When the Room Gets Wiggly, Make It a Story

How one “bounce-about” kid reminded me that presence isn’t quiet—it’s shared.

Community read-alouds aren't quiet. But neither is joy. | Photo by Quinn Cummings at a community shared reading experience.

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Every week, I’d bring juice boxes and picture books to our community read-aloud. Nothing fancy. Just a folding table, some chairs, a few coloring pages. But every week—there they were.

A brother and sister. She was younger—giggly, thoughtful, very busy figuring out the mechanics of the juice box. (Why didn’t it puff back out after you squeezed it?) I’d catch her eyes sometimes, mid-investigation, feet swinging. She always voted for another book.

Her brother, though?

Story time was his time.

And not in a sit-down-and-listen kind of way. No. He read with his whole body. Interrupting. Roaring. Jumping into the plot like it owed him something. It was chaos. Glorious chaos. But also? A little too much for the rest of the room.

Now, I always tell parents: be interruptible. Because the conversation that comes from the book? Often better than the book. (No shade!) But this? This was starting to pull focus.

And it hit me: I’ve seen this before. My son, Aidyn, used to do non-stop cartwheels during read-alouds. I started calling him my “bounce-about kid.”

So that’s what I did. I bounce-about adapted.

I added him to the book. Literally. I swapped in his name for a character. Gave him a role. “When I say ‘car,’ you say ‘vroom.’ When the lion shows up? That’s your moment.”

It worked. He had a part. The room exhaled. We kept going.

And now? Every time I see him in the school hallway or in the community, he roars.

I roar back.

Because reading out loud isn’t always calm. It’s not always quiet. But it can still be shared. If we make space for it.

So tell me—if you’ve ever led a group read-aloud, hosted a story circle, or shared books in a room full of wriggly bodies—what helped? What didn’t? What have you tried when one child starts to pull focus—and you want to keep everyone in the story?

Let’s talk about it. Because the wiggles, the interruptions, the unexpected tangents?

They’re part of the story, too.

My best,
Quinn