Giraffe Detective

Let me tell you a story about a giraffe detective.

"With a crackle, the giraffe detective leaped over the Laundromat and swung to a stop atop the Volvo and looked around. He saw no one about, but he heard a skittering sound coming from somewhere over in the flower bed. He quickly checked the mud, which he had noted was the same as his own, and found it to be the same. He then noticed a bit of trash that was thrown to the side and it was the same too.

The giraffe detective, happy that all was right in the world, sat down in the flowers, for there were no weeds, and dined upon the worm and then, full, he slept. The End."

What is so great about this book is that it has no back story. The main character has no name and his only motivation is that there was something in the mud that he thought was strange, but what was strange and why, no one knows.

It made me wonder how hard it is to get kids into reading and what the hell it is that we are doing wrong.

A little background, in case you don’t know me. I am a child psychiatrist and work with kids who have a variety of issues. Most of the kids are difficult to reach, violent, and have had poor life experiences that have scarred them and led to violent and aggressive behavior. I don’t deal with children who have normal issues. You know, “Am I cute? Am I smart?” "Will Johnny play with me?"

Most of the kids I deal with do not want to learn how to read. And it is because of the fact that I read to them that they are willing to sit still with me. You see, I read the same book over and over. All of the kids I see know it. We start off slowly with one-syllable words and I am certain that there are some neuroscientists that will refute my approach as not helpful to a child’s overall brain development, but I don’t care. If a kid cannot sit still for me, I lose my magic. When I lose my magic, they know it.

They sense it and in turn become very agitated. Some become physically aggressive and violent.

So, to make them sit still with me, I have to have some type of routine. I read the same book over and over again. They learn the same words over and over again. If I change it, they know and don’t like it. I also limit the books I read. I don’t read “Where the Wild Things Are” in one sitting, even though I love the story and the book. It is too much. It would take too long and it would just drive me nuts. I read that book over a series of sessions. And again, if I change it, they notice. They complain. They get agitated.

I have one child in particular that was really bad. He would come in with very violent thoughts and actions. He started off, just like all the others, by showing me he didn’t want to read with me. So I started off reading a book of fairy tales. I had read it many times before, but he hadn’t, so it was new to him and he was OK with it for a while. When I had read it, I just made up a new fairy tale on the fly, using a similar pattern as the one I had just read. That did it. He sat with me and did what he needed to do.

I continued to do this for a few years. I slowly advanced his reading skill as he was able to follow along. I became very good at it and it became very easy. It started to take less and less time. And then something started to change.

He started to participate in the reading sessions. He started asking me about the stories and his questions started to have more to do with the story than the fact that it was a new story.

He began to ask me to read certain books that he had heard about from a cousin or an aunt. And he would check in with me about the books I was reading, sharing with me that he really liked the giraffe detective or something he had heard from his sister. And when we were reading those books, I could tell that he was getting it.