Want Your Kids to Love Reading? Here’s What Really Works

It is no grand secret that parents have influence over their children. You can reduce it even to biology: the little ones learn from the big ones. It is also no secret that reading is good for humans, especially for children. However, perhaps it is more surprising to draw a link between the two and state the fact that parents can deeply and purposefully impact their child’s reading habits.

The Hidden Power of Parental Influence

As much as a mother or father will teach their child goodness or manners, they will also bestow upon them many other lessons without necessarily meaning to. Without consciously acknowledging it, studies show that children are almost always watching our reactions, our behaviours, and our choices.

Adults do the same thing. They watch other adults in order to learn how to perform, to observe the kind of routines that may lend to happiness, health, and success. They say the most important communication is silent, understanding gained from observation and repeated patterns of behaviour. 

Children Learn by Watching, Not Just Listening

Children are clever; they are tiny sponges of information. After a long day at work, perhaps you like to pick up your favourite Stephen King novel, curl up on the couch, and get lost in the world of words. Let us say you do this each night, so much so that it becomes an observable part of your routine. It brings you joy, and everyone in your life can see that quite clearly, even without you announcing it.

While it may be unintended, your child may be recognising this activity as something important, worthwhile, and joyful. This by no means is to say that your children are like Big Brother – always watching – and that you cannot therefore do anything that you wouldn’t want your children to do. It is, above all, a strength, a piece of knowledge designed to help you. 

Why Encouragement Matters in Building Reading Habits

Parental encouragement is critical to a child in general, and studies have even shown a direct correlation between a child’s reading frequency and encouragement from their parents. A child likes to be encouraged by someone they love and respect. Even if they may not admit it until many years later, they want to make their parents proud.

Once they begin to read the vivacious and immersive world of literature, they will no longer need the same kind of encouragement, but rather the acknowledgement of their positive action. You may even find the opposite problem, not knowing how to stop them reading late into the night, but that is a topic for another article altogether.

Leading by Example

Although the world may dismiss children and their capacity to think for themselves, they undeniably have the ability to see beyond our words and encouragement. They want us to lead by example, to live the words we say.

Like having a friend that tells you to eat healthy whilst smoking a pack of cigarettes a day, children can easily recognize when actions don’t match words. They may ask themselves why they should read if their parents do not. They may even begin to believe that reading cannot be as good as people say if even their mother or father doesn’t read themselves. 

Parents Benefit Too: Replacing Screens With Books

Adopting reading habits is not only wonderful for children, but for the parents, too. Let’s face it, even though the youngest generation is getting all the criticism for being screen-addicted, most of us face some form of technological dependency. Our attention spans are shortened, AI is threatening our critical thinking, and often we find ourselves filling our spare moments with short distractions of social media.

Trading scrolling on our phone for opening a good book whilst on a train or plane, for example, can allow our brains a moment of repose. Purposefully slowing down and deepening our thoughts teaches our minds to fully grasp an idea and consider its impacts and facets.

These kinds of changes could normalise reading whilst engaging with it, allowing our words to turn into actions. After all, the base idea is true; there are a plethora of benefits associated with getting lost in an Orwell, a Blyton, or a Christie. 

Reading Builds Empathy, Creativity, and Critical Thinking

The most vital ingredient to shifting your child’s attitude towards reading is, not surprisingly, your own attitude towards it. Both the spoken things and the way the words are embodied and lived. If we want and expect children to put effort into reading, as well as teaching their own brains to fight against short attention spans, they need to see us put that effort in, too.

Of course, daily lives are becoming more and more filled with work and responsibility. We run our own lives and the lives of our loved ones, and time can feel sparse and always disappearing. Despite this, reading is vital to build a child’s armour against the constantly developing world of technology.

Reading has been linked to empathy-building, thinking capacity, and creativity among children. Given this fact, backed up by various studies and real-world experience, perhaps we could be trying our best to inspire, embolden, and encourage an affinity for reading. When standing before this ever-changing world of technology, shouldn’t we do anything and everything that gives us the best chance possible to persist through it all?