Five Ways to Encourage Your Child to Read

A love of reading is a gift that will last your children a lifetime. It will educate them- not just in facts, but in ways of thinking. It will make them laugh and cry - it will lift them up in their lowest moments and inspire them at their highest. It will give them access to uncountable worlds and lives that they would otherwise never see. Reading will, in the long run, be by far the greater part of their education, and it is one of the most important and valuable gifts you can give to your children, and it starts right now. Here's how you can help to encourage your children to explore books.

Start Young

Any task requires practice - even a simple ability, like listening to a long story and following along is not a facility we are born with. It must be cultivated young. Start before your children can read, and preferably before they can speak. When they're very young, it's important that they begin to associate the rhythm of the story with the pleasant activity of hearing their parent's voice. As they get older, make sure you keep up, and give them better and more complex stories – funny stories are ideal, because they are inherently enjoyable on a very basic neurological level. Be aware that you’re probably going to find yourself reading the same story over and over again, many times. Young children take a lot of comfort in repetition, and that will show here. Try to encourage variety, though – it’s important to keep them growing. As they get older and begin to learn to read, try having them every other chapter to you.

Limit other Media

With any kind of medium, there tend to be tradeoffs between how superficially compelling they are at first glance, and how much value you can extract from them in the long run – and, naturally, commercial media favors works that are very interesting and superficially exciting, but may not have very much depth to them – television in particular, while it occasionally produces deep and brilliant content, has serious problems. Most of the shows meant for children are vigorous, colorful, exciting schlock with minimal redeeming value. Videogames can be problematic as well, although they have some redeeming value in that they require a degree of active participation, and can teach basic skills like puzzle-solving, risk-assessment, patience, and money-management.

Still, if you want your children to invest in a less-obviously-exciting medium like books, it helps if they’re a little bit bored. Boredom is useful. Limit TV and videogame time, and try to make sure that the content they’re absorbing there has value. The Twilight-Zone is excellent, thought-inspiring, and surprisingly age-appropriate – and, of course, there are the classics like Reading Rainbow and Mr. Rogers. The Portal series of videogames will teach spatial reasoning and elementary physics like nothing else. It’s important, in parenting, to take lessons where you can find them.

 Give Them Fun Books

It honestly doesn’t matter too much what they start out reading, so long as there’s variety in it – books are gateway drugs, and bad books lead to better books. Provide books that you know are compelling to kids, like the Harry Potter series, and books that cater to their interests. Don’t try to force them to read them, but make it clear that the option is available. As they begin to get into the habit of reading, introduce them to their local public library, and let them explore for themselves.

Be Flexible about Age-Appropriateness

The best books are written for adults, and, as a result, tend to have some concepts and content in them that may be troubling for children. Sex, suffering, death, and madness all provide a lot of drive to your plot, and pop up nearly-universally in literature. Your children will make the most of their reading careers if you allow them to read what they want, on the understanding that they should come to you if something bothers them, or they don’t understand it. A certain exposure to troubling ideas is probably good for children – and knowing how to handle that sort of thing is a life skill that will serve them well as adults. Be aware that some of the questions will be hard to answer. This requires a lot of patience and maturity as a parent. If it’s too much, try limiting them to just the children’s section, or just the young adults, at least until they’re a little older.

Don’t Push Too Hard

Few people like being told what to do, and children who are forced to read will do so with a bad taste in their mouths, and be less likely to enjoy it later. Also beware of trying to incentivize them with small rewards, as there’s significant evidence that people are less likely to perform small good deeds when offered a small reward, as it makes their natural motivation feel cheaper. Allow things to develop naturally – give them the opportunities, an let them seek them out for themselves.

Kristen Thomas is an avid blogger and contributor to TheLearningExperience.com, a leading child care provider with quality daycare centers throughout the United States.