We spent the last day of summer on the Connecticut shoreline. Among our choice of activities was a visit to our favorite bookstore, R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut.
Elysha and I once spent hours in bookstores, but when our children entered our lives, that changed. We tried for a while to do some tag-team parenting. One parent relaxes while the other stops the monsters from ripping every book off the shelf.
It wasn’t fun.
But something happened on that last day of summer. I brought the kids upstairs to the children’s section of the bookstore, and within a minute, with no intervention on my part, this happened:
Not only did they plop themselves down and start reading, but they remained this way for a full 30 minutes.
Just imagine how much better it will be when they can actually read!
I probably couldn’t leave them unattended and descend to the adult section, but while my wife browsed below, I browsed the children’s section, which I sort of love anyway. I’ve written a few picture books that I am hoping to eventually sell, and I missed out on these books as a child, so I still have lots of catching up to do.
Even if this weren’t the case, this is a huge improvement over chasing them around, shushing them, and returning strewn books to the shelves.
This is good.
There is hope for the future.
