"Raising Readers"

By Cheri Fuller

Children are made readers on the laps of their parents. —Emilie Buchwald

With the abundance of computer games and Playstations, cartoons and TV shows, it may sound like an impossible dream to raise a reader today, but it’s not an overwhelming task. A love of reading is a great legacy to pass on to your kids.

Here are some ways to get your kids turned on to books—even if they’re “reluctant readers”:

• Whatever your child is interested in, connect it with reading. Reading is vital to your child’s learning—and can be lots of fun if you tap into kids’ center of learning excitement (that means the subject or topic they want to learn about more than anything else). This is the #1 way to get kids into books and reading. If your child loves sports, get some books on soccer, basketball, or his favorite sport or sports hero. If she is fascinated with whales or clouds and storms, there are great books on that. Ballerinas, World War II history, insects, dinosaurs, and more—the sky’s the limit on what you can find in books.
• Take advantage of your local public library. You can check out wonderful children’s books, educational games, kids’ books on tape, and lots more for free (just return them on time!). Make the children’s room of the local library your second home. Get to know the librarians and they can help your kids find interesting books. You can even reserve books from home on the Internet, a timesaver if you have an infant.
• If you go to the library every two weeks and get a big stack of books, you can deposit them in baskets in obvious places (by the couch, by your child’s bed, etc.)—don’t put the books “out of sight” or they’ll be “out of mind.”
• Play games that include reading, like “Boggle,” “Password,” “Go to the Head of the Class,” “Candyland,” “Scrabble Junior,” and others.
• Take your child to a local bookstore to spend her birthday or Christmas money on the purchase of a book by a favorite author instead of a new electronic toy.
• Install a clip-light next to your child’s bed or provide a bedside lamp and interesting books. Then give her a little extra time to stay up—if she’s reading. (Even 15 minutes a day will add up to a lot of silent reading!)
• Cuddle up with your kids and a book. Reading aloud as a family is one of the best ways to encourage your children’s reading and produces priceless memories, especially chapter books where they have to wait till the next night for the next episode. When it’s cold outside, get one of the Chronicles of Narnia series books by C.S. Lewis, an E.B. White book like Charlotte’s Web, or Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, snuggle up and read.

Every season brings a reason to share reading as a family and boost your child’s love of books—reading aloud by the fireplace, reading while traveling, perusing magazines while recovering from a cold or flu, reading recipes together while baking cookies—whatever the time or place, raising readers is a great privilege and responsibility we have as parents!

Copyright© 2004 Cheri Fuller, adapted from The Mom You’re Meant to Be: Loving Your Kids While Leaning on God (Focus on the Family/Tyndale). Use by permission only.