How I Get My Tweens To Read

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We are in a big transition right now with our girls. I have 2 tweens, gulp, who are itching to move away from cartoon movies about princesses and forest animals and start watching more “grown up” movies like Goonies and The Hunger Games. To be perfectly honest, it’s a welcome stage for me because as much as I LOVE a good animated feature, there’s only so much I can take of SpongeBob on repeat {head-desk}.

This is how I get my tweens to read more books.

So the big trend this summer has been more electronics including TV watching so I decided to make a deal with the tweens. They’ve been asking to watch movies that are more mature than they’re used to and slightly out of my own personal comfort zone for them, however I’ve decided that if they read the book, they can watch the movie and with their circle of friends all talking about the hottest movies, there is no lack of motivation.

Win/Win!!

The first movie/book combo we started with was The Maze Runner. It took my 12 year old about a month to get thru the book but once she was done and we sat down and watched the movie on Netflix, the seed was set and she was off and running (pun intended). She blazed thru the second book, The Scorch Trials and can’t wait for it to hit theatres this fall.

Mother/daughter date night!

Thanks to Netflix, she picked The Hunger Games series as her summer reading project. I soon found her sitting on the couch immersed in her book rather than starring at her iPod. YAY! I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed asking her, “what’s happening now in the book?” every 10 minutes.

As a mom, it’s a big deal for me to start letting my kids watch movies that have violence and other adult themes. I know it’s something that I won’t be able to avoid for much longer but at least using this strategy, I can ease both of us into this new territory. Lots of questions can be answered and we can discuss topics that come up in the book.