10 Ways To Get Your Child Interested In Reading

July 23, 2008

photo by cara75

My children loves reading. To me, reading is important and its an essential skill to cultivate.  I remember asking my sister-in-law if my nephew reads when we were chatting.  Her reply was:” no..he don’t.  i tried reading to him but he is simply not interested and runs around.”  So, it seems that this behavior in a toddler has discourage the parents from reading to them altogether.  The reply I gave her was to persist… no matter how he react to reading, just persist reading to him and teaching him.  Let me define persist.. it is not forcing your toddler to sit still and listen to you read.  It’s keep thinking of ways to arouse his interests slowly.

I have this problem of being unable to sit still with Ashton and Ashlyn when they start reading but now they sometimes pick up story books from the book shelf. Ashton picks up the habit of reading when we were in Montana, USA with my husband for business trip and this is what I do.

1. Set a time to read. No matter how busy you are, always set a time for reading.  It doesn’t have to be too long.  It can be as short as 10 minutes.  Get a book and get your toddler to sit down with you.  Even if he starts to crawl around, it doesn’t matter.  Continue to read.  One fine day, he will just sit down and listen.  That’s a test of your patience though.
2. Keep reading the same book. That’s for the very initial stage.  Toddler loves the idea of familiarities.  After reading the same thing over a period of time, they will settle down and listen when you start telling the stories.  Ashlyn loves a book untitled “babies” by Baby Enstein.  It’s because that’s her very first book.
3. Make it interesting. Make reading interesting..Get yourself engage in the story.  Change your tones at different characters of the story.  Apart from that, you might want to create some sound effect. For instance, when one of the character if a cow, I will make a moo moo sound, cat, I will go meow…etc..
4. Build in experimental learning. Relate the contents of the book to daily life.  For instance, when I bring Ashton to the zoo and we see a Hippo and it just happen we have read a story with hippos.  I will go “Ashton, remember Mr Hippo?  He has got the biggest mouth, ….” Try to relate back so that they it can arouse their interest in the book that they are reading and at the same time learn about the things around them.  Kill two birds with one stone.
5. Have a mini library for them. You can get a book case just for their books and put it at places within their reach.  This will encourage them to reach out for the books themselves.
6. Start with picture books. I start out by giving my children picture books.  Some are pictures of animals with only the names of the animals of it.  Children love bright and colourful pictures.  You can also have some imaginary stories to this pictures.
7. Most importantly, do not force them to read.  Hard pushing the children to read might backfire.  Do not force.  Forcing them will make reading seems like a chore.
8. Choose a subject of their interest. If your toddler is old enough to express his interest, find reading materials suited to his interest.  Ashton loves train, so I try to get some books related to trains.  One of his favourite is Thomas and Friends.
9. Acknowledge the toddler’s attempt to read. Sometimes, Ashton will just pick up a simple word book and attempt to read to me.  For every word he attempt to pronounce, I will praise him and tell him that he did well.  There was once he was so motivated that he learn the whole set of baby’s first words.  There are 6 books in a set and he was less that 2 year old back then.  Praise works wonder for children.
10. Cultivate reading habits yourself. Children are influence by the person closest them.  Show them that you can read, so can they!

In the current context, literacy is a must.  Apart from that, reading is so enjoyable that you can basically immerse yourself in another world through reading.  Reading is another way to enhance your children’s imagination too.

Posted in Education, Interesting Findings, My Parenting Journal