If reading with your child is a struggle, focus on these three key ideas: being flexible, keeping it fun, and experimenting.
Be flexible. Being ready and willing to adjust to your child. To make the mental shift this requires, it can be helpful to deliberately focus on the end goal rather than the immediate one. The end goal is that at some point your son or daughter enjoys reading and reads independently. There are an infinite number of routes that can be traveled to reach that goal. What does that mean? It means that you can be flexible about what you read, when you read, why you read, where you read, and how you read—and still reach that point where your son or daughter seeks out books on their own and reads them from cover to cover. It matters that your son or daughter has repeated exposure and positive experiences with books. It doesn’t matter if those books are fiction, nonfiction, picture books, e-books, or the encyclopedia. It doesn’t matter if the reading takes place in the bathtub, backyard, or while cuddled in bed.
Keep reading fun. Think about your own childhood. Chances are one of two things happened. If you were lucky, you were surrounded by interesting books and your family and teachers showed you that they were these magical things that involved shared moments with family and friends, that would make you laugh, transport you to far places, and provide you useful bits of information just when you needed it. If you weren’t so lucky, books were painful and unpleasant. The books were boring or difficult, your questions were shushed, you had to sit uncomfortably for long periods of time, or you were laughed at or scolded for not understand or being able to pronounce the words. If you are in this second category, chances are scars from your negative reading encounters are still present in your mind today—but you are trying to create a different experience for your son or daughter.
Experiment. I said before that there are a lot of different routes to literacy. When one route doesn’t seem to be working, try a different one. When one time of the day doesn’t seem to be working, try a different time of the day. If one book isn’t working, try a different book. If one experiment fails but you want to try it again in a week, try it again. Recognize that the same solution won’t work all of the time, yet repeated experimentation will give you a collection of solutions—and one of those will work.
Be flexible. Being ready and willing to adjust to your child. To make the mental shift this requires, it can be helpful to deliberately focus on the end goal rather than the immediate one. The end goal is that at some point your son or daughter enjoys reading and reads independently. There are an infinite number of routes that can be traveled to reach that goal. What does that mean? It means that you can be flexible about what you read, when you read, why you read, where you read, and how you read—and still reach that point where your son or daughter seeks out books on their own and reads them from cover to cover. It matters that your son or daughter has repeated exposure and positive experiences with books. It doesn’t matter if those books are fiction, nonfiction, picture books, e-books, or the encyclopedia. It doesn’t matter if the reading takes place in the bathtub, backyard, or while cuddled in bed.
Keep reading fun. Think about your own childhood. Chances are one of two things happened. If you were lucky, you were surrounded by interesting books and your family and teachers showed you that they were these magical things that involved shared moments with family and friends, that would make you laugh, transport you to far places, and provide you useful bits of information just when you needed it. If you weren’t so lucky, books were painful and unpleasant. The books were boring or difficult, your questions were shushed, you had to sit uncomfortably for long periods of time, or you were laughed at or scolded for not understand or being able to pronounce the words. If you are in this second category, chances are scars from your negative reading encounters are still present in your mind today—but you are trying to create a different experience for your son or daughter.
Experiment. I said before that there are a lot of different routes to literacy. When one route doesn’t seem to be working, try a different one. When one time of the day doesn’t seem to be working, try a different time of the day. If one book isn’t working, try a different book. If one experiment fails but you want to try it again in a week, try it again. Recognize that the same solution won’t work all of the time, yet repeated experimentation will give you a collection of solutions—and one of those will work.
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