Monday, January 11th, 2010
Creating a Reading Climate
From time to time, parents will ask my advice on how to motivate their children to read. In reply, I always go back to what made me an avid reader: I was raised in a home where reading was clearly valued. One of my very earliest memories is sitting in my father’s lap, leafing through a little book about reptiles. My parents read to me on a regular basis from before my memories begin. I listened to my older brother and sister read and dreamt of the day I could read for myself. Dinner table conversations were often about the various books we were reading. Family vacations always included Mother reading to us during those long car trips. Most evenings, our entire family would sit down in the den after dinner and read for an hour or so – sometimes my father would be reading aloud to all of us. On other evenings, we’d each be engrossed in our own book.
Only later in life did I learn to appreciate the incredible gift my parents gave my siblings and me. They taught us that reading was not only important, but that it was a great pleasure. I don’t remember them over putting this into words, but the lesson came through loud and clear all the same.
Even to me, the picture I just presented seems impossible in today’s world. There are so many more distractions now for families. But really, don’t we still have the same 24 hours in a day? A friend of mine is fond of saying, “Don’t say you don’t have time for that. Just admit it’s not a priority in your life.”
Perhaps that is the key: making reading a priority. It costs nothing but time to listen to a child read a library book brought home from school. Trips to the public library make a great (and inexpensive) family outing. Reading to children creates a bond you just can’t duplicate by watching a television show together, no matter now entertaining it may be: Sharing a book together is interactive. Watching TV together isn’t.
Give it a try! Read to and with your children. Make it a pleasant experience – not a chore. Let your children see you reading – even if it’s just the sports section of the local newspaper! Talk about what you’re reading. Children are hard to fool. They know what’s important to the adults in their lives. They hear our words, but our actions, as the saying goes, really do speak much louder. Who knows? You may just get excited about reading all over again!
