Let’s look at our house and money situation. Do we have a family? And do we still want to have some fun-filled entertainment in our lives? We’re tired of watching TV every night, but we’re keeping an eye on the family’s money, and taking the whole gang to the movies is a great change. So let’s go back to a common form of entertainment from the past: reading.

When I was a child, there were no computers at home, but we did watch TV. Our way of watching television was not extreme. Saturday morning cartoons as a child are a wonderful memory. But what I remember vividly is that my mother read to me every night. Then I would read to him when he got a little older and finally, when my reading was proficient enough, I would curl up in my bed at night, crawl under the covers and read novel after novel, something I still love to do today. This allowed me to travel to faraway places, my imagination being my plane ticket to anywhere I wanted. With other forms of entertainment so readily available today, many people have lost this passion for reading. Perhaps our finances are our main motivation for seeking cheaper forms of entertainment, but there are many more benefits.

• We become proficient in one of the major skills required to function in today’s world.
• Improve vocabulary and conversational skills.
• Entertainment: rarely bored.
• Children and adolescents have a higher IQ when they love to read
• It promotes mental development because it involves concentration while listening to the radio or watching television requires only limited participation.
• Broaden our perspective. If we read certain types of books about different cultures and different countries, we come to understand their histories and therefore their lifestyles today. The same can be said of reading our own historical books.
• Books can affect our attitude towards life and thus improve our life if we read the right kind of books.

I tell my kids to read at least half an hour a day, but that’s good advice for anyone. They’ve all found their own love of reading, but they’ve definitely needed a production here and there. If we have small children, now is the time to start. Read to them when they are babies, as part of the routine, and they will learn to enjoy it. By the time they start school, reading will have been such a positive experience for them (time with their parents) that it will not be considered a chore. Rather it will be an imaginative walk or a fun knowledge lesson.

So keep the TV off tonight, go to the library or bookstore or search Amazon if you don’t want to go anywhere, and then find your book, hunker down, and open up this whole new world.