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Welcome to speed Round Sunday on the
Parenting Roundabout podcast, where we share a

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mini episode from our past for your
weekend listening pleasure. We'll be back tomorrow

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with a brand new episode. So, Nicole, what are your kids reading

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this summer? Good question? Um? Yeah, what are what are my

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kids reading this summer? Um?
Let me think? Well, Oh,

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my daughter actually read two or three
chapters of her American ap American history course

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tex wool and that's about as far
as she got. She does not she

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does not read if she doesn't happen. Yeah, it's not on a computer

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screen, it's not happening. We
would she read an ebook if you put

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the padron her phone. Only if
it has audio to go along with it.

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We'll have I just listen to the
soundtrack of Hamilton a bunch of times.

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She'll be all ready for Ye'll be
ready for American History. There you

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go. Yeah. If any high
school teacher is not using Hamilton to teach

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American history at this point in time, they're not paying attention. I wonder,

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I wonder if you a teacher will
I'll have to keep an eye on

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that. Um. And there's cursing
in wraps. So you know, yeah,

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Um, my son is reading graduate
admission admissions information. Oh there aren't.

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There are not a lot of um
books for you know, how to

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kind of thing, well, yeah, or just even in general in our

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family right now, they're just they're
not a lot of books lying around trying

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to manage our dramatic lives. So
unfortunately, my kids are not reading this.

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They didn't have like reading lists.
Your daughter didn't have a reading list

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from high school that she had read. Well, he's not doing she's not

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doing ap English or ap Lang.
So she didn't have any summer homework because

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she's she's a math science girls,
right, but she does have to do

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this ap us history class and that's
why she a couple of detectors. But

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in our in our district, at
least when my kids were in school,

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everybody had summer reading stuff they had
to do. And it was miserable way

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to spend the summer when you have
kids who are reluctant readers and the assigned

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reading is over their heads and so
you have to explain it to them.

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Yeah, fun, the Catherine.
Did they have enough to do? Agree

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daughter, her last day, her
last day before school, her last year,

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summer break, her and her friends
were up like studying and doing homework,

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and of course they could have done
it over the summer, but who

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wants to do homework over the sum
Yeah, but they were spent the whole

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day yesterday cramming in all their summer
homework. It's miserable. Well, who,

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it's not a good way to turn
reading, you know, kids onto

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reading. Yeah, well that's true, that's true. Some kids enjoy it.

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I guess if you enjoy reading,
it's an easy gig. But for

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those who struggle, Catherine, did
your daughter have reading assignments so she didn't

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have read this is a really bad
speed run question when she's reading. Is

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the driver is a manual? You
know? Yes, how to how to

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drive book? Although she she started, you know, on the first day

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of class, they said, okay, you know, for tonight you read

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this thirty page chapter or whatever.
Um, so, of course thirty pages.

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I'm like, okay, that'll day
thirty minutes. But then the next

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day she went to class and she
found out that they basically just went over

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exactly what they had read. So
then she's like, well, I don't

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need to read this because we're just
kind of go through it line by line,

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so no need for prereading. No, she at least in her mind.

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So yeah, there's that. And
then my son, he didn't have

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any assign reading either. He man, you guys all got it easy.

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I know he did decide that he
wanted to pick up Maybe it was last

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summer. I don't remember when we
started it, but he was reading.

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We were reading Oliver Twist together,
oh yeah, and he he noticed it

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and he said, let's let's do
that. And I said, you want

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to start where we left off,
which was like a hundred pages that,

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no, let's start over because I
don't remember. Okay, just watch the

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music. He likes musicals, right, yeah, and we have heard that

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song, just a one song on
the Broadway channel, you know Oliver that

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song? So yeah, so yeah, so we're reading it and we're kind

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of enjoying the sarcasm that it just
drew us with. So that's kind of

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fun, and that's what we're doing. Whoa. Yeah, you see My

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theme here is forget the reading,
just watch musicals basically, or listen to

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the Oliver. This is actually,
this is what I would have liked to

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have been able to do with my
kids. Don't like us for a while

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there in the spring we were he
wanted to read War in Peace, so

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kid, so he did for a
good while. He got it's a great

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show off book, but it's not
easy to read, and it's really boring.

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Got maybe two hundred pages in um. But that that Broadway show Natasha

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Pierre and the great comment that is
based on like a tiny sliver of that

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book, and he really listened to
he wants to go see that. Yes,

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I would guess ideas infinitely more entertaining
than reading the books I read.

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I read Anna Karenina when I was
actually in Russia waiting and waiting and waiting

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to adopt. It was very appropriate
because it felt similarly endless but and just

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you know, tragic and hopeless,
and you know, not a fun read.

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But you know, great works of
literature. I have to say,

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because my English major diploma is staring
at me as I talk, but great

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works of literature. Well, speaking
of great works of literature, the thing

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my daughter is reading. My kids
are adults now and so not constricted by

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reading lists and me forcing them to
read things that they have to read for

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school. So I don't think my
son really reads anything at this point in

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this life. He has some sort
of massive project involving moving photos around on

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his phone that seems to take most
of his non working time. You know,

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anytime you go into his room and
ask him something, it's like,

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I'm busy, I'm doing something.
I asked, what's he doing? He's

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working on his photo albums she seems
to have. I think he just like

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downloads random pictures of cars until there's
like thousands of them, and then he

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has to delete them, then he
has to organize them and exactly. But

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my daughter has always liked chicken soup
books, Chicken Soup for the Soul and

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the many many, many, many, unbelievably many offshoots from that, and

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she enjoys buying them, she enjoys
sitting with them. I am not one

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hundred percent convinced that she is actually
reading them, but she swears to me

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that she is, because she was
always reading. Reading has always been difficult

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for her and not have fun activity
or something that she particularly enjoys or pursues.

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So I have my suspicions. But
you know what, they are short

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little essays, and they are heavy
and human interest, and so possibly you

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know something that she would actually want
to read. But that is the big

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book around our house right now are
all men of chicken soup books, which

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she has purchased with her Amazon Prime
membership, and she got accidentally well buying

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chicken soup books. Chicken soup for
the not paying attention when you buy things

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is what we need. But you
know what, I'm happy. I've always

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been a I don't care what my
kids read. If they find something they

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want to read, I will read
it with them. They should read it.

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If it's a Seventh Heaven novelization,
which was we went through for a

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while, I think we read,
you know, full house novelizations. We

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read I Carly novelizations. If there's
a children's TV show and they made a

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book out of it, we've probably
read it. But you know what,

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it's words going from the eye to
the brain. Yeah, I'm not biggy.

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So she wants to read or merely
just purchase chicken soup books, that's

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you know. I'm not going to
complain, even though I'm really glad she

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doesn't want me to read them with
her. I like those books. Some

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of them are pretty good. I'm
sure they are. They just all look

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to me like the kind of thing
I would have written in a cubicle early

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in my career. I love the
perspective you give us. It's so grounded

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in reality. I have many,
many, many things like that. In

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my early career I was, in
addition to moving a lot. In my

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twenties, I had lots of weird
little jobs. But about the