I’m pretty sure that my kids aren’t the only ones on the planet that get “stuck” in their habits. My daughter spent 6 months reading nothing but pink, sparkly fairy book. My son read the first book of the Harry Potter series four times in a row, and now will only read books about World War II battles. For at least a year when I was a kid, the only books I read voluntarily were Encyclopedia Brown. Several times, I’ve felt the need to redirect to new reading material. However, I also believe that the vast majority of all reading should be reading whatever the child wants. How does a parent redirect reading material if the parent is letting the child read what the child chooses?
Yeah, that’s tough.
I let jags go for about six months before intervening. That’s an amount of time that feels right in our house. A child who is rereading a small set of books over and over again might be encouraged to read something new a little sooner, but again, rereading books has a lot of value, particularly if there’s much depth or complexity to the book. There is a limit to everything.
In our house, a lot of the reading jags are centered in anxiety. What if I don’t like a different book? There are too many books out there. I know these. For me, reading the first page of a new book is still the hardest part of each book.
Some parents swear by taking their kid to the library to help them find their way to new books. This doesn’t work in my house. This approach always results in checking out more of the same in our house. This is certainly worth trying. We’ve had occasional success by encouraging the child to speak to the children’s librarian directly for suggestions. This really only works in our house “between” jags.
I’ve found two things that work well.
I still read to my kids, even though they independently at a very high level. This helps keep a variety of stories coming even if they aren’t reading a large variety independently.
For a few years when we were particularly stuck, I could introduce single books through reading the first chapter out loud. For a while there, my daughter claimed no interest in even listening to a book that wasn’t about fairies. I admit to getting devious. I offered to paint her fingernails and toenails. She would then have to remain at the table and not do or touch anything for 10 minutes while they dried. I’d pick out a book and read the first chapter. By the time the nails were dry, she was hooked.
We have occasionally made reading homework restricted in type. When in second grade, we made a deal that two of her weekly reading logs had to be on anything but a fairy book. We are currently requiring that my son read fiction for two of his reading log entries per week. It helps, lets them continue reading freely, widens the scope a little, and helps reduce some of the anxiety and scope of options.
We run out of books. That is, I’ve stopped going to the library. Since I refuse to buy any of those fairy books, having none in the house really helps when kids get bored, and they have to stoop to a different type of book. This of course backfires when kids are rereading. Sometimes I go to the library without my kids and check out dozens of books. I don’t go for things that are far outside their comfort zone or even very challenging. I go for good and engaging.