Photo by Maël BALLAND
According to several experts, children already learn to read at 6 or 7. But there are cases where they know how to earlier than that. The challenge is to educate themselves consistently.
As parents, you want your child to excel at what they do and succeed in life. So the essential thing for them to achieve is good quality education. And to be prepared for better opportunities, you must hone their skills earlier in their lives. So being the parent with the power and authority to shape their children’s beginning stages of development, how will you make your child love reading?
The Essence of Reading for Children
It would help if you instilled the habit of reading in a child early on to help develop their intellectual capacity and absorb their environment better. They can understand emotions and other ways of life once they have a visual encounter with the world around them. Reading aids in their social development since they associate what they see with comprehending words. Books exercise a child’s mind and gear up their imagination, enabling them to create their perspectives.
In the case of parent-child relationships, a time for reading bonds the two, with the parent reading aloud a bedtime story while the child listens. This activity strengthens your bond with your child and helps develop their brain, as mentioned. Reading aloud to children also aids in their listening skills and builds a sturdier emotional connection with others. In turn, they might eventually do it on their own one day, as they take pleasure in absorbing information that brings out a wide range of emotions.
Making Your Child Love Reading
There are many developmental benefits to a child who is well-versed at reading. Their language communication skills grow and will be an advantage to them as they grow older. Not only does reading benefit a child, but it will also teach the parents and allow them into the child’s world where there’s no limitation as to how far their imaginative minds go.
If you want to invest in your child’s reading skills, here are a few tips you can try:
- Be a good example. Letting your kids see that you are an avid reader will help them feel encouraged to do the same and pick up a book to read. It’s a well-known fact that what children see, children do. So be a good example to your kids by letting them see that reading is an excellent habit to form at an early stage.
- Bond together through bedtime reading. Children typically ask their parents to read bedtime stories to help them fall asleep. But sometimes, children find comfort in the sound of their parent’s voice, encouraging a strong bond which is essential once your child matures. You can read to them a collection of children’s short stories by Ruthanne, for starters. For it to not seem one-sided, engage your child by asking them questions that will make them anticipate what happens next in the story or what the characters do. Turn it up a notch by occasionally letting them read to you.
- Utilize library access. The library system in specific communities offer free admission, with programs that are heavily catered to school-age children like yours. Get them to listen in to some reading activities and allow them to interact with fellow kids in any public library events.
- Tap into their interests. Sometimes, your child might be into reading other forms of literature, like comics. This is still a good thing because reading comics spans all ages, and they are paired with age-appropriate visuals that appeal to a particular audience. As long as you regulate the kind of content your child reads, there won’t be any risks of encountering violence and other explicit stuff they’re not supposed to see.
- Have a reading nook at home. To increase concentration within your child as they read, you should have a reading-specific corner within your household. It should still be cozy enough for your child to settle in, so they can smoothly get into the zone.
- Let them join or build a book club with friends. Your child can learn social skills by letting them be part of a book club, enhancing their reading comprehension and simultaneously enabling them to bond with other kids. They can even incite discussions over the same interests, developing their communication skills.