September 17, 2025 • 16 mins
My oldest son couldn’t read at seven. And me? I was writing a parenting book for a major publisher. Being asked to speak to thousands of parents. Teaching emotional development, brain-based learning, and motivation. The irony wasn’t lost on me.
In this episode, I tells the vulnerable and surprising story of how we stopped trying to teach how to read, and started teaching why to read instead. What happened next wasn’t magic. It was science, patience, and a little bit of kiwi bird trivia.
Along the way, I share:
- Why panic over “late readers” is often just parental shark music
- The real reason traditional reading instruction fails so many kids
- What it looked like to let go of benchmarks and trust the process
- How a graphic novel cracked everything open
- And why motivation, not instruction, is the foundation of literacy
If you’ve ever worried your child is falling behind… this episode is a deep breath. Not because everything resolves perfectly. But because it reminds you what matters most.
“I don’t think we have a how problem in education. I think we have a why problem.”
🎧 Listen now for the story, the science, and the shift that changed everything.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jon (00:00):
My seven-year-old couldn't read.
I had a million peoplefollowing me for parenting
advice.
I was being asked to speak toaudiences all over the world.
I had just finished writing aparenting book for a major
publisher and my seven-year-oldcouldn't read.
Was there something wrong withhim?
Was there something wrong withme?
It sure didn't seem like it washim.
(00:22):
He displayed intelligence insome areas, well beyond what
could be expected of a typicalfirst grader, but yet he could
not read at all.
I started to hear the sharkmusic.
For those who haven't heard metalk about parenting, shark
(00:47):
music it's the idea that parentsoften unnecessarily panic when
they encounter small but no lesstriggering, innocuous signs of
struggle.
We all know the iconicsoundtrack from the movie Jaws,
the haunting orchestral dun-dunthat always signals the arrival
of the monstrous great whiteshark.
The truth is, the movie wouldactually be very unscary without
(01:09):
the music.
While the eventual appearanceof the shark was peak cinematic
achievement back in 1975, you'realmost an hour and a half into
the movie before you even see it.
The fear comes from one's ownimagination, triggered by that
music.
An underwater POV looking up atthe first unsuspecting teenage
(01:29):
victim, the flash of a fin, somebarrels surfacing and being
tugged along the water.
None of these are scary ontheir own, but the music makes
them all terrifying, terrifying.
By the first time the sharkactually physically appears, we,
the audience, are alreadyterrified of it.
It happens an hour and 21minutes in, when our protagonist
(01:51):
finally sees the beast and saysthe iconic line you're, by the
way, it's not we're, but you'regonna need a bigger boat.
That scene, interestingly, isalso the first time that the
shark appears without warning,relying on a jump scare rather
than the suspense andanticipation that comes from the
music.
(02:11):
The result of that masterfulskip filmmaking is that when
audiences watch Jaws, they are,in effect, not afraid of the
shark at all.
They're afraid of the idea ofthe shark epitomized by the
shark music.
For me, the shark music aroundreading went something like this
If my child is struggling toread at seven, they will never
(02:32):
learn how to read and wind upjobless, with no meaningful
relationships, living at home inmy basement at 40 or, worse, in
prison.
Of course, most of us don'tthink in such clear terms in the
moment.
It's more abstract.
Just oh no, this is really bad,really really bad, but
nevertheless.
(02:52):
When my seven-year-old couldbarely read C-spot run, the
shark music was there, thesoundtrack of my anxiety.
The only thing that kept mefrom going full-on freak-out
mode was the guiding principlethat I highlighted in last
week's post that, according tothe best available research,
kids will learn to do all of thebasic functions of
(03:13):
academics—reading, writing,basic math, etc—when they have
both the desire and thedevelopment to do so.
To understand why twoincredibly involved and engaged
parents with advanced degreeshad allowed their oldest son to
make it to seven before he couldread, you need to know the
context.
(03:39):
When my son was almost five, we,like many eager parents
planning on homeschooling, beganto implement a popular reading
curriculum.
The curriculum wasphonics-based, which we had
determined, through moreresearch than I would like to
admit, was definitely the way togo and it was highly regarded.
My son, for his part,absolutely hated it.
For his part, absolutely hatedit.
(04:04):
Here is this voracious andcurious learner who could do
basic math and memorized everydinosaur name with shocking
pronunciation and accuracy bytwo years old, but who
absolutely hated sitting down toread.
I started to think that he,like me, had ADHD or a
reading-based learningdisability.
It took the better part of anhour to do a simple one-page
worksheet and would often justresult in abject failure or
interminable power struggles.
(04:25):
We persevered.
Weeks turned into months as wewould take turns going to the
library with him to try and turnabstract, random symbols into
meaning.
Then, one day, we had all hadenough.
We had all had enough.
We stopped trying to teach himhow to read.
(04:46):
At this point we felt likegiving up entirely, and to you
it may sound like we did, butwhat really happened was that we
decided to think long term.
Ignoring the shark music, wesaid to one another our kid is
plenty bright.
One day he will learn how toread.
We just have to give him areason to.
And so we changed the goal.
From that point on, instead ofteaching him how to read, we
(05:07):
decided to teach him why to read.
The next day, c-spot Run bookswere put away and we launched
into chapter books.
Day C-Spot run books were putaway and we launched into
chapter books.
Charlotte's Web, the Hobbit,harry Potter.
I read for what felt like aneternity, out loud, each and
every day, and it still wasn'tenough for him.
(05:29):
He downloaded audiobooks andlistened to them independently.
He began to span out into booksthat I hadn't even read yet.
He fell in love with stories.
Then he started to write hisown.
There were no words on a page,but a hand drawn picture or two.
In some cases he would recordhis own audio.
We were doing it.
I thought it had worked.
(05:50):
Our six and a half year oldloved books, but then he turned
seven and he still had no desireto read.
The shark music came back infull force.
If this new, unconventional wayto teach reading was working,
where were the results?
I will not downplay how much Idoubted our approach at that
(06:12):
point, but in spite of all ofthat, there was one single
glimmer of hope.
Every night, lying in bed, hewould read non-fiction
Smithsonian science books forkids.
I put read in italics herebecause, as far as we can tell,
all he did was look through thepictures.
We were pretty sure that theonly reason that he did it was
(06:32):
to avoid going to sleep.
He didn't like the idea offalling asleep alone in a dark
room, and looking at the bookshelped him acclimate before
actually trying to sleep.
As a parent, you're often tryingto help your kids develop
numerous skills at once.
To be honest, the books for uswere not really about reading at
all.
(06:52):
They were about having anestablished bedtime routine that
didn't involve him coming out25 times a night.
Yet every night when the lightswere out, he would ask for his
headlamp and whichever book hewas in the mood for, and I
thought to myself it can't hurt,right?
Then one day a kiwi bird came upin conversation and I was blown
away.
Birds don't rely on a sense ofsmell.
(07:30):
They don't even have noses,they have beaks.
I said Kiwis have noses, theyhave terrible eyesight and
they're nocturnal, so they haveto rely on a sense of smell to
find food.
I don't think kiwis arenocturnal, though are they?
Yes, kiwis are nocturnal, sothey have to rely on a sense of
smell to find food.
I don't think kiwis arenocturnal, though, are they?
Yes, kiwis are nocturnal,they're like bats or owls, but
they don't rely on sonar orreally big eyes.
They smell their way around.
(07:51):
How do you even know that?
What did you see that on WildKratts it's important to point
out at this point in theconversation.
There was nothing out of theordinary.
My son has an incredible memoryfor animal facts and he
regularly watched educationalshows on PBS, like Wild Kratts.
That might contain informationabout kiwis being nocturnal or
hunting by scent, but what hesaid next totally shocked me.
(08:14):
No, I read it in All AboutBirds.
I looked at him in stunnedsilence, I'll show you.
He said, interpreting mysilence as skepticism, and he
ran upstairs to get his bookSure enough, in black and white.
Kiwis have nostrils.
They use it to sniff outinsects and earthworms.
(08:45):
For the next week or two I felttotally different.
Handing him his nightlySmithsonian text, I started
letting him stay up later,believing that he was doing
invaluable reading practice.
He still showed absolutely nointerest in reading during the
day, but before bed he wouldalways crack open a book and do
his thing.
Then, one night, a month or twolater, I asked him which book
(09:06):
he wanted.
Then, one night a month or twolater, I asked him which book he
wanted.
By that point he had requestedevery book in the set at least a
dozen times, and some far morethan that.
He responded with None of them.
I'm done with them, okay, Ireplied.
Do you want to try a chapterbook?
Nope, it's fine, I'll just goto sleep, I'm tired.
(09:27):
The next night, the same thing,and the next For weeks I
started to hear the music again.
I slowly began to realize thathe had read barely any of the
books.
The Kiwi experience was unique.
He had developed a particularfascination with the bird, and
it had given him the motivationto painstakingly sound out most
(09:47):
of the words in the three orfour sentences about kiwis and
then make educated guesses aboutthe rest of them.
The majority of the time he was, for the most part, still just
looking at pictures.
I even started to doubt thewhole kiwi breakthrough.
Was I really sure that my wifeor I hadn't read that to him
without realizing it?
His reading abilities seemed toimprove, but how much of that
(10:09):
was just age and braindevelopment and not actual
practice.
We stayed the course, but I was, to say the least, deeply
concerned.
Then finally came what we werewaiting, wishing and hoping for.
(10:33):
My son picked up a book that hadbeen gifted to him by his older
nephew, a book that I had beentrying to encourage him to read
for months Dogman.
For those unfamiliar, dogman isa graphic novel written by Dave
Pilkey, the author of CaptainUnderpants.
What began as a fun CaptainUnderpants spinoff became a
series to rival the original,spawning even more spinoffs and
(10:55):
a blockbuster movie.
The first night my son read Dogman.
It didn't seem like he liked it.
As a voracious fiction readermyself.
I assured him that almost allchapter books take some time to
get into.
The next night he asked for itagain, and the next and then the
next.
About a week later I camedownstairs from putting him to
(11:19):
bed to find Dogman, the bookthat I thought he was reading
upstairs, still sitting on thecouch.
Confused, I brought it to him.
No, I don't need that.
I finished it.
I'm reading the next one.
I looked down at the book.
In my hand it was well over 200pages long.
Granted, some of those pagesonly had a handful of words on
them, but still Okay, I replied.
(11:40):
Three days later he finishedbook two on Friday, not at night
, but around lunchtime.
He had started reading duringthe day For pleasure.
He finished book three in thecar on the way to church on
Sunday and complained that hehadn't brought book four with
him.
Within two months he had readthe entire series, including the
spinoffs, most more than once.
Nineteen books in all,thousands and thousands of pages
(12:04):
.
He moved on to the Bad Guyseries, another graphic novel
with far more words per page,and devoured those too.
Today, three days after heturned nine, he's almost through
book three of Narnia.
Books that because they werewritten in British English and
are now more than 70 years old.
My wife and I often trip upwhen we're reading them aloud.
(12:24):
Looking back at the five-yearexperiment, it's inescapable
that it worked.
Interestingly, I'm still notconvinced that he doesn't have a
reading disability.
Even though he's now readingabove grade level which, by the
way, I put absolutely zero stockin grade level assessment
anymore he still struggles withcertain reading skills that even
his five-year-old brotherdoesn't seem to.
(12:46):
For his privacy, I won't gointo the details, but one thing
I can say without a doubt isthat, as long as no one kills it
, this boy will spend the restof his life loving to read.
And what we love, we do, andwhat we do we get better at her
(13:11):
out.
Which brings me full circle.
I have alluded thus far to thefact that I struggled to read.
That is a massiveunderstatement.
My reading issues were soextensive that I was given an
IEP and medicated While myfriends learned Spanish and
French.
7th through 10th grade, I satin a room with a handful of
(13:32):
other students with readingdisabilities, trying to learn
how to spell the days of theweek consistently.
After school, while my friendsplayed video games, I would walk
downtown to the library andmeet an expensive reading
specialist who would give meextra practice and help me with
homework.
My mom, a resourceful womanthat she is, got me almost all
of the books that I needed toread, including some of my
(13:53):
textbooks on audio that kept meabove water, but reading for
pleasure seemed totally out ofreach.
Without my parents' resources,I likely would not have
succeeded at all.
I remember one day being toldby an encouraging and
exasperated teacher that's okay,not every job requires a lot of
reading and writing.
You can just do something elseand still have a great life.
(14:16):
It was not until I was a seniorin high school that that
changed.
I had a teacher, fred Schenk,who finally stopped trying to
teach me how to read and insteaddecided to teach me why to read
by the time I graduated college.
(14:36):
Four years later, I did so asone of the best written
communicators in my class andgot a job writing position
statements for a Fortune 100company.
Five years later, I graduatedfrom an extremely reading and
writing intensive master'sprogram with honors.
In 2025, I published my firstbook.
Why do I say all of this?
To pull what I've been tryingto say in this whole back to
(14:58):
school series into focus.
Here it is in a nutshell.
I don't think we have a howproblem in education.
I think we have a why problem.
We I think we have a whyproblem we have spent so long
(15:21):
put so many of our resources intrying to teach kids how to read
and do math and make friendsand hit a baseball and play the
violin that we have neglected toteach them why those things
will make their life worthliving.
We need to take seriously whenour kids say why am I ever going
to need to know this?
Because how we answer thatquestion probably matters more
than how we answer any of thefunctional, mechanical how
questions.
And so I turn it back to youparents.
Look at the skills that you'rehoping to teach your child this
year.
Look at the goals that you havefor them, not just today but
(15:45):
for their life.
Look at where you're puttingyour invaluable resources and
ask yourself one question why?
The Whole Parent Substackpodcast and social media are
(16:05):
entirely funded by giantcorporate interest groups,
political lobbying organizationsand venture capital money?
Just kidding, that's the otherpeople.
Like public radio and TV, mywork is entirely funded by you,
the people learning from andloving it.
I would and usually do try andmake all of this for free.
But if you wanted to say thankyou and keep the lights on and
(16:27):
keep the articles coming, thebest way to do that is to
subscribe for a few dollars amonth.
Thank you.
My seven-year-old couldn't read.
I had a million peoplefollowing me for parenting
advice.
I was being asked to speak toaudiences all over the world.
I had just finished writing aparenting book for a major
publisher and my seven-year-oldcouldn't read.
Was there something wrong withhim?
Was there something wrong withme?
It sure didn't seem like it washim.
(00:22):
He displayed intelligence insome areas, well beyond what
could be expected of a typicalfirst grader, but yet he could
not read at all.
I started to hear the sharkmusic.
For those who haven't heard metalk about parenting, shark
(00:47):
music it's the idea that parentsoften unnecessarily panic when
they encounter small but no lesstriggering, innocuous signs of
struggle.
We all know the iconicsoundtrack from the movie Jaws,
the haunting orchestral dun-dunthat always signals the arrival
of the monstrous great whiteshark.
The truth is, the movie wouldactually be very unscary without
(01:09):
the music.
While the eventual appearanceof the shark was peak cinematic
achievement back in 1975, you'realmost an hour and a half into
the movie before you even see it.
The fear comes from one's ownimagination, triggered by that
music.
An underwater POV looking up atthe first unsuspecting teenage
(01:29):
victim, the flash of a fin, somebarrels surfacing and being
tugged along the water.
None of these are scary ontheir own, but the music makes
them all terrifying, terrifying.
By the first time the sharkactually physically appears, we,
the audience, are alreadyterrified of it.
It happens an hour and 21minutes in, when our protagonist
(01:51):
finally sees the beast and saysthe iconic line you're, by the
way, it's not we're, but you'regonna need a bigger boat.
That scene, interestingly, isalso the first time that the
shark appears without warning,relying on a jump scare rather
than the suspense andanticipation that comes from the
music.
(02:11):
The result of that masterfulskip filmmaking is that when
audiences watch Jaws, they are,in effect, not afraid of the
shark at all.
They're afraid of the idea ofthe shark epitomized by the
shark music.
For me, the shark music aroundreading went something like this
If my child is struggling toread at seven, they will never
(02:32):
learn how to read and wind upjobless, with no meaningful
relationships, living at home inmy basement at 40 or, worse, in
prison.
Of course, most of us don'tthink in such clear terms in the
moment.
It's more abstract.
Just oh no, this is really bad,really really bad, but
nevertheless.
(02:52):
When my seven-year-old couldbarely read C-spot run, the
shark music was there, thesoundtrack of my anxiety.
The only thing that kept mefrom going full-on freak-out
mode was the guiding principlethat I highlighted in last
week's post that, according tothe best available research,
kids will learn to do all of thebasic functions of
(03:13):
academics—reading, writing,basic math, etc—when they have
both the desire and thedevelopment to do so.
To understand why twoincredibly involved and engaged
parents with advanced degreeshad allowed their oldest son to
make it to seven before he couldread, you need to know the
context.
(03:39):
When my son was almost five, we,like many eager parents
planning on homeschooling, beganto implement a popular reading
curriculum.
The curriculum wasphonics-based, which we had
determined, through moreresearch than I would like to
admit, was definitely the way togo and it was highly regarded.
My son, for his part,absolutely hated it.
For his part, absolutely hatedit.
(04:04):
Here is this voracious andcurious learner who could do
basic math and memorized everydinosaur name with shocking
pronunciation and accuracy bytwo years old, but who
absolutely hated sitting down toread.
I started to think that he,like me, had ADHD or a
reading-based learningdisability.
It took the better part of anhour to do a simple one-page
worksheet and would often justresult in abject failure or
interminable power struggles.
(04:25):
We persevered.
Weeks turned into months as wewould take turns going to the
library with him to try and turnabstract, random symbols into
meaning.
Then, one day, we had all hadenough.
We had all had enough.
We stopped trying to teach himhow to read.
(04:46):
At this point we felt likegiving up entirely, and to you
it may sound like we did, butwhat really happened was that we
decided to think long term.
Ignoring the shark music, wesaid to one another our kid is
plenty bright.
One day he will learn how toread.
We just have to give him areason to.
And so we changed the goal.
From that point on, instead ofteaching him how to read, we
(05:07):
decided to teach him why to read.
The next day, c-spot Run bookswere put away and we launched
into chapter books.
Day C-Spot run books were putaway and we launched into
chapter books.
Charlotte's Web, the Hobbit,harry Potter.
I read for what felt like aneternity, out loud, each and
every day, and it still wasn'tenough for him.
(05:29):
He downloaded audiobooks andlistened to them independently.
He began to span out into booksthat I hadn't even read yet.
He fell in love with stories.
Then he started to write hisown.
There were no words on a page,but a hand drawn picture or two.
In some cases he would recordhis own audio.
We were doing it.
I thought it had worked.
(05:50):
Our six and a half year oldloved books, but then he turned
seven and he still had no desireto read.
The shark music came back infull force.
If this new, unconventional wayto teach reading was working,
where were the results?
I will not downplay how much Idoubted our approach at that
(06:12):
point, but in spite of all ofthat, there was one single
glimmer of hope.
Every night, lying in bed, hewould read non-fiction
Smithsonian science books forkids.
I put read in italics herebecause, as far as we can tell,
all he did was look through thepictures.
We were pretty sure that theonly reason that he did it was
(06:32):
to avoid going to sleep.
He didn't like the idea offalling asleep alone in a dark
room, and looking at the bookshelped him acclimate before
actually trying to sleep.
As a parent, you're often tryingto help your kids develop
numerous skills at once.
To be honest, the books for uswere not really about reading at
all.
(06:52):
They were about having anestablished bedtime routine that
didn't involve him coming out25 times a night.
Yet every night when the lightswere out, he would ask for his
headlamp and whichever book hewas in the mood for, and I
thought to myself it can't hurt,right?
Then one day a kiwi bird came upin conversation and I was blown
away.
Birds don't rely on a sense ofsmell.
(07:30):
They don't even have noses,they have beaks.
I said Kiwis have noses, theyhave terrible eyesight and
they're nocturnal, so they haveto rely on a sense of smell to
find food.
I don't think kiwis arenocturnal, though are they?
Yes, kiwis are nocturnal, sothey have to rely on a sense of
smell to find food.
I don't think kiwis arenocturnal, though, are they?
Yes, kiwis are nocturnal,they're like bats or owls, but
they don't rely on sonar orreally big eyes.
They smell their way around.
(07:51):
How do you even know that?
What did you see that on WildKratts it's important to point
out at this point in theconversation.
There was nothing out of theordinary.
My son has an incredible memoryfor animal facts and he
regularly watched educationalshows on PBS, like Wild Kratts.
That might contain informationabout kiwis being nocturnal or
hunting by scent, but what hesaid next totally shocked me.
(08:14):
No, I read it in All AboutBirds.
I looked at him in stunnedsilence, I'll show you.
He said, interpreting mysilence as skepticism, and he
ran upstairs to get his bookSure enough, in black and white.
Kiwis have nostrils.
They use it to sniff outinsects and earthworms.
(08:45):
For the next week or two I felttotally different.
Handing him his nightlySmithsonian text, I started
letting him stay up later,believing that he was doing
invaluable reading practice.
He still showed absolutely nointerest in reading during the
day, but before bed he wouldalways crack open a book and do
his thing.
Then, one night, a month or twolater, I asked him which book
(09:06):
he wanted.
Then, one night a month or twolater, I asked him which book he
wanted.
By that point he had requestedevery book in the set at least a
dozen times, and some far morethan that.
He responded with None of them.
I'm done with them, okay, Ireplied.
Do you want to try a chapterbook?
Nope, it's fine, I'll just goto sleep, I'm tired.
(09:27):
The next night, the same thing,and the next For weeks I
started to hear the music again.
I slowly began to realize thathe had read barely any of the
books.
The Kiwi experience was unique.
He had developed a particularfascination with the bird, and
it had given him the motivationto painstakingly sound out most
(09:47):
of the words in the three orfour sentences about kiwis and
then make educated guesses aboutthe rest of them.
The majority of the time he was, for the most part, still just
looking at pictures.
I even started to doubt thewhole kiwi breakthrough.
Was I really sure that my wifeor I hadn't read that to him
without realizing it?
His reading abilities seemed toimprove, but how much of that
(10:09):
was just age and braindevelopment and not actual
practice.
We stayed the course, but I was, to say the least, deeply
concerned.
Then finally came what we werewaiting, wishing and hoping for.
(10:33):
My son picked up a book that hadbeen gifted to him by his older
nephew, a book that I had beentrying to encourage him to read
for months Dogman.
For those unfamiliar, dogman isa graphic novel written by Dave
Pilkey, the author of CaptainUnderpants.
What began as a fun CaptainUnderpants spinoff became a
series to rival the original,spawning even more spinoffs and
(10:55):
a blockbuster movie.
The first night my son read Dogman.
It didn't seem like he liked it.
As a voracious fiction readermyself.
I assured him that almost allchapter books take some time to
get into.
The next night he asked for itagain, and the next and then the
next.
About a week later I camedownstairs from putting him to
(11:19):
bed to find Dogman, the bookthat I thought he was reading
upstairs, still sitting on thecouch.
Confused, I brought it to him.
No, I don't need that.
I finished it.
I'm reading the next one.
I looked down at the book.
In my hand it was well over 200pages long.
Granted, some of those pagesonly had a handful of words on
them, but still Okay, I replied.
(11:40):
Three days later he finishedbook two on Friday, not at night
, but around lunchtime.
He had started reading duringthe day For pleasure.
He finished book three in thecar on the way to church on
Sunday and complained that hehadn't brought book four with
him.
Within two months he had readthe entire series, including the
spinoffs, most more than once.
Nineteen books in all,thousands and thousands of pages
(12:04):
.
He moved on to the Bad Guyseries, another graphic novel
with far more words per page,and devoured those too.
Today, three days after heturned nine, he's almost through
book three of Narnia.
Books that because they werewritten in British English and
are now more than 70 years old.
My wife and I often trip upwhen we're reading them aloud.
(12:24):
Looking back at the five-yearexperiment, it's inescapable
that it worked.
Interestingly, I'm still notconvinced that he doesn't have a
reading disability.
Even though he's now readingabove grade level which, by the
way, I put absolutely zero stockin grade level assessment
anymore he still struggles withcertain reading skills that even
his five-year-old brotherdoesn't seem to.
(12:46):
For his privacy, I won't gointo the details, but one thing
I can say without a doubt isthat, as long as no one kills it
, this boy will spend the restof his life loving to read.
And what we love, we do, andwhat we do we get better at her
(13:11):
out.
Which brings me full circle.
I have alluded thus far to thefact that I struggled to read.
That is a massiveunderstatement.
My reading issues were soextensive that I was given an
IEP and medicated While myfriends learned Spanish and
French.
7th through 10th grade, I satin a room with a handful of
(13:32):
other students with readingdisabilities, trying to learn
how to spell the days of theweek consistently.
After school, while my friendsplayed video games, I would walk
downtown to the library andmeet an expensive reading
specialist who would give meextra practice and help me with
homework.
My mom, a resourceful womanthat she is, got me almost all
of the books that I needed toread, including some of my
(13:53):
textbooks on audio that kept meabove water, but reading for
pleasure seemed totally out ofreach.
Without my parents' resources,I likely would not have
succeeded at all.
I remember one day being toldby an encouraging and
exasperated teacher that's okay,not every job requires a lot of
reading and writing.
You can just do something elseand still have a great life.
(14:16):
It was not until I was a seniorin high school that that
changed.
I had a teacher, fred Schenk,who finally stopped trying to
teach me how to read and insteaddecided to teach me why to read
by the time I graduated college.
(14:36):
Four years later, I did so asone of the best written
communicators in my class andgot a job writing position
statements for a Fortune 100company.
Five years later, I graduatedfrom an extremely reading and
writing intensive master'sprogram with honors.
In 2025, I published my firstbook.
Why do I say all of this?
To pull what I've been tryingto say in this whole back to
(14:58):
school series into focus.
Here it is in a nutshell.
I don't think we have a howproblem in education.
I think we have a why problem.
We I think we have a whyproblem we have spent so long
(15:21):
put so many of our resources intrying to teach kids how to read
and do math and make friendsand hit a baseball and play the
violin that we have neglected toteach them why those things
will make their life worthliving.
We need to take seriously whenour kids say why am I ever going
to need to know this?
Because how we answer thatquestion probably matters more
than how we answer any of thefunctional, mechanical how
questions.
And so I turn it back to youparents.
Look at the skills that you'rehoping to teach your child this
year.
Look at the goals that you havefor them, not just today but
(15:45):
for their life.
Look at where you're puttingyour invaluable resources and
ask yourself one question why?
The Whole Parent Substackpodcast and social media are
(16:05):
entirely funded by giantcorporate interest groups,
political lobbying organizationsand venture capital money?
Just kidding, that's the otherpeople.
Like public radio and TV, mywork is entirely funded by you,
the people learning from andloving it.
I would and usually do try andmake all of this for free.
But if you wanted to say thankyou and keep the lights on and
(16:27):
keep the articles coming, thebest way to do that is to
subscribe for a few dollars amonth.
Thank you.
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