Erin Goodman at Exhale. Return to Center. interviews me on her blog about Book by Book: The Complete Guide to Creating Mother Daughter Book Clubs. Check out Erin’s great blog where you can read the interview.
More and more autism and treatments for the condition are in the public eye, but when Dan Burns’ son Ben was born in the 1980s, little was known about autism or what to do for children who had it. Parents who had skills and resources acted as the best advocates for their children, but even then, much of what they were able to accomplish came through trial and error.
Parents now have more resources to help their children, including the personal stories of parents who have come before them. One of those is Burns’ book, Saving Ben: A Father’s Story of Autism. Ben’s diagnosis when it came was doubly crippling: severe autism and mental retardation. The level of personal care he needed from others to function would tax the ability of most any parent, but for Dan and his wife Sue, who were struggling with issues of their own even before Ben was born, it was particularly difficult.
While I’m not qualified to say whether the treatments Burns tried with Ben over the years are recommended for those with autism, I can say that Saving Ben is foremost a love story of what lengths a father is willing to go to help his son. Burns had two other children when Ben was born, one who had already left home and one who had nearly finished high school. His professional career was well established, and by all outside views he had a good life.
But under the surface he was struggling with his own sexual orientation and his wife was struggling with past abuse. Caring for Ben added more stress to their household. Ultimately, they would divorce and Burns would downplay his own career to care for his son. He was fortunate to be highly educated, which meant he felt confident enough to question and challenge the medical and teaching professionals who recommended courses of action for his son. He was also fortunate to receive financial support from his mother, which meant that as a single father employed part-time he could still pay for extraordinary levels of treatment for Ben.
If members of a mother-daughter book club have been touched by autism, Saving Ben can definitely help other members see how severely this condition can affect every aspect of the whole family. I would have liked to know more about how Ben’s siblings dealt with his condition and the disintegration of their parents’ marriage, but ultimately, this is an honest portrayal of how profoundly parents’ lives can change when they care for a child with disabilities.
Burns’ frank discussion of his own personal struggles and mature language make this appropriate for mother-daughter book clubs with girls in high school.
Often, parents think that once a child is old enough to read on her own, she doesn’t need them to read to her anymore. While it’s true that a child’s burgeoning capabilities can be celebrated and encouraged, I want to challenge the idea that parents should stop reading to their children altogether. Here are several reasons your child may never grow too old for you to read to her:
- You can read books that are slightly above your child’s ability to understand if she reads them herself. As you read, she can learn knew words and take in concepts that she would be able to grasp on her own.
- Joanne Meier, who provides research guidance for Reading Rockets says that reading aloud “is a great opportunity to model for your child what good, fluent reading sounds like.”
- Talking about what you read lets you broach topics that may not come up otherwise. If the characters in the book are having trouble with a friendship, your daughter may be encouraged to open up with you about a difficult relationship she’s having as well.
- Reading together is time set aside for a shared activity. Minimize the distractions to show you both think your time together is important.
- It’s a good way for older kids to reconnect with parents. Catherine Weigel Foy, LCSW, LMFT, a clinical lecturer at the Weinberg School of Psychology and an affiliate therapist with the Family Institute, both at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, recommends that if moms are having trouble connecting with their teen daughters they start reading to them at bedtime. She says this simple act often connects to a good, positive memory from earlier childhood that can help bridge a relationship gap.
I still read to both of my daughters, who are 19 and 16 now. We read on our own as well, but the time we spend together with a book is time we know that’s just for the two of us. And while my own mom doesn’t read books to me (we live too far away for that), she does read stories she’s written of her childhood and early adult years. I love listening to her voice as she recounts tales of how she grew up, and I never want it to stop.
Judy Miller publishes a great blog for parents of children who were adopted from another country called The International Mom. She is also a columnist for the adoption network, Grown in My Heart. Today she’s featuring a review of Book by Book along with the answers to a couple of questions she asked me. Read my blog post and check out Judy’s other blog posts at The International Mom.
Kyra is back from the mental institution where she spent six months after her dad thought she wanted to kill herself. She’s been released to return home and go back to high school, because she’s not considered a threat to herself any more. But that doesn’t mean life is easy. Her dad, whom she calls Roger, is keeping a tight leash on her, she hates school and gets in trouble her first day back, and she’s very angry. Angry at Roger, angry at her mother who died of cancer a few years ago, and most of all angry at the guy she calls Fanboy, who told Roger she may be suicidal and got her sent away in the first place.
While Kyra was away, Fanboy has suddenly gone from being a geek to being popular with a lot of the kids in school. He’s publishing his graphic novel serially in the pages of the school journal, and he’s getting a lot of attention for it. Before, no one really knew Fanboy except Kyra. She gave him advice about his graphic novels, and she thought they may become more than friends. But now that Fanboy seems to have dropped her and moved on, she’s bent on getting revenge.
Goth Girl Rising by Barry Lyga is not an easy book to read, mostly because Kyra is such a hard character to like. Her emotions are raw, she bucks all authority, and she’s what every parent doesn’t want to have for a child: a smoking, cursing, school-skipping, car-stealing, in-your-face girl. Yet, interspersed between the chapters with Kyra’s voice are vignettes of a small poem that builds as the book goes on. It’s Kyra’s memory of her cancer-chemotherapy-ravaged mother’s last days. These vignettes give you a glimpse into the pain and guilt that Kyra has never dealt with since her mother’s illness and death, and you begin to see what’s behind her self-destructive behavior.
While Goth Girl Rising is a continuation of the story from The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Goth Girl, this book stands on its own and you don’t have to have read the first one to appreciate it. This book is definitely for older girls, I’d say 15 and up. The teens use foul language, are sexually promiscuous, drink alcohol, smoke, and make very bad decisions based on faulty information. It all feels painfully real, and the situations should provide great discussions between mothers and daughters and book club members.
Fourteen-year-old Joseph Michtom knows he’s one of the lucky ones in New York during the early 1900s. He’s the son of a successful Russian immigrant. He’s got a warm place to live, enough food so he doesn’t go hungry, and family to love him. Although sometimes he doesn’t feel so lucky, because his parents no longer spend much time with him now that they are consumed with their new venture—sewing and selling as many of the new “Teddy bears” as they can. Joseph’s parents came up with the idea for creating the cuddly animals after President Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a cornered bear while on a bear hunt.
Joseph’s family has found new wealth and prestige from their invention, but the boys in the neighborhood treat Joseph differently, as though he’s changed from the same old Joe who has always been a friend. Joe spends a lot of time with his sister Emily and their baby brother Benjamin. Joe and Emily dream of going to Coney Island one day, but it doesn’t seem as though their parents will ever take enough time off to take them there.
Interspersed with Joe’s story are vignettes of homeless children living under the Brooklyn Bridge. They leave home for many reasons, either they are abused or orphaned or crippled in some way, but they find shelter and solace with each other.
Karen Hesse’s novel Brooklyn Bridge is a wonderful portrait of family in its many facets as well as the story of the struggle of immigrants to leave their old lives behind and fit into their new country. It paints a rich picture of Brooklyn in the early 1900s. We get a picture of life in Russia that many of Joseph’s friends and family left, and of his aunt who worked tirelessly so that many could leave their homeland and find opportunity in the U.S. There’s a strong sense of family obligations, helping out your fellow man, and showing respect to adults. Issues to discuss with mother-daughter book clubs include homelessness, historical events in Russia and the U.S., immigration, sibling relationships and family dynamics. Highly recommended for clubs with girls aged 9 to 12.
In the last couple of days, I’ve been talking about reasons to be in a mother-daughter book club. Every week I hear from someone who is starting a club or has been in a club for a while. Every one talks about what they want to get from the the club they’re starting or what they find so special about being in a book club with a daughter. While each of those reasons is personal in its own way, each also falls under a broad category as well. Here’s a recap of the first two of those main reasons.
Being in a mother-daughter book club allows you to:
- Stay closer to your daughter as she grows
- Connect to the broader community around you
Today we’ll talk about the third main reason:
- Mother-daughter book clubs promote literacy in general.
A couple of years ago Scholastic released the results of a reading study that show children who read for fun are more likely to think of themselves as smart and good students who can succeed in school. Maybe not so surprising. But what is surprising, is that the number of kids who say they read for fun is really high only until about the age of eight. Beginning at nine, those numbers start to drop off, and they decline even more in middle school and high school.
Mother-daughter book clubscan counteract that trend, because they are a great way to keep your daughter reading for fun. Especially when you consider that nine (the age reading for fun begins to drop) is the “ideal age” if there is one to start a mother-daughter book club.
And it’s not just the reading that can benefit your daughter in school. It’s the talking too. When she discusses the books she has read with your group, she’s learning how to express her opinion and back it up. She gets to hone her speaking skills in a group, something that can really help her out when making presentations for research projects. Mother-daughter book clubs give her a safe environment where the pressure to perform may not feel like it has graded consequences.
Over the years I’ve watched as both of my daughters have become more confident at speaking up about issues to discuss in books we’ve read. I know of at least one mother-daughter book club that started because the moms wanted to encourage their daughters to speak up in class more. They had gotten feedback from teachers that their daughters’ school performance was being hurt by lack of participation in class discussion. These moms didn’t start until middle school, yet they felt their club really helped their daughters learn to speak out confidently. Now that’s a pretty large endorsement.
Yesterday I talked about how being in a mother-daughter book club can help you and your daughter stay closer through the years. Today I’ll discuss how your book club can expand your ties to your community as well. How does that work?
When you ask other moms and daughters to join your club, you broaden your connections with the people around you. Maybe they come from your daughter’s school, or your church group, or a Girl Scout troop. Maybe they are friends that you don’t see often enough. Either way, when you forge a group, you start to create a support system for each other that will probably manifest itself in ways you can’t even imagine at first. But over the years you’ll probably find yourself turning to the other mothers in your club when you want to get someone’s else’s take on issues at school, or you need advice on finding a new dentist or pediatrician, or you need feedback on your disciplinary approach. Your book club moms have the potential to be your sounding board and your best resource.
Plus, your daughters have other adults who can be a resource when they need advice. Having them know there’s a whole circle of women ready to step in and help them out when they need is a great support for them as they grow. My daughter even got a recommendation from one of the moms in our book club when she was submitting an essay for a college scholarship a few months ago.
You can also spread out into the community at large. One way to do that is connect with a book expert to recommend books for your group. Who is a book expert? Maybe it’s your school librarian, or the youth librarian at your local branch of the public library. Maybe it’s your favorite bookseller. Establish a connection so your expert can get a feel for what works and doesn’t work with your group. Over time she can recommend new books for your or direct you to classics to check out.
When you expand the relationships you and your daughter have with the community around you, it can enrich your experience and help you form friendships that may last the rest of your life. That’s a pretty big benefit.
