Should we force the kids to love books?

I was in National Bookstore one day trying to find a good book for a seven-year-old birthday boy when I overheard a mother arguing with her two sons, a teenager and a tween. The mother was actually scolding her kids for not reading books and spending most of their free time playing computer games. She was so engrossed with the situation and was so unmindful even if other people, including me, can hear her. She was actually “forcing” the kids to look for a book to buy and to surely read.

The kids just stood there, no initiative whatsoever to look for a book to bring home. And that infuriated the mother even more. She took a book from a shelf, gave it to her teenage son, convinced him that it was a nice book, and made him promise to read it cover to cover.

We were on the same aisle. And since I arrived there first and I was not yet done with my business when they came, I felt no need to make distance. But I was really shocked. I mean how can a mother teach a child to read books by forcing him?

I started buying books for my kids even before they were born. I arranged those books on the bookshelves together with their toys. Though I encouraged them to read, I never reprimanded them when they chose to play with their toys, or play computer games on schedule, rather than read. But seeing us often reading books and studying for lectures made them do the same. When before I buy the books they read, now they give me the book’s title and ask me to buy it for them. Isn’t that something?