One idea from my childhood you may want to adopt - extremely limited TV watching. 90 minutes/ week on a black & white (in the 70s/80s) until we got rid of it completely.
One idea from my childhood you probably won’t want to adopt - make childhood generally a miserable experience from which the child is dying to escape.
An idea from a friend who had a much more functional upbringing - her parents would incent her to read biographies, a dollar a biography. Probably more like $3-5 now. So she could read Sweet Valley High or whatever if she wanted to, but there was something in it for her if she picked up that bio of Harriet Tubman. I think some type of book report was required to claim the loot.
It might be good to rotate the “bonus category” each year: biographies, travel writing, corporate expose, etc.
We read to our kids as infants. We gave them board books to love, cherish and chew on Everywhere we went, we took books to pass the time while we waiting on appointments, etc. so that reading would be looked forward to as something fun and entertaining.
When they would catch me reading a grown up book and ask me “whatcha doing”, I always told them I was watching a movie in my mind, much better than any movie I could see on TV. Now they watch mind movies, too.
In short, we wanted them to want to learn to read and love it. They did and haven’t looked back since.
The only required reading they have done for us was when we homeschooled, and even then I tried to choose interesting books, such as the Dear America series from Scholastic.
Now, at 12 & 13, one of their favorite stops is by the 2/1 book store. Our problem is that we love our books too much to ever trade in!
We have the “no tv during the school week” rule, which helps. Another trick (that I see others have used also) is implementing the lights out bedtime rule unless they’re reading. They’ll stay up all night to get to the end of the book if we let them!
Mr. Adoptamom and I also volunteer at their school library and have become friends with the librarian as a result. Our kids have followed in our footsteps and are also library “helpers”. They like having first pick of the new books that come in.
I’m not a parent, but I can tell you what mine did. First, they read to us every night. Even when my sister and I started to read on our own, they still read to us. Once we were reading, the read-to books were always beyond what we could read on our own (maybe some 5 year olds can handle the Lord of the Rings, but I couldn’t.) I’m not sure when they stopped reading to us. I may have been over 10 at the time.
I do remember my parents bribing me to read at some point. I had some grid of boxes to fill out. Every time I read a chapter (or a whole book if it was small) I checked a box. When I had all the boxes filled, I got some sort of prize. I think I was ~5 at the time. I’m not sure why I needed to be bribed. I think maybe I was frustrated because anything I was able to read at the time was stupid. I was always bringing home books from the library that were too hard for me (like some 300 page book on whether bees can see color or not.) I don’t think this lasted very long. I was certainly never assigned a book or required to write reports on them. That would have been horrible
I’m an avid reader who figured I’d have kids that enjoyed reading as much as I did, of course life doesn’t work quite that way. My 12 yo son has ADHD and Asperger’s, what captured his interest were comics and magazines. He’ll listen if I read something like the Harry Potter books, but they’re too tedious for him on his own, even though he reads above grade level. Comic books have given him some fairly impressive vocab skills, a bonus benefit as I wasn’t a comic reader and hadn’t much of a clue before I had to start reading them to figure out what he could have.
Books as gifts, check. Reading but no games or toys after bedtime, check. Follow up on what their interested in, check. I’ll still buy something once in a while I think he ought to like but mostly I follow his lead and interests.
You can never start kids on books too early – my son had books in his crib almost as soon as he was born, and I’ve been reading to him since he was 6 months old. And while he now enjoys toys and videos as much as any other child, he’s also got a shelf-ful of books, is already reading ahead of his grade level, and enjoys a trip to the bookstore as much as a trip to Toys 'R Us.
You definitely gotta let them pick their own reading material. Recommendations are fine, but if he wants Yet Another Book About Trucks and Trains, then that’s what he’ll get. The association of “reading == fun” is the most important thing to nurture.
My 15-year-old has always loved to read. She learned spontaneously when she was around three years old (at first I thought she’d just memorized the books I read her, but then she started reading signs to me), and she never looked back. Her 11-year-old sister, however, was less enthusiastic and had to be prodded by her teachers. I never required either of them to read, although their teachers did and I, of course, made sure they did it as part of their homework. Our younger one has started to read on her own more in the past six months or so, and I think that allowing her complete discretion over her choice of books is a large part of that. She started out getting “Animal Ark” books, which are really crappy, simplistic, formulaic easy children’s fiction, but after she read ten or twelve of those, she started to look around at what her older sister was reading. This led her to the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy, which is frankly far too advanced for her at this stage, but she also got into Harry Potter, which isn’t. We’re all taking turns reading the Lemony Snicket books now, and those are about her speed. I try to surround her with as many forms and levels of reading materials as possible, and slowly but surely, she’s starting to pick them up independently. She still hates to complete assigned reading, but she’ll read twice as many pages in half the time if it’s her idea and her choice of book.
I grew up with complete access to the public library and my mother’s books, and I’m sure I read many things that were far too mature for me when I was a child. I enjoyed them at my own level, though, and I think that gave me an deeper understanding when I reread them as an adult. I’m allowing my children to read whatever they want to (although I don’t give them the same freedom when it comes to movies, TV shows, Internet sites, or video games). In fact, I’ve developed a sneaky way to get my older daughter to read a book I think she’ll enjoy - I pull it out, discuss it briefly, and then put it back, saying I think she’s still a little too young for it. She almost always ends up reading it within a month.
Checking in from the other side of the fence, sort of –
I’m a voracious reader, but my husband is not. He just does not read for pleasure. Some people misinterpret that to mean he doesn’t read, or doesn’t read well, which is untrue. He reads at the college level (real college level, not watered down stuff). Some folks are like that - they’d rather watch a movie in their spare time than read a book.
But the important point is that he DOES read well, and he knows what books are for. All the books he owns are factual books, reference books, how-to books… For him, a book is a tool for a very specific job, not a source of entertainment.
Which is OK - so long as a kid grows up knowing what books are for, their uses, and reads at an appropriate level for his/her age I wouldn’t worry too much.
But yeah - you get kids to read by giving them stuff they’re interested in. In the case of someone like my husband, that might be the owner’s manual to a car or a book on small engine repair more than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.
My house, that of my parents, my sister, and all of my friends, are defined by books. IAs soon as I go to someone’s house, I head to the bookcase. I think I spent my entire adolescence shut in my bedroom, reading. My daughter had books before she was born. I read to her as a baby, and all the way through her childhood, and she loved it. Often the only thing that would get her into bed was the promise of another chapter.
She’s 17 now, and she doesn’t read. Ever. I know she CAN read, as every so often she’ll read a magazine, or newspaper (and my private correspondence), but the concept of reading for pleasure is completely alien to her. I blame this partly on her schooling: Italian schools don’t encourage reading for pleasure, and none of her friends read either, but she knows plenty of people who read constantly. She’s very smart, highly articulate, has a wide vocabulary a vivid imagination, and writes very well, but she just will not read.
It breaks my heart to think of the worlds that are lost to her.
Blah Blah Blah
I started reading to our 6.5 year old son when he was in the womb.
I cannot imagine not reading. From cereal boxes, whatever kind of book that is available, to a general fiction book, I read at every meal. I have a magazine addiction too.
I’ve read to him every day. When he was an infant, I would just read to him whatever I was reading outloud. By the time he was two, I would average three hours a day total reading time to him. ( During meals, before naps and bedtime. This was, naturally, before the Dope Sucked Me In. You Bastids.)
When I was pregnant with his sister, she was read too (and poked alot by big brother.) They both adore books. We have more books than toys. And we have buttloads of toys. What blows my mind are the families I go to for play time that have no visible signs of books anywhere or there is a pathetic little shelf filled with a few, lonely books. My son has a 6 foot high bookshelf loaded with books for every reading level. My daughter has two bookshelves as well.
We are just starting to get into Story Tapes. I love these. They are still warming up to the entire concept.
He is one of two of the top readers in his first grade class. ( Strangely enough, both are boys and fortunately, one of his good friends.) He reads independantly level two chapter books and is working on his thesis for grad school. Ok, that last bit was a bit of BS to see if anyone was still reading.
Some nights, after one or both of them are suppose to be in bed, they weasel into my bed, during My Time of Big People Book Reading. I allow them to lay on either side of me as quietly as two weasels can, while I read. Sometimes I read aloud other times I let them pick out the words or letters they recognize. Then they fall asleep, then I fall asleep. The 88 pound dog sleeps at my feet. And we sleep like a pack of dogs, all over each other. I.love.this.
I am also introducing them to bowling.
Everywhere we went, we took books to pass the time while we waiting on appointments, etc. so that reading would be looked forward to as something fun and entertaining.