BOOK ADDICTION 1: THE BEGINNING
I started reading fluently at the age of five; I was just in nursery two.

About two and a half years before, we had just moved to Abuja and my parents were trying to pick out the best school they could afford for me. When I was brought to be enrolled in my school, my mum explained to the school management that I had completed pre-nursery and had started nursery one at my previous school (this was in January so it was the second term) and so she wanted me to continue from where I stopped. The proprietor refused to admit me into that class because I was too young to be there and didn’t think I could cope (mum believes he thought she was lying).

After all, efforts to have it her way proved abortive, she came up with a deal for the proprietor.
“Fine, we would have it your way, my daughter will repeat pre-nursery but if she makes it to the top of her class with an average score above 80% at the end of the academic session, then she’d be promoted to nursery two instead of nursery one,” she said to him. He readily agreed because he didn’t think I would meet the criteria, he probably thought my parents were just trying to put up a show. What he didn’t know was that my parents were more than ready to win.

My parents bought a blackboard and lots of children's books and would spend hours teaching me daily, mum during school days, and dad on weekends. Of course, their efforts paid off, they won the deal because at the end of the session I emerged the overall best student among all the arms of my class even though I didn’t have a first-term result. I was promoted to nursery two and I still came out the best at the end of the session. And so my journey into books began with my parents as my foundational teachers.

For the first nine years of my life, I didn’t get to play with other children and didn’t even own any toys; books were my toys, books were my dolls, books were my teddy bears and books were my playmates. I rarely got the chance to go out and play with other kids in my neighborhood. Whenever mum needed to go out, she would drop a novel or an educational book for me to read and summarise before she got back home after which she would mark and grade the summary, even the smallest grammatical error was never overlooked. However, as I grew up and had younger siblings, mum gradually became very busy with running the house and work and so the book tradition slowly died off but I was already hooked.

My mum hated it whenever I had to tidy the house. I would read every scrap of paper I found on the floor and always ended spending hours tidying one room. Therefore tidying the house was always a full day affair for me. A waste of precious time that greatly irked mum.

My parents soon stopped buying novels for me. They wanted me to concentrate on school texts and recommended readings. But I had already built a good network of friends (most of them older) with whom I exchanged novels both at school and in my neighborhood and so I didn’t lose my supply, I only stopped being a supplier.

Relevant Lessons (for parents):
1. You are primarily responsible for the all-round growth and development of your child/children. Stop leaving that responsibility to the school. Get in there and do your part and you’d be surprised at the level of improvement that will follow.

2. Start early. Stop using unnecessary excuses to shield that child from learning necessary life skills (not just reading). At six, you said the child was still a baby and would learn how to do dishes before he/she clocks eight. That child is now nine years old and can’t even hold a broom properly. Wake Up.

3. Discipline will not kill your child. And discipline does not necessarily have to be flogging. Teach your child that the pain of discipline is what births the pleasure of victory. The home lessons were not always pleasant for me as a child, in fact, some days were dedicated to tears but in the end, it paid off.

https://www.lowermiddleclasslife.com/2020/06/book-addiction-1-beginning.html

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