic - a pressure cooker.

I remember how heavy this aluminum pot felt for its rather normal size. I remember reading the brand name on its lid and learning that “Presto” meant “fast.” I remember the round tinker-toy-like valve perched on the bullet shaped stem that jiggled with its tic-tic-tic rhythmic release of pressure. But what I remember most was my mom’s warning that too much pressure could be a dangerous thing and if the pressure got too great, the “whole thing could explode.” Yikes! No matter how much time it saved us, I never felt it was worth the stress, worry and angst.

And now, after all these years, I find myself thinking of a pressure cooker again. Not in terms of food preparation, but rather, in terms of children and reading. Everywhere we turn it seems the pressure is on. Faster! Faster! Hurry! Hurry! Like a subconscious cultural mantra, we march blindly to its devastating message and our children are paying the price. In our zeal to not let our children be “left behind” we’ve confused the journey with the destination and the process with the product. What we’ve left behind is our common sense and remembrance of who our children are and what they really need from us.

As a result, we’re putting our littlest learners into pressure cookers and continuing to turn up the heat. We have mandates and measurements and yes, actual stopwatches that are supposed to help us monitor how well (fast?) our children are reading. And then we wonder why so many of our children come to hate reading. Can we blame them? No, we can only blame ourselves.

Do we really believe this is the right thing to do? Here’s the test … would we do this to each other as adults? Would we love to come to work knowing our boss was timing our efforts as we learned new skills? No! What we’d do is protest and shout “stop” at the top of our lungs. Yet, sadly our children have no voice in the matter.

So, how about we become their voice and do the right thing as adults? Let’s remove the pot from the stove, turn off the fire and take our kids out of the pressure cookers of our own creations. Let’s put away the charts and graphs and retire the stopwatches for good. And in their place, let’s delightfully and enthusiastically read aloud to our kids every day. What will happen you ask? I guarantee you three things: Our kids will learn to read. Our kids will love books. And our kids (and we) will be happier, less stressed and more likely to feel joy and pride on a daily basis. And as we do this, there is no shortage of wonderful books to share together. Come to the library and get all you want, over and over and over.

One final thing - let’s remember that childhood is a journey, not a destination. So too, is reading. And in the words of my mom …. “too much pressure can be a dangerous thing.” Let’s take the pressure off and let our kids love reading.

by Kathleen Ahern
NPL Children's Librarian
published in Moscow-Pullman Daily News, 3/20/10