Confiscated contraband: 6 reading lights

My daughter has been waking up super cranky in the morning, so last night when we put her to bed, we unclipped her reading light. An hour later, my husband went down to check on her and found her with a flashlight. Back again, he removed 2 more lights. This is what I saw on the kitchen counter this morning. She’d managed to get her younger sister’s clip on light as well. I have no idea how she acquired light #6. Yet another reason to be pissed off at her partner in crime, Rick Riordan…

lights

19 thoughts on “Confiscated contraband: 6 reading lights

  1. I used to do this with my Nancy Drew books. I used to put the light back on after I heard my parents go downstairs. Unfortunately one night my Mom forgot something and had to come back up and saw the light on under my door. After that they regularly checked on me so I had to read by flashlight under the covers. I always said just till the end of the chapter and then something would happen and I would have to read on till the next chapter and on and on it would go. Oh and those Nancy Drew’s were handed down to me because they used to be my Mom’s!

  2. You guys are hilarious! Thank goodness my daughter has no idea how much support she’s getting on Reel Girl. Or maybe she does b/c last night, we found her reading with the bathroom light. My husband unscrewed the lightbulb. We sound evil, I know we do, but the girl is getting no sleep. I am wondering what she’ll come up with next…

    Margot

  3. My father, a respected philosophy professor, supplied a torch to one of my girlfriends (back in the 1950s) so she could read after lights-out at her convent boarding-school.

  4. I used to use the light from a backlit alarm clock to read by when I was about 10. I had to move the clock back and forth and up and down as I read from top to bottom, and it put forth an ugly orange glow, but Judy Blume and I were ok with that, because we were keeping each other company!

  5. I was exactly the same!

    My poor mother put six year old me to bed one night, and at about 2 am I started screaming. She thought she would have a sick kid and a sheet change on her hands, instead I was just excited that I had finally finished my first real chapter book…

    Luckily this kind of addiction always end well!

  6. When I was a young girl, living in a tiny house with my family, I would place my book on the floor, allowing the light that came under the door from the kitchen across the hall to fall across the page, hang my head over the end of the bed and read into the night. That was 50 years ago. Things don’t change much!

  7. My son is now just as guilty, (with Rick Riordan also to blame!). I did the same as a child, and I wonder if all those late nights are the reason I’m so short. But I also have a love of reading and a headful of my own ideas for writing, so I’ll take it. My suggestion is to put daughter to bed extra-early and allow her to read to her heart’s content until you decide to turn out the lights. And if you need to confiscate all lightbulbs in her room, or have her sleep in YOUR room to begin the night, so be it.

  8. My sister and I shared a room growing up, and we always stayed up late reading under the covers with a flashlight! We’re both in our late 30s now, and we still love to read 🙂

  9. I am reading this and chuckling, as I have the same problem with Amelia! I went to change her sheets the other week on the top buck and found an entire library up there!! We had a power outage last month, guess where all of our flashlights were found………

  10. Not sure how I feel about this. Of course as a reader, I think children who have a passion for reading should be encouraged. But this many reading lights borders on compulsion and definitely insubordination. Also, studies have shown that reading before bed and other stimulating activities can disrupt sleep, children need a sufficient amount of sleep for proper development, and you’ve said she’s been cranky. Maybe you’ll be able to wean her off her Rick Riordan addiction with some real strong female characters. 🙂

      • Or, I’m your parent and I’m trying to make decisions that I believe are in your best interest and you’re disobeying me as though you have no respect for my authority or my opinion and you don’t care that it makes me upset when otherwise I do everything in my power to provide you with a loving, stimulating environment. See, I can play that game, too. 😉

  11. Margot, I have that round LED light up near my bed. This way when my roommate wants to go right to sleep, I do the secret under the blanket thing with the LED light and read for a while longer. 🙂

    Best. contraband. ever.

  12. Gotta love a love of reading. When I was younger my mom actually grounded me from reading. Yes, you are reading that right. She grounded me so that I would be forced to go outside and play. And look at me now, I turned out awesome! 😉

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