Often moms wonder if their kids would develop reading habits when they grow up. Some moms leave it to time, assuming that it’s too early and their children will develop this habit on their own. However, if most of the great maestros of the world started learning their instruments by the age of 2.5 years, shouldn’t a child also show at least some level of interest in reading from childhood? Indeed. There are some moms who believe that reading is in the genes. If the parents read a lot, the kids would automatically read and, if they are not avid readers, they abandon the efforts and leave it to the child’s choice. Reading habit in parents definitely helps facilitate an environment for the child to pick up this skill naturally, but it may not be guaranteed.
In this article, I will discuss with you how you can inculcate reading habits right from a very early age, irrespective of the fact if you or your spouse are voracious readers or not, to ensure that your children grow up to become good readers.
As you switch on your buying habits from clothes, diapers, bibs, etc and start investing in toys, spend an equal amount in books, mostly pictographic to begin with. Remember the mantra at this stage is both availability and interest and you have to work on both of them for your baby. The first few books when the baby is 9 months or so should be mostly with one big picture of a single item on a full page to help the little ones identify the objects, view them clearly (remember at this stage they are not focusing on attention to detail) and relate to them. Whenever possible, try to show a real-life replica of the object they are seeing in the book, at least the ones they are showing a higher level of interest in. Unless the child relates to what is printed, they will not be able to retain that interest. Encourage your child to spend more and more time with the books in hand, watching pictures. Be with them, displaying your excitement energetically. They being new to this world still don’t know the difference between a rattle and a book, so both will appeal equally to them: the former for its sound and the latter for its colors. For every toy you are purchasing, please buy a book to ensure that the baby’s surroundings are full of toys and books.
Gradually, your focus may go over to pictures showing a relation. For e.g., if the first books had the picture of a bib on one page, now you can show them pictures of a baby wearing a bib, so they start understanding context/relation. More examples: One football vs. one boy kicking a football, a milk bottle vs a milk bottle with a few cookies and so on. As mentioned earlier, it is important that you help the child relate the pictures in the books to real life things, so they are able to connect and understand the 3D shape of the object in question.
Eventually, the number of items in the pictures should increase as the child grows up and his cognisance of the environment widens. For e.g., two or more kids playing with a football on a green field with a sky beyond. Try to show the child a similar scene in the neighbourhood park when you go with them for an evening stroll. Make it a habit to read out a story to the child every night or during dinner time. You can tell them stories on vegetables or fruits to make them interested in food. Usually simple stories on mannerisms and good habits are a good introduction at the age of 2.5 years. Keep reading a book every day for about a week till the time the child is completely familiar with the book. Introducing too many books is equivalent to introducing too many concepts to the little brain; they may feel overwhelmed and lose interest. You can keep making references to the story even when you are not reading with your child. Once you realise that their familiarity with the story or the book is very high, you can introduce the next book/story to them. It’s a great idea to enact a few characters also, with the help of character toys or cardboard figures (that you make together with the child). For concepts like volcanoes or space, you can read out books and simultaneously show them some movies on the same topic. This helps the child understand the dimensions of these things and convinces them of their reality. For example, you can take your child to a visit to the planetarium in your city after reading books on the concept of space. Take them to a museum with a dinosaur skeleton in display after reading about dinosaurs, take them to palaces after reading about kings and queens and so on. With this kind of studied and deliberate approach, you will notice that your kids are giving same time to books as they are giving to toys.
In the process throughout, never coax your child in to reading against their own choice or mood. Reading should never look like something you want them to do, just like the thousand other things that the child has to do or oblige to because their parents want so without the child’s ability to understand the logic or reasoning behind the action. Reading should never fall in to the list of the child’s dos and donts - there should be nothing disciplinary about it. The way you don’t react to your pre-schooler when he plays with a doll or a transformer toy, your emotions should be very matter-of-fact with the reading habits of your children too at this stage. However, you can choose to reward your child by reading with or for them. For example, “if you finish your food all by yourself, mamma will read out that new book to you” or conducting story reading sessions for a group of children in your neighbourhood once a week that your child can look forward to. Even when the pre-schooler is 3 or 4, please don’t make comments like, “You have been playing all day long, why don’t you sit down with a book now?” When you say this, you are creating a polarity in the mind of the child between playing and reading.
For a pre-schooler, the habit is more important than the learning. Therefore, expose them to books on a variety of topics like human body, animals, birds, fairy tales, insects, volcanoes, space, dinosaurs, food names, or other story books like Pepper, Aesop’s fables, phonic-based stories, etc. It’s okay for them to grow fondness to some against the other. At this stage, it is fine if they never touch the human body book even after you have made a couple of attempts to introduce the book in a very interesting fashion. For 3 year and above children, mostly buy books with some activity at the end with stickers or colors or collection of objects. This will instil their interest as they are full of the energy to do something creative. Encourage them to tell stories that you have read out to them in their own words the next day. Some children may slightly customize the stories based on how they would have wanted the ending to be. Don’t correct them. Tell them, “Wow! That’s also a nice ending.” This will help them know that they are free to interfere in the world of story-telling with their imagination. After all, we are talking about toddlers and pre-schoolers here; they are not preparing for exams and will not lose marks if they recite a specific story a little differently.
I would like to conclude the article by asking you to focus on instilling the passion of reading when they are burgeoning. The way you want to make them independent in life skills, make them independent in their pursuit of knowledge also. For there will be a time, when their interest on certain topics may go beyond yours. And, you don’t want them to restrict themselves to what you like. The more they read, the more they will know. As Frederick Douglass has put it, "Once you learn to read, you will be forever free."
This article was published on mycity4kids.com on August 6, 2015
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