Do you tuck your small child in at night with a bedtime story? Lullabies are great, and so is a loving snuggle, but neither takes the place of reading.
Why reading?It’s a chance to bond, a chance to be physically and emotionally close…but so can singing a lullaby be these things, or just snuggling and talking with the child. Ah, but reading a story instills in the child a love of the printed word and encourages in him or her the desire to learn to read so that he, too, can uncover and discover the magic between the covers of a book.
You do want your child to learn to read and read well, and to read at least at an appropriate age if not an early age—right? And you do want her to have an ongoing interest in reading, and in learning from books? Then encourage in him the love of books you want to foster…and of what’s inside them.
What’s inside them? Knowledge. And knowledge is power. Surely you want your child to be powerful and accomplished.
Then read to him or her.
And, as he gets old enough, encourage him to follow along in the book as you read. As the child learns to recognize simple words on sight, as well as letter combinations, she’ll be laying the foundations for actual reading.
Read her a mix of easy readers and more complex stories. The more complex ones will hold her attention better, but the easy readers will be easier for her to follow along with as she attempts to decipher the stories “hidden” in the “hieroglyphs” (letters) on the pages.
As he gets just a little older and wants to try to read the story himself, encourage his halting and stumbling efforts, and praise him as he gets a word right (or near-right).
And don’t stop reading to him just because he’s learned to read himself. That’s tantamount to punishing him for an accomplishment: Now that he’s achieved a skill, he loses out on the closeness of having Mommy (or Daddy) tuck him in, snuggle with him, and read to him every night. Wrong!
You can let the child read to you, instead. Or you can read to her from a book that’s beyond her reading level, a story she can easily comprehend but cannot yet read. Just e sure you keep on reading every night.
Reading—it’s nothing less than the key that unlocks the world.