Getting Closer to your Daughter through Reading

By Sandra Byrd

As little girls, most of us played house, corralled a friend to be the “husband” in a mock wedding ceremony and then, later, pretended that our dolls were our children. The dolls, of course, were almost all female and did exactly what we told them to do. Imagine our shock and surprise years later as grown-up women in real households with daughters who not only don’t do as we tell them but often seem to set out to do just the opposite!  These flesh and blood daughters are so much more valuable and precious to us than the dolls, but as they become tweens and teens we often grow apart. Shared activities is key to remaining close. Reading books together not only facilitates bonding time but allows you to peek into the hearts and minds of your own not-so-little-any-more girls.

Reading Together Allows You To Understand Your Daughter’s World
Often if you ask a privacy-prone teen or tween what she is feeling or thinking you’ll get a short, one word answer in return.  Tweens and teens are nearly as reluctant to give up their secrets as the grave! However, if you phrase the questions or discussions in terms of third party, neutral characters in books you’ll get a much more forthcoming response.

• “How do you think she handled that?”
• “Does this seem like your school – in what ways?”
• “How would you rate her relationship with her family?”
• “What do you think about the friendship choices she’s making?”
• “Do kids at your school have these kinds of temptations?”
• “Do you find this book realistic?”

Each of these questions will give you more insight into your daughter.

Reading Together Helps Your Daughter to Understand You
As mothers, it’s easy to forget that our daughters often view us as powerful and adult but may know little about us beyond our jobs, hobbies, and food preferences. Share some of the books you enjoy now, or enjoyed as a teen, with your daughter. Read one that she likes, and then read one that you liked.  When you discuss it, share something about your childhood, some appropriate vulnerabilities, such as your continuing need for good friends, just like she has, and about the hopes and dreams you had as a girl. Doing so will “humanize” you to your daughter. The more she knows you, the more she can love you. When she realizes that you understand where she is by sharing that you’ve been there, too, she’s more likely to open up.

Reading Together Allows You To Have Fun
If you ask most kids what comprises the bulk of their family time, you might be shocked to find out that they respond, “chores” and “discipline.” In today’s hustle and bustle a lot of the time we spend together revolve around those two things, and both can be fraught with conflict.  Making time to share an enjoyable activity will change the nature of your one on one time with your daughter.  When you read a book together, make a weekly coffee date to discuss what you’ve read. Or duplicate something the book characters do. If the characters go to a new store to shop, do so with your daughter. If they visit the beach, make plans for a short day out.  You plan one outing, and then let her plan the next. Talk about the book on the way to or from the day out.  Offer to take away one of your daughter’s chores if she’ll spend the time reading the book you two have decided to read together. And then make time in your schedule to read, too.

Sandra Byrd is the mother of two teenagers and the author of many books for tweens and teens, including the new series, London Confidential, published by Tyndale House. You can learn more this series, and Sandra’s other books, at www.sandrabyrd.com

What to Read? Sandra Byrd offer suggestions

London Confidential by Sandra Byrd
A fun, fast-reading series where British fashion, friendships, and guys collide, and where an all-American girl learns to love life and live out her faith. Moms and their girls can talk about the mother-daughter relationships in the series books, about faithfulness in hard times, about age-appropriate interaction with boys, about friendships, good and bad, and placing hope in God.  sandrabyrd.com

The Christy Miller Series by Robin Gunn
A perennial favorite, classic Christian teen series wherein fourteen-year-old Christy Miller has the dream summer ahead of her in sun-kissed California, staying with her aunt and uncle at their beachfront home. Aunt Marti loves to shop, and those surfers are cute – especially Todd. Christy promised her parents she wouldn’t do anything she’d regret later, and some of her beach friends are a little wild. But Todd and his “God-Lover” friends are giving Christy a new image of all things eternal. Can this summer live up to its promise?  robingunn.com

The Divine Dance by Shannon Kubiak Primacerio
We want to be liked–that’s why we put so much energy into pleasing others. Life has become a dance that we perform for others, auditioning for a place in the hearts of everyone we meet. We put our energy into performances to please our parents, friends, teachers, boys–even people we don’t know. It’s simple: We all desire to be loved and accepted. But in this busy, complicated world, we should be dancing as we were designed to–for the One who really cares.  beingagirlbooks.com

Dragon Quest Series
This is classic quest fantasy with echoes of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and of Christopher Paolini’s Eragon. As in C. S. Lewis’s “Narnia” books, Christian allegories and messages are clearly presented and easily found, but it is equally possible to read this as Kale’s story as it happened in Amara, a world completely separate from our own. (School Library Journal) donitakpaul.com