How to Make Your Child Into a Reader – Part One

Most of us know that our children will need to know how to read when they grow older. Reading will lead to some of life’s greatest pleasures. Do you remember reading the beautiful love letter your spouse sent you? Do you remember reading your favorite novel?

You certainly realize that you can gain new knowledge and be inspired by reading, your doing it now.
Now many today will say that the internet is ruining children’s reading skills. I am not sure I agree with that, but I certainly would not be using the internet for a child’s first reading experience. For that, I would still vote for good old-fashioned books. So what should a parent do?

Well, actually, there are a few things. In part one, I will talk about what you should do in your home. In part two I will talk more about how to read to your child.

Number 1- Start reading early! Any educator will tell you that at some point in a child’s life, if you have not started reading already, you are late. Better late than never, but you should have started earlier. On the other hand, there is no point that it is too soon to start reading. So I have a picture with each of my sons on my lap reading a book when they were one day old. I admit, I am a little nuts and that was more for the photo-op than for my sons reading skills. But we read to them every day and now they are readers. Something worked!

Number 2 – Surround them with reading material. If a child is surrounded by balls, they will play with balls and eventually learn sports. If a child is surrounded by cooking things, they will play with cooking and eventually learn to cook. If a child is surrounded by books, magazines, newspapers and other written material, they will play with books and eventually learn to read books.

Number 3 – Model reading for them. Children will do what you do. If you play piano, they will play piano. If you play basketball, they will play basketball. If you read, they will read. One of my proudest moments was when my 3 year old (literally) grabbed a newspaper from the breakfast table and replaced it with a book for me to read to him.

So the first thing we should be doing to encourage our kids to read is to value reading ourselves. This will lead to our children valuing reading. And when our children value something, there will be no stopping them from doing it!

Next, in part two, I will talk about how to read to your child.