EXCLUSIVE: In A World Of Distraction, Second Lady Usha Vance Wants Children To Slow Down

ATLANTA — When Second Lady Usha Vance asked Georgia school children to share with her how often they get distracted by cell phones or tablets, almost every child in the school gym eagerly raised their hand in the air.

It’s hard for everyone, she told them. And it’s one of the reasons she wants them to be reading as much as they can.

“You see in your own life, I see it in mine, where my attention is fragmented, I get distracted and pulled away all the time when I have a phone around me,” she shared in a brief interview with The Daily Wire at Cherokee Classical Charter School in Atlanta, Georgia. 

“I know from experience and I know from hearing from other people that this is a real issue,” Vance explained. She had just finished listening in on several classes at the school and handing out bookmarks to the eager children, who carefully recited their lessons, led by their teachers, in the presence of the smiling second lady. 

Vance was in Atlanta to speak with students at the charter school about her “Summer Reading Challenge,” which encourages kids to read 12 books between June and September, and to fill out a form and send in their accomplishment to the Second Lady’s office for a personalized certificate and small prize. Some lucky winners will be selected to travel to Washington, D.C.

Second Lady Usha Vance tours the school rooms of Cherokee Classical Academy in Georgia.

On Thursday, Vance explained her challenge to around 200 school children and read them “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere,” the classic poetic tale of the Revolutionary War hero and his historic ride through Massachusetts. She also took a few questions from the students, who asked her what it is like to be the Second Lady and what her favorite books are. Vance shared that she loved Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House” series, detailing the life of Laura Ingalls and her family as they travel across the United States.

Across town, her husband was speaking at a Republican National Committee event before heading to an industrial refrigeration manufacturing facility in Peachtree City, Georgia, where he spoke about the importance of the “working families tax cuts” in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” JD Vance and Usha Vance had flown down to Georgia together on Thursday morning, kissed one another goodbye before the motorcade, and then sped off to their respective events.

Thursday was one of six “Summer Reading Challenge” events that Usha Vance has spoken at, and perhaps her last one of the summer, since the 2025-2026 school year is beginning for many students. She was poised and polite, gracious to the children and the school officials who welcomed her. She chuckled at the eager antics of the students in their classrooms, as they strove to best one another in answering questions while she watched.

Speaking with The Daily Wire after she toured the school itself and visited several classrooms, Usha Vance shared how she seeks to block technological distractions for children.

“For my children, and I think for all children, my goal is that we do things that try to counteract that,” Vance explained. “Whether that’s spending time outside, whether that is engaging in the kinds of activities where you just can’t be distracted, you really have to commit to build strength or skill or whatever it might be.”

“Or reading,” she added. “Reading, I think, is maybe the most important of all these because when you can read and focus on something for hundreds of pages, then you can really do anything at that point.”

Asked what her own three children are reading this summer, the second lady responded with a big smile, describing her eight-year-old as a voracious reader.

Second Lady Usha Vance reads to students at Cherokee Classical Academy in Georgia.

“So Mira, our youngest, is not a reader yet,” she explained. “Our oldest child is a total bookworm. He’s eight, so he’s read dozens of books this summer. Right now, I think he has been reading, actually, copies of the Mahabharata, which is an Indian epic, and he also just finished re-reading all the Percy Jackson books.”

“I think he read The Hobbit recently,” she noted, referring to J.R.R. Tolkien’s precursor to The Lord of the Rings trilogy. “Those kinds of things are really exciting.”

“And our middle guy has been immersed in dinosaur encyclopedias,” Vance concluded with a laugh. “That’s his thing right now.” 

The young Vance son’s interest in The Hobbit likely stems from his father’s partiality for The Lord of the Rings: Vice President Vance himself is known to be a fan of the “The Lord of the Rings” series and has even said that it greatly influenced his view of the world.

“I’m a big Lord of the Rings guy,” Vance said in a 2021 interview, “and I think, not realizing it at the time, but a lot of my conservative worldview was influenced by Tolkien growing up,” he said. “Big fan of C.S. Lewis — really sort of like that era of English writers. I think they were really interesting. They were grappling, in part because of World War II, with just very big problems.”

Vance’s wife speaks much less politically (she gently said she “high hopes” that people will come back to Washington, when asked by The Daily Wire whether she now feels safer in D.C. due to the White House’s enforcement efforts). But, like her husband, she also recognizes the massive impact that literature can have on an individual. In a statement on Thursday, she encouraged American children that reading will build strong foundations “that will serve them for a lifetime.”

“We want every child to know that reading opens doors,” said Usha Vance, “not only to education, but to imagination, opportunity, and achievement.”