Week 5 (Jan. 29-Feb. 4): Influencer

The prompt for Week 5 of #52Ancestors is 'Influencer', and it brings to me the influence of family.  I believe that the influence of family in how we each develop as individuals cannot be underestimated.  Spending the first few years of my life on an isolated sheep station with the only other child being my older sister has had a huge influence on my life, and increased the influence of my parents on me.

My parents always spoke to us in adult language - no baby talk for us - and took questions seriously.  If we asked, obviously we were interested and deserved a serious answer.  Having little opportunity for education themselves, my parents truly valued learning and as a child I can recall my parents slowly paying off a children's encyclopedia for us. 

Then we moved to the town of Moama, one of our first stops was the local library.  Both my parents loved to read and taught my sister and I to love books and reading from a very early age.  A Sunday morning tradition as young children was to spend time snuggled in our parents bed being read to before getting up for breakfast.  We always had books around, and we knew we had been truly naughty if our parents took away the book we kept beside our beds to read quietly if we woke up early. Throughout my childhood and into my teens in the evenings if there was nothing we specifically wanted to watch on TV we would sit together, each with puzzles or handcraft projects, taking turns to read aloud to each other.  I can recall being about 12 years old at a sleepover with friends when I first realised not all families read aloud to each other like this!

my sister and I both arrived at primary school already well able to read ourselves, and while our peers were learning their letters my sister and I were already independently reading for ourselves.  Fortunately our teachers were quite happy for us to visit the school library to borrow more advanced books rather than limiting us to the readers in our classrooms.  It is hardly surprising that this early influence resilted in my choosing to become a librarian as my career.