Having a very quiet evening, telling my son stories of when he was a baby and the amazing dog we had at the time, I tried to sneak in some reading.

“Why don’t you choose a book for us to read together?”
“I don’t have books, remember we took it to the library yesterday”
“Yes, but you have a bookshelf full of children’s books in the lounge?”
“Arggh, no I don’t want to read”

Now, for us, reading is one of those things that we need to do every day! My son easily forgets, and I’ve noticed some regress during this too long holiday period…

Being the sneaky mom that I am, I quickly sent him a sms “Hello son! When are you going to bed? Love mommy”

He literally jumped up with excitement when he heard his phone beep! With a big smile on his face he looked at the message “mom, please read this for me”. “No Kai, you CAN read, it is your message after all”

It took him a few minutes to read out loud “Hel-lo sin when a-re you go-ing to bed love mommy” with me helping him to pronounce the words ‘son’ and ‘are’.

Soon he started typing away on his phone “I wil go to bed soon mommy”, this took him a few minutes. I had to help him locate some of the letters. I watched as he closed his eyes each time he needed to press a key more than once, mentally counting the number of times he needed to press to get an o, y, etc. (this took a lot of practice).

After clicking “send” he started typing more words on his phone. So much for “not wanting to read”!

My sneakiness paid off! I got him to read and ‘write’. I now also receive lovely messages when I least expect it “I MES YOU FROM KAI” and lots of “I LOVE YOU FROM KAI”