It’s something that every parent worries about. We’re afraid they’re not learning enough. We’re concerned they’re falling behind. Is it the school? Is it us? Is there something wrong with them?

In the late 1880s, future general George Patton’s father got the sense that his son was having trouble learning. He not only wasn’t reading, he seemed to hate the subject and he labored over each word, mixing up letters and not understanding sentences. In those days, most fathers probably used brute force on kids who struggled…or worse, wrote them off as just not the school type.

Instead, as Roger Nye writes in the absolutely incredible (but out-of-print) book The Patton Mind, “Papa kept young George out of school, and instead launched him on a program of aural learning. Family members read to him until he was 11 years old, and he was required to memorize long passages from the classics, ancient history and romantic poetry.” In this form, he drank deeply from the great classics…and the great tales of adventure. Patton knew King Arthur and Shakespeare, the Odyssey and Sherlock Holmes…and he knew them backwards and forwards.

With time and in his own way—as most kids with dyslexia eventually do—Patton did learn to read and not just learn, but learn to love reading. This was possible because his family was accommodating. They were patient. They didn’t give up on their son, nor did they make life easy for him. They just found the best way for him to learn and they built a curriculum and a practice about that. They gave him space, they gave him confidence and most of all, they gave him his own way to love something that he might have otherwise come to fear or resent.

We are all trying to ‘raise a reader,’ as we say in The Daily Dad. Some of us—some kids—will have an easier time of this than others, but it’s one of the most important and incredible things we can do for our kids…and for the future.

We think this idea—that you have a responsibility to make reading a part of your children’s life—is so important that the month of September in ​The Daily Dad: 366 Meditations on Parenting, Love, and Raising Great Kids​ is dedicated to it and titled “Raise A Reader.” It’s 30 days full of stories and lessons in learning, curiosity, and how to raise a reader. ​Grab a copy today over at the Daily Dad Store​!