When my first born was little, it seemed as though there was this HUGE push towards parents to READ TO THEIR CHILDREN. And I did (honestly, babies 1-4 were read to A LOT…babies 5 and 6…I think I dropped the ball a bit). I’m not sure if this is still a push or not, because my kids are all grown now and though I work for the school district, I am pretty isolated on all the things. So, if this is obvious information for you, I apologize. I think, in general, homeschooling parents are amazing at reading to their kids. We love to snuggle with our kids on the couch, and we can cover the reading and usually another subject at the same time 🙂 And it seems to just “settle” our kids. I mean, don’t get me wrong…a few of my children had an uncanny ability to tune in to television and were quiet while they watched a show…but then too much time in front of a screen would always end up with them fighting. I don’t know the “science” behind it, but too much screen time clearly impacts us (yup, we adults included). We get restless and kind of frustrated – and as an adult, I know I need to go outside and move my body – but little ones don’t always get that and that restlessness ends up with kids bickering.
Anyways…reading aloud to your kids is honestly the best thing you can do to encourage your kids to read. And I mean you – not the IPad, because it isn’t just about seeing and hearing the words, but rather about the bonding experience. When we read to our little ones, we tend to sit close. We enjoy the pictures together, and point out different things in the illustrations and the text, and though you may not realize it, you are teaching your babies to associate reading with affection and wonder. If your child’s first experience at reading is not until they are 5 or 6 years old and suddenly they have to try to make sense of this code we have, and it doesn’t “click” right away…they will probably hate reading. It isn’t fun, there is no affection, everyone is frustrated, none of it makes sense.
Reading to kids also teaches them what a fluent reader SOUNDS like. They hear expression, pauses, what to do if you misread or mispronounce a word. When they first start to decode words, they will not sound fluent. But they will know what the goal is.
Reading to kids teaches them how to hold a book, and that we read from left to right in our language. You don’t have to do this real formally, but pointing to words with your finger as you read, models that. It’s important.
I know teaching kids how to read can be a challenge. Sometimes we are so eager for our kids to read, we want to push and if it doesn’t “click” right away, everyone is frustrated and angry. As a homeschooling parent, you likely have 50 other things you need to attend to that add to that frustration and teaching littles to read is time consuming – time you probably don’t have when there is meals to make, and laundry to do, and groceries to buy, and bills to pay, diapers to change, and the baby is sick. But let’s take a breath and remember a few things…
This is not an emergency situation. The world will not end if your children don’t learn to read by age 6. Teaching someone to read is hard work but just like when children learn to walk, it will happen when they are ready. You can encourage and work with them to keep trying, and you should, but you didn’t get angry when they couldn’t walk and once they mastered it, nobody cared how old they were when they originally started. Learning to read can be harder than learning to walk for many kids. If we unintentionally make this experience unpleasant, we are not creating a reader. Maybe, at best, we have a decoder in the end – but that is not our goal. Our goal is to introduce our children to books and the magic within. We want our kids to learn to read so they can learn, wonder about our world, enjoy the experience of seeing things through other perspectives, and engage with the text. We want kids who can continue their own education through reading. So take a break, the housework can wait, and let’s make reading GREAT!