Make Sure They Are Reading This Stuff

The world around us is dark. It is filled with awful people doing awful things. You can’t protect your kids from that. But what you can do is steep them in stories and history and myths that let them see that they don’t have to succumb to that, and that they may well be able to change things.

As a young boy, Abraham Lincoln ​read everything he could get his hands on​. One of the first poems he ever read in his life—as part of a compilation reader he had picked up—was “The Task” by William Cowper. Years later, Lincoln could still remember and recount these lines:

I had much rather be myself the slave,
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on him.

Not long after, Lincoln, who grew up in a free state, would first encounter slavery in the flesh. He would write in horror, watching this coffle of slaves, of the sight of seeing men chained together “like so many fish upon a trot line.” It was here that his high-minded reading intersected with brutal reality. It was the first stirrings of the activist he would become, the politician who changed the world.

It’s wonderful that our kids like to read comics and funny books about animals. But we have to make sure we are exposing them to literature that elevates them, that challenges them, that opens their hearts and minds. We have to plant the right seeds so that their experiences bear the right fruit. We have to encourage them to see the humanity in others, we have to encourage them to see the importance of their own moral choices.

​It was reading that made Lincoln great​. It’s reading that will make your children great…or not so great.

P.S. Not only is reading a fundamental way to instill a habit of lifelong learning in our children, it also helps them engage with the skills and perspective necessary to understand and impact the world. If you’re looking for high-quality kids books that your children will enjoy and learn from, Ryan has written two childhood fables based on the Stoics: The Boy Who Would Be King and The Girl Who Would Be Free.

And for more practical advice on raising readers, we dedicated a whole chapter to this in The Daily Dad book. Be sure to grab a copy of The Daily Dad for you or a fellow parent (it makes a great gift!) over at The Daily Dad Store today!

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