How to Encourage Your Child to Read Independently

Our goal as parents and educators is to help our children to enjoy reading for its own sake, not to read because they are told to.  How many people enjoy and choose things to do because they are ‘told’ to?  Few of us do. Kids are the same.

There are several ways whereby you can encourage your child to enjoy reading and improve your child's reading comprehension skills, and not pick up a book because they ‘have to’.

·         Go to the library or bookstore and get some literature that caters to your child’s interests (e.g. if he loves baseball, get some magazines, how to books, biographies, or a book about the history of baseball) and start reading it to him.  Your enthusiasm will surely rub off.

·         Provide your child with movie reviews, comics, and even video game manuals (they are actually quite detailed and have a significant amount of text).  After all, they are all literature, and what would be better to read than something your child is interested in? 

·         Develop a library at home.  Make the library your child’s library.  He/she will develop a sense of ownership and pride in his/her books.

·         Visit quality websites that relate to your child’s interests.  There are jillions of websites about cars, dinosaurs, movies, music, and especially video games.  There are a vast amount of written articles on everything!  Just get out there and find them.

·         Make bedtime ‘reading time’.  For example, if your child always goes to bed at 8:30, make 8:30 – 9:00 reading time.  Your child will take advantage of the extra half hour.  This will become a treat and habit at the same time.

As you expose your child to high interest literature, coupled with a high amount of enthusiasm, you are creating a recipe for a love of reading.