Get answers to your questions about marriage, parenting and family life from experts and parents of 7 children!

Rachel Denning (00:10.542)
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Extraordinary Family Life podcast where your host, creator, Rachel Denning, coming to you from Portugal.

I don't know about you, babe, but I'm loving it here. We've been going to the beach and watching the sunset and the evening playing in the water and the sand. It is very nice. Walking through the woods. It's just our house and then the woods and to the beach. And it is a little bit of heaven. Aliyah, who is our 16 year old daughter, she and I found a Krav Maga and like an intentional hit martial arts training. We have been loving that. Still sore.

We've been three times and still sore even after a Thai massage that Rachel and I went to get. Like this stuff is good. I love it. Love pushing hard. We're all going to a self -defense martial arts class tonight. Good, good things going on. Raising our new puppies. You guys, we're living the dream. Living the dream. I bought my dream truck.

which many of you would laugh at, because it's more like a tractor than a truck. But I love it. Got my dogs and we're just gonna see. The Defender 180? It's 130. Oh, I don't even know. So it's a Land Rover Defender.

They don't even have them in the States very much. They've got a few old ones, but Land Rover Defender 130 truck. Oh, it's awesome. So we're loving it. All these, all these fun things that we've been thinking about planning on strategizing for a long time or now it's just the timing has worked out. Here we are making it happen. It's awesome. Yes. And so now we're getting more settled in our house. We're leaning back more into a consistent education schedule.

Rachel Denning (01:57.422)
after six months of travel. Which is extremely educational. And our philosophy is you need both. You need a lot of hands -on experiential learning. If you do traveling right, some people go out and travel and they don't learn anything. They're just like, they're just wandering around and like. They come out of the sea of knowledge without a drop on them. Without getting a drop on them. I don't know how people do it. Speaking about books today and loving books, we're quoting from.

a family favorite, Phantom Tall Booth. Such a great book, such a great book. Which is a great book for youth to read. It's a great book for you to read adults. There's so many great principles in there. I think as we go through here we'll mention books. Yep, perfect. That'd be great. So yeah, you can go out and travel and not get much out, but if you travel well, you can learn so much, infinitely more than you can actually get from a classroom or a book or a video or whatever. It's experiential learning.

But you also need book learning. This is our core philosophy. You have to read the books. Lots and lots and lots of books, hundreds of books, and then thousands of books. I think a sustainable, I know this is going to ruffle some of you, but I think it's sustainable to try to average a book a week for the rest of your life. Totally possible. Now the average American reads less than one book a year.

Maybe. I've been wondering about checking up on that statistic, but that was something really straddle.

It was a decade or two. Yeah, that was less. So it's probably less now. Maybe it's more because reading is... Because they're binge watching Netflix. Well, yeah. It's insane. We'll talk about those things. But okay, we got to read. And yes, we are huge, huge advocates of listening to audiobooks. We'll dive more into that. Well, yeah, we're going to dive into all of that. So essentially, we received a question, which is why we're doing this topic.

Rachel Denning (03:47.182)
We have talked about it before, I know, but we talked about it, I think, in our coaching with what is now called the 28 Day Challenge. But we're gonna do it here. We're gonna do it on the podcast because this is a broader audience. So I wanna read the question that I received through Instagram. If you're not following us on Instagram, I'm worldschoolfamily and Greg is greg .denning. So get on there, it's a great way to connect with us, to ask us questions.

Questions, okay. Do you have a podcast episode or advice somewhere or you talk about how you instilled a love of reading in your children? We parents love reading and have read a lot to the children when they were young. Sometimes we still do now, but no matter which book we suggest, they hate reading and it breaks my heart. Oh, that's good. That is good. Thank you. Thank you so much for asking that question. So first of all,

A couple things come to mind right away when I read this, because she says, how have you instilled a love of reading in your children? Well, I think it's kind of funny because if you ask some of our younger children probably, they'd probably be like, oh, I hate reading. I don't like reading. Because the definition we have as parents of what reading is and what that means versus the definition a child might have.

don't always match up because in our mind reading might be one thing, it means this, but to the child it means something else. Our kids love to read with us. They love to have us read to them. Essentially they love stories. Yes, which I want to talk about a lot today, the importance of stories. And our 12 year old loves audiobooks. He listens to them all day long. But if you said do you love reading, he'd probably be like no I don't.

despite the fact that I want to walk through here today, he does actually love it even though it looks different than what it used to look like and maybe what we think it should look like as parents. And that's one of the things I want to talk about because sometimes we need to change our definitions here of what it actually means when we say we want our kids to love learning.

Rachel Denning (06:14.51)
taking into the context of, for one, what does that actually mean? What does it mean? I want my kids to love learning. Well, what does that mean, really? Is it really that we just want our kids to sit down and love to read a book, or is there some sort of benefit?

or outcome we want from them reading books. You said, you threw a little word in there, I don't know if you intended to. You said, we want our kids to love learning. I think you meant to say we want our kids to love reading, and I'm glad you threw that word in there, because we want them to love learning. Yes. And we see that as, that's a little bit what we want. We're like, we want our kids to read because we want them to learn. And so we want them to love learning. And loving learning is actually pretty natural. Most kids,

most people love learning. They do. They just wouldn't necessarily define it as learning. Right, exactly. And they wouldn't necessarily connect reading with learning because if you think about it, reading is actually, it's more work.

So when you're, especially when you're learning how to read and reading seems like a chore. So you have to have a reward that's commensurate, is that the right word? With the effort. So if it's a lot of effort to read, and I vividly remember this because I struggled with reading so much. I was such a slow, slow reader and reading was so much work for me.

So I loved it, totally transformed my life when my sister read stories. So she would read her books. So she was a teenager and she would get these little romantic, emotional books and she just would read out loud to us as we were little kids. So we'd just sit there and hear stories. I'm like, oh my gosh, we were like crying together and like laughing and just having this just super emotional.

Rachel Denning (08:03.502)
experience with these families, right? We'd get to know the characters, we'd fall in love with them. Like, no, don't, no, please don't. We'd celebrate with them. I got into the emotional story of humanity. I love that. Then my sister moved out. And I remember like, gosh, I want stories. I want more stories. I have to read them. And my uncle was like, he just had this idea. He'd read books. And then after that, he would just get rid of them because what he always I've read that I'm never going to use it again. So he didn't keep his library. So he started handing them off to me.

And he handed me this Tom Clancy book that was like 1200 pages. And I just held that thing and I looked how many pages there were and I'm like, oh, OK, that's retarded. No. All I saw was work. All I saw was work. But my desire for stories finally compelled me to at least start. And then I read that whole book and read it fast. I just couldn't get enough of it. It was such a great story.

And then, so my love of stories, my love of learning, and I wouldn't call it love of learning. I would have called it love of stories. My love of stories compelled me finally to push through the hump.

of work, the effort of work. And the sense of accomplishment I had as a 12 year old kid to have read a 1200 page book, especially being a slow reader where reading was so difficult for me, I was over the moon. And I was like, oh, I can do this. I can do this. And that's where I fell in love with reading. And then I just read and read and read and read and read like crazy. Every book I get my hands on, I just read like crazy. And now it was all storybook, all storybooks. But I loved it. And so I read and read and read and read. Well, then eventually it was, I mean,

And I'm like, dang, I want to figure out how to solve this problem. I moved out on my own. I'm 16. I'm trying to figure out life. And I'm like, oh, I can turn to books. Well, I already had a skill of reading. I already had a love of reading. So now I'm like, oh, I can turn to personal development books and professional development books and books that can make my life better. And then that has turned into still to this day, average a book a week and have for over well over two decades.

Rachel Denning (10:05.934)
and then audio books came along. Well, right. So I want to get there, but I want to, there's a couple things here. One of them back to this idea of defining what it exactly is. What is the outcome you want by having your children love learning? There's like multiple layers here and we kind of have to unpack the layers and get down to understanding where we're at and where, where we want to go. And you know what level, what layer comes before that. So when we identify, well, I want my kids to love reading because I want them to love

learning because I want, for us you know I know it's about personal development. We know that when we read us personally it helps improve our life, it gives us insights, you know we've learned about marriage and parenting and finances and everything from reading but for a kid they don't really care about that as much. They're not interested in personal development per se, they're not interested in...

non -fiction, right? And so if we think, well I want my kids to read for those outcomes, and maybe that's the outcome you want, maybe it's something different, that's not going to be a motivating force for them. And so we go back to what we've been talking about here, is story. Story is actually what drives human beings to be engaged in something.

to be engaged in a book, to be engaged in a movie, to be engaged in someone telling a story. It's the story aspect. So if we want our children to learn to love learning, ultimately, they have to learn to fall in love with stories. That's the first step. And so, and I think it's important there to, when we're talking to our kids, we're not gonna...

where strategically may not use words like reading or learning. We're just going to talk about what they want. Hey, you want some stories? Do you want me to tell you a story or read you a story? You want to check out this cool story? And they're drawn to the story, but you're like, hey, would you want to do some learning? No. Hey, why don't you do your reading? No. Exactly.

Rachel Denning (12:08.206)
Right. So we focus on the aspect that they are drawn to, which is the stories, and we use that to our benefit. And you, in your story about your own life story, you shared important principles there. And the same happened for me too, because I also fell in love.

with reading because of reading, you know, what nowadays we might call fluffy books, you and I. But those were the stories that got me into the reading. And so it was that love of learning about someone and hearing the story and wanting to get over the hump of having to put in the work that got us to fall in love with the process of reading, which then led to us.

loving reading. So it's multiple steps here. You can't just say, I want my kids to love reading and like try to make them read so that they love it. They won't. They have to fall in love first with stories. And of course that starts by you being absolutely in love with learning and with stories and with reading. You're in love with it first and then you have to read to them, which they mentioned that that's something they did. They read to their kids.

But then we kind of come to this awkward phase, starting maybe around 11 or 12, where we may not be reading to them as much anymore, and we want them to do more reading, and we have to bridge that gap. Now that gets difficult because they're at an age where they don't want to read just anything. They don't want to just read whatever you suggest. They want...

If they want to read at all, which they may not want to do, it's going to be something that they are interested in. And so that's actually what we have to build on. We do have to use that to our advantage because a lot of parents are like, Oh, I can't find anything that my kids are interested in reading. Now I get how that can seem to be the case, but the reality is there's so much content out there nowadays. I guarantee there's going to be something.

Rachel Denning (14:21.584)
Yeah, it's impossible to not find something. Now, it can be difficult to find something that you might think appropriate because there's plenty of things out there that I don't want my kids reading either. So it does take research, it does take looking, it does take asking to find things. But if you can find...

or when you can find the books that they are interested in. And nowadays it's cool because they do a lot of series. There's not just one book, it's like series of, I mean it's the thing people have done for a while, but there's a lot of them out there, of series with hours and hours and, our children have gone through hundreds of hours in one series, sometimes 40 hours in one book of content, and they love it.

They can't get enough. Now, maybe this is a good time to switch to discussing audiobooks. Well, first, I want to back up, because we might be tempted to kind of check the boxes of, oh, yeah, I love reading. And oh, yeah, and I read to my kids. And you kind of check those boxes. But it's worth going back and really examining yourself. Do you deeply love learning and reading?

If so, are you actively doing it? Are you, and don't just say, oh, yep, I am. Are you actively, deeply in love with learning? Are you pursuing your own education? Be just totally honest with yourself. Cause I meet people sometimes I have this conversation, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, well, tell me, let's look at this. Let's go in here and really examine.

And then we realize in the deep examination, like, well, no, no, you're not actually, you're not an active learner and you're not in love with learning. Maybe you did before, you dabble here and there, but you're not actively in love with learning. So you've got to be in love. And most important, your children aren't seeing that process. That's the other thing. So if you are in love with learning, do your kids know that? And it's not like, I love learning, you should read, or you should read because I love it. Like that's a turd in the punch bowl, right? It's not.

Rachel Denning (16:33.104)
not going to go over well. You have to become so tactful and influential. You have to be a great teacher. You have to be a great mentor. You have to share that love with them, not just by saying it. I love learning. You should too. Why don't you love learning? I love learning. Like that, all that, it doesn't help. It actually hurts. It drives them away. Your love of learning is going to be exuded by loving learning and they see you reading and then you're like, you guys.

Oh my goodness, let me tell you this is what happened. And you tell the story. You share the quote. You share what's happening in there. And like, oh my gosh, this is so good. Or no, like they'll see you reading. And then all of a sudden you just verbally, no, no my gosh, don't, no. And they're like, what's going on? You're like, oh my gosh, okay, this guy's in here and he's about to make bad decisions. I am.

Oh man, I hope he does not do that. I gotta keep reading to see if this happens because he can't do that. And they're like, what, what, what, what? And you see what I'm doing? You're drawing them in. You're getting them into what you're feeling. But most of you sit there like you're dead. And look at you like I'd run over and check your pulse. And you're like, I love this book. And like, yeah, it looks like you're dead. So show it and share it in a way that draws them into it. And I did this so well.

that long before our kids were old enough to read or old enough to listen to audiobooks, I was sharing what I was reading and they could not get enough of it. They were just dying. Specifically, we always talk about this when I read Les Mis. We were living in Costa Rica and every day, I mean, they came to me begging, what did you read from Les Mis today, dad? Tell us what's happening in your book. I mean, they just couldn't get enough of them.

And that's a long, long book. And I drew it out over months. And so I told them all the stories. They all fell in love with that story. Now it's just in our family. It's just, it's part of our family culture, Les Mis. Because I told them all the stories. I drew them in. I became a great storyteller. That's how you convey love of learning and love of stories. And then they just hunger and thirst for it. So you've got to be really, really good at loving it. And then...

Rachel Denning (18:50.638)
Sharing of the love. It requires you to geek out about it a little bit. Like you have to be emotive about the process. Because like you were saying. I can literally hear some of you say, I'm not very emotive. I'm just not like that. Yeah, I'm not like that. That's not me. Well, okay, guess what?

Your choices have consequences, as Greg loves to say. And I get it, because I'm also not that super emotive person. That's definitely more of Greg's strength. But I have learned how to be more emotive in my own way. We're not saying you all have to be Greg Denning, neither do I. But you can, in your own way, share what you're thinking, what you're feeling, what you're learning. The more you share your internal process of what's going on with the process of loving learning,

the more they're going to see, oh, this is actually a desirable thing as opposed to it looks like this, boredom and... Pulselessness. You're dead. And yet you're telling me how wonderful it is. They don't know what's happening. They don't know the internal process you're experiencing that makes it a worthwhile pursuit. And you're sitting there saying, this is so wonderful. It's so exciting. It's so good. And they're looking at you and be like, you are boring.

I don't want anything to do with that. And that's just an honest truth. I'm sorry, I'm just gonna be blunt. If they look at you and your outcomes and your result and your life, they subconsciously are gonna be like, I don't want.

what you have. So I'm going to kind of discredit what you say. And this is a hard truth, but it's true. Well, right. I mean, that is a hard truth because if you know, especially as kids get older, starting at 11, 12, 13 and into their teens, they do start looking around and they're looking at their peers and they're looking at the media and they're looking at movies and they're saying, you're telling me to read.

Rachel Denning (20:52.43)
but I'm looking around at all these other people and they look like they're having a whole lot more fun, why should I listen to you? Or even getting better results. Right. Oh, that's so and so. He doesn't read. Yeah. And again, this is holistic. This, okay, this wasn't the intention here, but this is super important. It is holistic. If, if they look at you and they're like, well, I just hear you fighting all the time and complaining all the time.

and you're unhealthy, you're out of shape, you don't look like you're enjoying life. Of course they can't verbalize or articulate. Yeah, they can't articulate any of this and most of it's subconscious and a lot of it is literally biological. You're biological, you're just trying to figure out life and you're like, just my overall assessment is you're not thriving. You're not doing so well in life. You're not living the life I want to live. And yet you keep telling me to read.

So subconsciously they're going to connect like, well, reading equals your outcomes, like I'm out. And so in a holistic approach, you have to be thriving. You have to be living what you're preaching here and showing them the benefits of reading. Yeah, showing and vocalizing, because often just showing is not enough either. Exactly. OK, so that.

as sort of the foundation along with getting your kids to fall in love with stories because that is, that's the essence of reading. At least when you begin to fall in love with it, it's the stories. Really you're falling in love with the stories. Even in the great personal development books, there's tons of stories. Absolutely. And so we'll share, Rachel, we share all the stories we can from personal development books we're reading. Yeah.

So it's kind of this mindset shift you need to make like, oh, you know what I'm trying to do is help my kids fall in love with stories because if they fall in love with stories, then they'll easily fall in love with reading.

Rachel Denning (23:00.526)
Now, there's another part of this that I want to emphasize or mention because I feel that it's very important, especially in our day and age. Greg and I are both from the generation that was kind of the transition between no technology and technology. In our teenage years is when the internet came out and computers and...

all the things started coming. Before that, if you wanted to learn things, you had books, that was it. Movies did start to come out, of course, and then there's the radio. But things have drastically shifted since then. All of us know this. The world has drastically changed. So much so in the past 30 years, or less even, 20 to 30 years, that...

It's a totally different world. And so we, in some ways, we have to redefine what we mean by...

getting our kids to quote unquote love reading. Because ultimately what we want is the outcome of that process, which used to be only achieved primarily through or mainly achieved through reading physical books. Now, I, this is a great time to jump in here. I am still a huge, huge advocate for paper books. As am I. And you know, electronic books are great. And when they came out, we're like, this is amazing. I can take.

hundreds of books and they weigh nothing. I can add 50 books to my phone and it doesn't change its weight. Like we're going to travel with ebooks. And then we realized out of sight, out of mind, we read less, the kids read less. It just wasn't there. There was no physical presence. Whatever it is, there is something literally.

Rachel Denning (24:53.806)
Connecting with holding a book in your hand and reading the pages. Absolutely So we've paid many many thousands of dollars to pack hundreds and hundreds of pounds of books all over the stinking planet and it I felt like a pack meal for years and it was Hashtag worth it. Yes, so Having them is still valuable. Yes ebooks are great. They're great advantage audio books are great I still think all of us should have paper. So right here we're sitting in our bedroom recording

both of us have books sitting on our nightstands, there's books on Rachel's desk and shelves all around her desk, on my office there's books everywhere, we have books out on our table in the family room, there's books all around, we have books wherever we go. Yes, which is obviously a key part of this, but what I do want to say is that just because we love physical books and we...

heard them, we've also shifted, and I would say shifted because earlier on in our marriage, in our parenting journey, we were more about the physical books. That was the primary desired outcome for our children to read physical books most of the time. But I would say that that shifted partly, one, because technology itself has changed, and two, because we've also realized that not every

brain, not every child is the same. They all have different learning strengths and capabilities. Our oldest daughter has dyslexia, which forced us. Some of our kids have ADD. That forced us in a hard way to reconsider our core flaw. We were just like, we will read paper books. And then our oldest daughter can't read really. I mean, she's doing great now, but she couldn't. Yeah. It was a major struggle. Oh my goodness. That was just the biggest slap in the face. And

gut punch for us and we're like, oh, everything we dreamed of. And then that's where we had to, we forced us to make this massive shift to audio books, which she loves and listened to so many audio books. Which ironically, you and I had made that shift to audio books because they start, well, books on tape is how they came out. We used to get books on tape from the library because we started to get into this mode of.

Rachel Denning (27:10.926)
learning while you're driving, learning while you're exercising, you know, like we wanted to add more learning to our life, which we realized cannot happen with a physical book only mindset. Because if you want to...

add more learning and you only read physical books we can only do that when you're sitting down with a book but if you add audio books well now you can learn in the car and now you can learn while you're walking and now you can learn while you're washing the dishes so we had made that shift then but then for our children we still were like oh you've got a first read physical books and then when our daughter had dyslexia we're like oh okay well I guess we rethink this and so we we did the audio books

And yeah, she is a huge learner. She absolutely loves listening to all kinds of books. Her favorite book is Crime and Punishment. But it's all based on audible learning, basically. It's all listened content. So that's one of the things that we have to include in this is when we're like, I want my children to love learning, well, some of us have this definition of me. That means you sit down with a physical book.

and you're reading from a physical book. And that's not always going to be the case. Some kids literally cannot stand sitting still. Well, that's what I was going to say. So the barrier to entry is sitting still where they would love learning if they can move. Exactly. Because we have another son who is an amazing child and, you know, super responsible, but he's this very active learner. He just needs to be moving hands on.

He absolutely loves audiobooks, but one of the reasons that he loves it is because he can do other things while he's still learning from a book. So he can listen to a book and he can build something or he can go outside, he can run, he can do other things. So when we allow that definition or that flexibility into their learning, well, we're encouraging their love of learning without having it to fit into these certain specified.

Rachel Denning (29:22.222)
rules that we have that in some ways are outdated, you know, because things have changed. And it's this is I'm still though an advocate like I know for me, at least for the foreseeable future, sitting down with a nice book in your hand, I just am going to keep advocating. Well, absolutely. But I think it's important to point out that even though you still love that.

You average a book of a week, but I would say primarily, it's through audible books. Primarily the content you're consuming. Like you read physical books every night, so do I. But most of your content consumption is still done through audiobooks because you can do it while you're driving, while you're exercising, while you're doing these things. And as you practice, it's actually a skill you have to develop how to listen to books. You think, oh, I can do it. No, your mind wanders. It's all replaced. When I first started listening, I'm like, what? I can't.

I was thinking about this and like two chapters passed, I don't even know what happened. You have to practice listening and then you get better at it. Just with every skill, you get better at it and then you can multitask, like you can work on something. Again, it can't be very thoughtful. If you have to do something very thoughtful, if I'm trying to measure and work on something and build something, then I'm either listening to a book and I make a bad cut or I'm making a cut and didn't listen to the book. So it has to be kind of thoughtless, like walking, exercising, washing dishes.

But you get better at it and then you can increase the speed. So you can go to, you know, one and a quarter, one and a half, two, and I'm at, I'm at 2 .2 now. That's where I listen to my books. And if you were to do that right now, you'd be like, this is incomprehensible. I can't even understand this person. This is crazy. You have to work up to it and you do not lose comprehension or retention. It's amazing that mind is even more active.

more alert and captures more. It's incredible. Well, what's really fascinating, I found that our children, and they don't necessarily do this with every book, but on...

Rachel Denning (31:17.71)
books they've listened to more than once because they do that they get these series they love and then they'll listen to them you know once a year or something they can actually listen to them at three x speed which I'm like can you even understand that? and yet they've trained their brains to be able to and granted it's content they're familiar with

And it's just stories. Yeah, and it's just stories. But you know, they, that's what something they do. So they, they consume huge amounts of content, but that's one way they do it. And think how that diminishes a barrier to entry where you pick up a book. It's like I, in my experience, a 1200 page book, you're like, oh.

man, that's all these words I have to try to pronounce, I can't, the vocabulary's over my head, it's so much and I have to sound out each word and they can listen to it at double speed and they have somebody read to them with all their fun voices and especially when they're characters and it's dramatized, like that just eliminates this barrier to entry.

which there was a part of me that used to think that was a problem. I'm like, well, I don't want my kids to be entertained. I want them to be able to do the hard work of reading a book. And while, okay, I get that that has value, ultimately, if our goal, our desired outcome is for our kids to love learning, well then, why are we trying to make it harder than it needs to be? Learning.

Especially early on and the vast majority of time learning should be entertaining when you're really learning when you're in the zone of learning It's entertaining right there is a time and place for really hard learning. You should all read the essay by Mortimer Adler Who's it's called an invitation to the pain of learning. It's phenomenal But if there is a time and place for that, but it's usually later teens early 20 Yeah, if we lead out with that then we're basically We're trying to get them to do something that seems

Rachel Denning (33:14.8)
seems hard and miserable, and they're like, why? Why would I do that? Well, because you need to learn grit and heart. Yeah, I get that. We're gonna learn that. But the best way to draw something in, to fall in love with something, is not to lead with the most painful aspect of it. Because you want them to actually want and enjoy the painful part later. Exactly. Yeah. Because you force your kids to do it. You're like, we do hard things around our kids. Just get gritty.

Stop using your six -year -old age as an excuse, right? And we're missing the mark where if we do it right with tact and love and they're in it, then later on, they'll joyfully choose the pain of learning and the pain of doing hard things. And you're out there doing something so excruciating that most people avoid, even most adults. And your kids will be like, this is so hard, but I love it. I think a good example of this was, so our oldest son is.

19 right now and we've spent the past six months traveling he traveled with us for three of those before he moved out and While we were traveling he chose to listen to a whole bunch of books I don't know what and he he did ebooks to he so he literally read in fact on that in that section He read more than he listened to okay. It was incredible. I think it was about 40 30 or 40 books

But in a three month period, while we were traveling. And so just pause right there for a second. Have you ever read, like how long has it taken you, taken you listener to read 30 books? Like let that sink in 30 and 30 good books, not fluff, not garbage, like 30 really good books. I'm guessing most of you be like, whoo, that was the last three years or five years.

And to get that much, and some of you haven't ever read 30 really great books, but to get that much in in a three month period. Plus all of the amount of travel, and we went to 13 countries while he was doing it. But the point is like we led out with everything we've already discussed here for his whole entire life basically.

Rachel Denning (35:34.99)
And so he chose to do this on his own. He had been reading before. It's not like he wasn't reading. He had been reading, but not at that level of intensity. But he also chose to take on hard books. I think one of the ones he read was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which is a challenging book.

Point being, he chose to do the hard work of reading those levels of books because he wanted to. It was something he chose to take on. Yeah, that was on his own. I didn't say anything. He just like, you know what, I'm on it. And he just hit it. Actually, you guys, I did a whole podcast episode with him on the Be The Man podcast. We did the whole interview, talked through the whole thing. It is worth listening to. It's really powerful. So.

But it came from leading out with the stories and getting them to fall in love with that process along with modeling it for them and sharing our own journey of learning and growth and excitement about learning. But also embracing this other way of learning that doesn't have to look just like.

we it used to look or just like we think it should look with this physical book sitting down another i'd just want to listen because another way that we do this that we encourage this that we facilitate this is right now i think with our twelve -year -old son it's a perfect example and we've done this with pretty much all the kids i think that we have this framework where

you know they do their morning routine and then they have study time and when they finish study time then they are allowed to listen to their audiobooks of choice the ones they want to listen to but

Rachel Denning (37:19.117)
We, it's not just unlimited listening, right? It's not just like, oh, now you get to sit on the couch and listen to audio books for hours, right? Although that happens sometimes. Sometimes, yeah, it does. But the agreement that I have with my son right now is as long as he's active, doing chores or working on stuff, he gets, he has a time limit password, so I give him an hour at a time. So I give him one hour and he goes and does something and then he comes back and I'm like, okay, what are you gonna do next? And he, he...

goes and works on that thing for another hour. And so he's being active and productive, but also just loving listening to his audio book. This is such a good example. He is so in love with stories.

that he'll come to Rachel and say, Hey, I'm going to do all the dishes. Can I listen to my book? He'll come do chores, like chores that people don't want to, he's like, I'm going to sweep up. I'm going to go clean up. I'm going to go do this thing. And he's willingly doing a chore that needs to be done because he loves reading that much. So it's not reading, listening. He loves stories that much. That's a great point. These other barriers, like other seemingly unrelated barriers are gladly overcome because of how much he loves story. Right.

And so it's this powerful process of encouraging that love of story. Plus, plus I do include in that, you know, I will buy him a new audio book, you know, another credit on Audible. It's part of his payment for doing his work. All of our kids are constantly asking for more books. Yeah, he's motivated by that. We have 700 books in Audible. Our family library. And they're...

There are 11 or 12 bucks each, so do the math. We're up $8 ,000 just in audiobooks. Worth it. Worth it, man. There's so much goodness in there. I want to back up a little bit and kind of deep dive again. Are you reading to your children? Literally, truly, are you reading to your children? And I hope if it's a no, that needs to change. You've got to be reading to your kids.

Rachel Denning (39:25.133)
and read books that they will like.

read books that they will love. Now it doesn't mean you have to sacrifice standards and read crap and fluff and garbage. Find really great books that they love. Read from the classics, but don't like pick classics that they'll get into that they'll love. I read hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours to my kids, all of them. And basically the routine was every night I would read to the kids. And it wasn't always, and there was time periods when life was crazy when I didn't do it. I'm doing it now again. Right now I'm reading around the world in 80 days.

to my little girls. And it was so cute, Sage, who's nine, she said to me last night when we were reading, she's like, Dad, there's lots of big words. I don't understand all the words.

And I'm like, but do you understand the story? And she's like, yeah, I think so. I'm like, share me the story. She's like, this happened. And I'm like, it's great. And so we're, and I'm quick to point out, you know, share the lessons. Oh, what do we learn from that? Oh, look at that. That's cool. That's cool. And a lot of it is, it's such a beautiful way to introduce your children to vocabulary. And there's a lot, there's a lot of vocabulary in that book and these little classics, but you're, you're inducing the vocabulary and ideas and concepts and things, especially that one. He dives into all these details about India.

Africa and all this stuff in history and all these religions and all this different stuff. He's covering all and it's just a simple introduction I don't expect my little kids to understand it or grasp it but what it's doing is just building this little scaffolding that later on will circle back to it and they all they've heard that and it's it's all these point touch points right and introducing it again and again and again until finally sticks and they have this massive exposure so read to your children and then in devotionals Rachel reads from story of the world.

Rachel Denning (41:09.069)
And so we are, we're reading, actively reading to our kids and sharing what we're learning. Well, I want to add that that's actually another benefit of audiobooks is because generally people tend to listen or have read to them. In the case of you reading to your kids or them listening to an audiobook, they listen at a level that's above their current reading level. Which is actually a positive thing because it's helping them with vocabulary and all of these other things that...

isn't necessarily happening. Because there's... So true. When you're talking about reading, there's actually multiple layers there. One of them is the actual physical process of what's going on in your brain while you're trying to decipher signs on a page and translate that into a word that you can say. So that's not actually comprehension, you know?

the comprehension happens more when you can just listen to you're not doing the physical part of it. You're just listening to it and you're hearing the story and you're comprehending it and you're retaining it. That's a different thing. Yeah, especially when you're learning sometimes the actual reading of it interrupts the comprehension because it's so much work to say the word, identify the word and put the words together in a string. Like there's so much effort going into just reading it that you're not putting that much effort into comprehending it. So it's a great point.

ways if you want your kids to fall in love with the story so they fall in love with books, the more content they can get in that they actually comprehend and fall in love with, well that's actually better, which eventually will drive them.

to improve their learning skill, their reading skill itself, so that they can have access to more content. And they'll make them better readers when they turn back to it because they have more vocabulary. They're familiar. Yeah, they're familiar with more of the vocabulary. More concepts. Really powerful. I mean, I thought maybe just for fun we'd read some of the books we have in our Audible library as a reference because people are constantly asking. In fact, one of the other comments I got was, what are some books you recommend for...

Rachel Denning (43:18.125)
Do do do.

Well, we have a recommended reading list and in my list specifically, there's a whole section for youth. And I think you adults should read all the books that are in the youth section. It's not just for you. It's for you too. But I think it's great for youth. So in there, depending on maturity and reading level stuff, maybe 11 or 12 up. And that's that youth section in my list. It's great. But even for little ones like get one of our favorites was the illustrated classics. Yes. That was a little white set. It's white hardback.

It's called the Great Illustrated Classics and it's basically all of the classics but in condensed form illustrated with simple illustrations. They loved it. They loved those books. Usborn has a great collection of abridged stories. You know, they've got...

lots of Dickens and all kinds of other bridge stories. But I read every book from Wizard of Oz, all 15 of them. I read all the Narnia stuff. I read all the Betsy Tacey series. I read all the Little Britches series. All the Little House on the Prairie. I mean, take these series like that. Teach great principles, lesson great stories. I read all those books to the kids. Now, that being said, I think especially the teen tween age, starting 11, 12.

on into their teenage years, that's when kids can start to learn this, start to lose this love of learning. And so it can be really important to get them engaged with books that...

Rachel Denning (44:52.365)
they're still interested in. So I am going to read some that are currently on our list. Now, I will tell you, I haven't vetted these because I've gotten to the point where I allow my teenagers to pick the books and they're pretty good at picking and I'll ask them, I'm like, what's in this book? What's the content? Is it appropriate for our 12 year old, et cetera, et cetera. And sometimes they'll notice like I got into, Kimball said this and he's like, I got into this one. I listed the first one. He's like, it wasn't, there wasn't a whole lot of substance to it. It was kind of lame. So he's like, yeah, don't,

that one. So they are pretty good about doing that. But no, I don't know if we should, it's even worth it to share that. But like they got into the Percy Jackson series, of course, Brennan Sanderson series, there's a lot there. But don't discount the classics here. I know those are kind of, the modern ones are more of kind of, they're more exciting, more exhilarating, more snarky and sassy. There's some substance.

But don't discount the classics, the great classics, the great stories. And again, you have to get a story one and you have to get, and I'll read those ones, you know, the Seawolf by Jack London, the vocabulary is challenging the writing in that old, the old English or the accents. It was extremely challenging. Our kids couldn't comprehend it. So I read it.

and I read in the voices and I did the voice, I did that. They all love that book, but they could not read it on their own. Or nor could they have listened to it on their own because they didn't have you there to kind of translate it for them. So books like that. So I know what you're saying, like, you know, we don't want to discount the classics, but it can be challenging because it's spoken in a language that's not what we speak today.

so it needs some sort of translation. I would say even the same with some of Louis Lamour's stuff because our kids have loved that but there was a time when they had a hard time understanding it. And so you kind of had to translate it for them. So especially at first that's helpful because I know like our 18 year old son now, he loves Louis Lamour.

Rachel Denning (46:57.325)
But when he first started listening to it, he had a hard time understanding what they were saying. What are they even saying? So when you listened with him, and you would listen to the audiobooks while you were driving on a road trip or something, and you could help him...

understand the story and what's happening, what they said, then that helped him to be able to now where now he can understand himself and he can listen to them on his own. That's a good example. I took two of our boys and we drove from Georgia to Guatemala and on that trip I think we listened to five Louis Lamour books and man they just loved it. They couldn't get enough of it and I did too. I absolutely loved it. Like we'd stop for gas and they're like quick get back in so we can start the book or we'd stop for food or whatever any break and I was like let's turn the book back on.

And it was incredible for both of them to do that. Our then 11 year old was just all over it. It was fantastic. So yeah. So and so in that case that's done as a co -activity and that's helpful for those books they can understand. Now on their own. I forgot about we did a ton of that.

we listen to a lot of books while we're driving together as a family. Back in Alaska to Panama. Well, yeah, then and we do tons of road trips. We've driven across the country multiple times. We spent a lot of time doing road trips and we'll listen to books together. And I forgot about that. We would listen and discuss a lot of books together as a family. Although that also doesn't always work and notice as a lot of the kids have gotten older, it doesn't work as much because we're all at different levels. We all have different interests. And so the young

and the younger kids are like, I don't understand this book, turn it off. So you have to kind of adjust to the situation and circumstance. But what I'm trying to say is, while all of that is valuable, and I agree with all of that, and we may have differing opinions on this, I think that when they're listening to things on their own, it may be more of what we call fluffy sometimes.

Rachel Denning (48:59.213)
but it can still be valuable because they're falling in love with the process of learning. So, well, the process of listening and stories.

I understand that. In fact, my own story, my own story, too. My own story. I was reading things as a kid that got me the love of learning, love of books that I wouldn't read today. And I wouldn't share them. There's not a lot of substance there. And I, on a principle level, like there's so many fun, nominal classics. There's so many great books, more than you'll ever read in a lifetime. There's no reason to go through the fluff. There's no reason to consume fluff because.

there's too many good books that have substance. That being said, that's for a more mature level, I would say, because while you're still trying to get your kids to fall in love with learning, like, oh, here's an example. We were traveling through Turkey.

We didn't have very many physical books and we had nothing available for our 12 year old and I wanted him to read a physical book just because I wanted him to practice his reading. And we were at a bookstore and I found Diary of a Wimpy Kid. Now that's not a book I would normally buy. You know, that's just not one of my personal favorites, but I got it. You know, I'm like, okay, he's gonna read Diary of a Wimpy Kid. No big deal. He's gonna practice his reading. It's something I think he would be interested in.

and we got it and he read it and he didn't even like it enough for me to buy the next one but the point was he read it and he practiced his reading.

Rachel Denning (50:36.397)
That's kind of what I'm talking about here. We do kind of maybe, if we want to say quote unquote, sacrifice their standards a little bit on some of the things we're gonna let them read or listen to while they go through this transitional phrase. Yes, we want them to read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. But if we expect them to read that when they're 12, we're not gonna develop this love of learning. So my 12 year old is listening to things like He Who Fights With Monsters or Percy Jackson or whatever else is on the list. That's kind of where we need to

have this little flexibility, if that makes sense. So my position is I don't like that.

Well, and that's why I was saying we've come to an agreement here that Rachel does that. Although you do recognize that that was kind of part of your own journey, as well as part of my journey. Mark of the Thief is something they've listened to. Oh, but then the other thing is too, like with our now teenagers, we are, as a family, older family members, are going through books together that we're discussing. We have a list. Yeah, a really great list of the classics.

Obviously Jane Austen, the Scarlet Letter, we've done, we've done, I'm currently working on Uncle Tom's Cabin and Moby Dick. I did Moby Dick before that and all of you have already done those. I'm kind of behind all of you guys, you're ahead of me. Return of the Native.

So we have an entire list like that which I actually should share that we are working on. Oliver Twist was one of them, 20 ,000 Leagues Enter the Sea, of course. And then, oh, here's another thing too. Like a great way to connect learning to real life is to connect it to things you're doing. Now, obviously the travel is a good example because like when we went to Warsaw and Auschwitz in Poland,

Rachel Denning (52:37.037)
we as a family listened to books about it. So we listened to Auschwitz Lullaby and The Teacher of Warsaw, which were amazing. The Teacher of Warsaw was so powerful. Yeah. I had my 12 -year -old, we were going to Krakow, I had him listen to The Trumpeter of Krakow. So you connect it to things. So if there's civil war sites around you or something like that, connect the learning, but try to find something that's, again, a story. You don't want to make them listen to some...

historical book that's dry and boring you want to connect it with a story that's interesting to them. Gulliver's Travels. Well, okay, there's a lot in here. 700. There's 700 in here. Return of the Dragonslayers by Brandon Mole. That's one of them that my kids used to read. Oh yeah, they really like Brandon Mole and Brandon Sanderson. I like Brandon Sanderson's book. I think there's more substance in there. Some of them are very good. Right.

So anyways, that's, oh, my son listened to one about Vikings. I don't know if I should recommend it, because Viking stuff is pretty violent, but you know, we went to Norway, and so we learned about the Vikings. So again, just some other ideas. So I think that's enough. That's enough of an idea, a framework, an outline. Just basically just...

Facilitate the love of stories the more you can do that the more you can get your kids to fall in love with story Which I'm gonna say includes movies like movies are stories and so if they can fall in love with story and Then you can connect that I think that's where audiobooks are powerful because anyone can listen to an audio book one way we navigated that is we would We knew there was a good movie and so we would read the book

And so or listen to it. It's like, hey, we listen to this book when we're done listening, we'll watch it. Exactly. That was a great transition. And what was super cool about that is they all noticed the book was better than the movie. That's exactly what you want to have happen. You don't want them saying, oh, I don't want to read the book. I'll just watch the movie because it's, it's such passive learning for the most part for movies. And it's like, oh, it's a little effort. But if they, if they listen or read the book first and then watch movie, like a movie is kind of disappointing because the book is so good. That's exactly what you want going on. They're like, oh, I prefer the book.

Rachel Denning (54:52.015)
And another thing I will do, you know, because they do love story that if, say, they, especially with my younger children, if they want to watch a movie, and you know, for us we try to stick to once a week on that, I'll be like, no, we're not watching a movie tonight, but you can listen to an audiobook, you know.

let's get an audiobook that you can listen to, especially when it's not something that they can do just all the time because that is a part of it. It's not just available 24 -7. So you make that a part of something that they're allowed to do and it becomes a fun thing, you know? That's...

entertaining and beneficial. Help them want it, help them love it, help them enjoy it, help them see all of it. And as you're constantly reading and sharing what you're reading and it's, it's helping you be a better person, helping you get better results and you're sharing how exciting it is, how real it is, how relevant it is. You're making connections to real life so that they, they get this sense of like, man, these great old books are super relevant to real life scenarios. They'll help me be happy.

happier and more successful, of course I want books in my life. And then you, oh man, it's beautiful. And then you get into biographies and autobiographies and history. I love reading. I love reading. And that has happened, you know, with our older teens. We've just seen that naturally happen where you start getting older and they get more interested in other content. Our oldest daughter especially, she loves biographies. And, you know, Marcus Aurelius, of course, we mentioned and other...

stoic literature and you know on and on you know our son right now he's out doing sales and he's listening to sales books and they just naturally make that connection like you said where they begin saying oh yeah books this is where we get story and information and learning and education and guidance and mentoring and they just turn to those things and then that carries over into podcasts and other

Rachel Denning (56:55.629)
You just become a consumer of content, which is ultimately back to the original question, like, what is it we really want? That's what we really want. We want our children to consume content that has a positive effect on their lives. Beautiful. And it has certainly had a positive effect on our lives. Absolutely. I can wholeheartedly, without reservation, say that reading has totally transformed my life.

And essentially, if you can trace it back upstream, every good thing we have in our life, this extraordinary family life we live, this dream life we're living, is because of books. Book after book after book led us down the path to become better people, more capable, more knowledgeable, understanding human beings. And it's blessed every aspect of our life. And then we get to share it, right? Rachel gets to share it in the 28th challenge. I get to share it in the master class.

All of this comes from just the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of books across time and space that have helped us understand life and given us tools. We get, we get to sit at the feet, so to speak, of some of the greatest thinkers and leaders of all times. Or conversely, sometimes some of the worst thinkers and leaders of all time. You're like, yeah, it's worth reading. And you get to read tragedies. And that's important.

certain age to read the tragedy. The series that we're reading, the classics that we're reading with our older teens, a lot of them end. There's no happy, happily ever after ending. It's tragic endings. And they're like, oh, this is getting depressing. Book after book, sad ending. I'm like, that's the reality check that so many lives, real lives, actual lives end.

tragically because choices have consequences. And it is so important to read both sides that, oh, look, these good choices led to this wonderful outcome. And it's just as important to read these books that say, man, these poor choices led to terrible outcomes. Yeah. Anna Karenina and Adam Bovary are both on the list. Yes. And you gotta read those. Well, and even the Return of the Native. No!

Rachel Denning (59:17.229)
It's so sad. I get into the story so much and love and learn from them. So this is great. Continue your education, help your kids facilitate their business. Deep, deep love of learning and it'll be such a blessing for our families. Love you guys. Thanks for listening.