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Over at the Freakonomics blog, the authors have again noted their stance on the subject of reading to your children. Notably, they say it doesn’t really help and they use a flashy headline to ask a question. Perhaps surprisingly, I agree with their points, even if I have some trouble with their wording.

Culture cramming may be a foundational belief of modern parenting but, according to the data, it doesn’t improve early childhood test scores.

Amen. The anecdotal evidence I’ve witnessed doesn’t support it. The aggregate test scores of our high schools don’t appear to show the improvements of this group of very intensely focused parents. Do the special schools and flash cards give your kids an important head start? I can’t say. My concern is that that the kid will learn something much worse than arithmetic. They’ll learn to hate learning, a problem that is incredibly difficult to teach away.

I want my kids to love to read. I’m not particularly concerned about the mechanics of reading at such an early age. I don’t have a spreadsheet to track their progress or a checklist where I record their accomplishments. I tend to keep the flash cards hidden within the case of that brightly colored alphabet work set.

I do, however, attempt to foster their interest in books, or magazines, or even the occasional map from an amusement park. I decode the writing below the occasional statue on the fields of Gettysburg just because they ask. I look forward to the days of comic books and secretly thank J.K. Rowling for a future where I can show my kids that reading is more than something that school forces you to do.

So, we’re on the same page, at least until their conclusion, which doesn’t need to be restated more than it needs to be reworded.

Parenting technique is highly overrated. When it comes to early test scores, it’s not so much what you do as a parent, it’s who you are.

Parenting is very much an attempt to pass on the good and acknowledge, and maybe contain, the bad. The most important lessons you teach your kids, you do as an example. In a sense, it’s very much about who I am. I want my kids to be like me — at least the good parts of me. But the X’s and O’s of reading, writing, and arithmetic come up when I play a different but related role, the role of a teacher. When we talk about who I am, and who I want them to be, it’s then that I’m being the parent.

If I’m reading things correctly, it sounds like I’m taking the right tact. I certainly dig propping the kids on my lap for a short story or two or three or four. More importantly, they seem to like it too.

I’m really disappointed that I haven’t spent my time this year blogging, something I log as a personal failure more than anything else. I have no audience to please or satisfy. I don’t harbor any fantasies of the importance of this space. I do, however, very much use these pages as an offbeat historical record. I note the updates about the kids. I follow my old thoughts as an active reader. And, occasionally, I remember that the process of simply writing is often an exercise worth doing. I feel a bit sorry I don’t.

My only, and unspoken, New Year’s Resolution this year was that I wanted to create. That might mean many things — the sandbox I hope to build for my two little boys or the paint I’m certain the wife hopes I finally get around to applying to the walls — but, mostly, it meant I wanted write.

I wanted to write more about gaming, a personal hobby and industry in flux. As the major players in the gaming market position their billion dollar investments, there’s commentary to be made there. I’d love to try my hand at it.

I wanted to write a bit about software and programming. An outstanding percentage of software related writing outside of Joel on Software is either boring, lacking style, or both. Some of it makes my eyes bleed. Some of it makes them close. I wonder how I’d do. Is my quirky style interesting to others? Is my quirky style interesting to me?

But mostly, I wanted to get back on track. Shake the dust off.

It’s hard to view your home page as a vacant wasteland. I’ll see if there’s something I can do about that.