Become a Mom Who Reads Again

Often, new moms feel like they have lost their identity as interests and hobbies take a sideline to the demands of a mother’s busy schedule. It is possible to rediscover yourself and carve out time for interests such as reading once more!

When I was a little girl I was a voracious reader. I remember ploughing through books under my covers with a little booklight well after I was supposed to be asleep. My dad managed a Christian bookstore and provided me with a steady stream of quality, clean reading material. The most effective consequence my parents found for me was to take away my books (gasp!)

I hit college and I still did a massive amount of reading, but it changed from pleasure reading to coursework reading. It was still enjoyable but I started to have less and less time for pleasure reading. Post college, I started my teaching career. I was that teacher who stayed at school until 10pm perfecting lesson plans and, though I was reading a great deal, I didn’t really have the margin in my life to read for enjoyment.

Enter motherhood. About 6 months in I realized that the only things I was reading were my Bible and a few portions of mom blog articles. I wanted to start reading again – whole novels – for pleasure! While I still don’t have as much time for reading as I did when I was a carefree third grader, I have found ways to fit reading into my life once again. I hope my journey and my tips will inspire and help you to feel a little less lost as a mother!

First, I want to quick address those of you who, unlike me, were never really into reading and maybe still don’t think that it is a high priority. Four good reasons to read:

1) There are some interests and hobbies that work well with motherhood. Reading is one of those. I used to swing dance too, but that simply doesn’t work with my schedule. Reading, on the other hand can be done anywhere at anytime. I can read for small increments of time. I don’t have to spend money or find a babysitter.

2) Reading will grow you in many directions. Motherhood, contrary to what society would like us all to believe, requires a great deal of intellectual output coupled with emotional stamina. You need to become an expert in laundry, education, medicine, cooking, nutrition, time management, motivation, behavioral science, and so on. You also need to learn all those things on the fly with a crying baby in the background which means you need to learn how to focus and drown out distractions. Reading is the exercise your mind and heart needs to enable you to do your job well.

3) One of the best examples you can set for your children is by reading! Do you want your children to love reading, to aspire to be readers, to have a habit of reading? Then read! From day one you are sending messages to your children in every single thing you do. When you read, they will want to read!

4) It gets easier! Even if you were never a great reader you can still grow and learn. Think of reading as a muscle that needs to be strengthened. Maybe you never enjoyed reading because it was always coupled with the pressure of schoolwork. Maybe you weren’t interested in the books you had available. It is never too late to develop a new skill and interest.

5) The ultimate reason for reading and the ultimate book to read is God’s word. Growing as a reader will help you to become a better reader of The Book. Also, the main reason we want to inspire our children to read is so that they will read God’s Word. (Side note: If you are not reading the Bible regularly I would urge you to prioritize that over other literature. See this post I wrote a few weeks back for ten tips to make that a reality in your life.)

Ok, back to the story . . .

There I was with a 6 month old. I would read my Bible in the morning and then snippets of mom blog articles throughout the day. I picked up Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell (author of these great classics) and started reading it whenever I sat nursing her. That worked great until my baby was old enough to start grabbing at the book and trying to “play” during nursing sessions. I didn’t finish the book. Then, my husband picked up the first book of the Wingfeather Saga, On the Edge of The Dark Sea of Darkness, by Andrew Peterson. I was pregnant and too tired to stand in the kitchen one night so he offered to do the dishes if I’d sit and read aloud to him. We started reading the whole Wingfeather Saga out loud to each other. We would read when we drove to church (at the time, it was a 20 minute drive) and whenever we had a few minutes in the evening. The books were riveting and we were drawn in. After we read the entire series we had developed a habit of reading in the evenings! We would sit and read either out loud to each other or we’d just read our separate books sitting together in our living room.

Soon after that, a friend from church invited me to join her book club. It was a group that met once a month. We read fiction that had been published prior to 1940, which meant it was mostly “classics”. I loved it! I found myself with just a tiny bit of pressure to get through each book in a timely manner and I was also reading books that others had chosen. The book club has since disbanded (there are seasons for everything) but for about three years I had a steady rhythm of reading in my life that I have, for the most part, kept up.

I did it and you can too!

If you are thinking, “Well, that’s great that you read, but I could never find time with my busy schedule.” You certainly can! You can do it even if your husband doesn’t want to read with you. It is possible even if there is no book club. My life is busy. Currently, I have three little girls under the age of six. I am in charge of my church library. I have an Etsy shop. I write this blog. I am in a Bible study. I garden. My house isn’t perfect – but it isn’t terribly messy. I cook at home. I am starting to homeschool. All that, and I do find time to read! Here are some ways I make it happen:

• Most of my reading is done in ten minutes a day. There is a great book called Ploductivity by Doug Wilson. You may love him or hate him but you can’t deny the man is productive beyond belief! In this short book he describes how he gets things done; by plodding. Using tiny scraps of time. You can plod through any type of project. For reading it might look like setting a timer for 10 minutes each day and reading. Or you might take the total number of pages and divide them over the period of time you have to read the book. Lets say you want to read Ploductivity in one month. There are 112 pages in the book. 112 divided by 30 days equals about 4 pages. If you read just 4 pages each day you’ll have that book read in a month. You’ll be surprised how quickly you march through your book list if you simply plod along.

• I think of my mind as a muscle. I remember when I started reading Robinson Crusoe. It was HARD! The historical language had me reading and re-reading passages very slowly to understand the story. As I read, I found that it got easier and easier to read! The language didn’t change, but my reading muscles were strengthened! If you start reading and it feels choppy, you aren’t comprehending, or you loose focus I recommend you power through it! Sometimes I abandon a book because I don’t like the author’s style or the storyline. But if my difficulties are because my mind is out of shape I try to keep going.

• Occasionally I listen to the audiobook. I like to read a physical paper copy of books. There is something about imagining the voices for myself and going at my own pace. I also want my daughters to see me reading. But there are seasons where there is simply too much going on and I’ll listen to the audiobook while I fold laundry rather than sit down with the book. If you are looking for audiobooks you can find a lot of classics (in the public domain) through librivox.org. Some of the readers are great and some are not but they are free. Your public library likely has many audiobooks online through something like Hoopla.

• Sometimes I read easy or light books. I really like Dickens (David Copperfield is my favorite) but Jan Karon also has a place in my heart! I even like juvenile fiction. These make great read alouds for my daughters but I also just read them for myself. If you are historically just not a reader start with some juvenile literature! Read The BFG again. We are reading the Little House On the Prairie books right now and it is incredible to read them from an adult perspective. If you like dystopian/thinker type books check out Margaret Haddix as an author. If you want to feed your soul and your imagination for sure don’t skip The Chronicles of Narnia!

I hope this article has inspired and helped you to rekindle a love of reading in your life. There are affiliate links in this article (which means I make a small commission if you make a purchase on Amazon via one of the links) and they are all for books that I have read and would recommend. Please share a book that you would recommend in the comments. Also, I would love to keep in touch so please subscribe!