Learning to read is one of the most fundamental and important things your child will ever do. Stop and try to imagine how the course of your day would change if you couldn’t read. How could you do your job? Find your way in a new place? You’d get mail and emails that were mere gibberish, you couldn’t read ingredients or maybe even prices on items in the stores. How would you get by without being able to read the instructions on how to use a new item, or new recipes, or. . . .
Most of us can’t even really imagine what it would be like if learning to read was something we’d never done, because reading has become something inherently part of us. When your eyes rest on letters and numbers, you don’t have to concentrate to read them—you know what they say automatically, much like you breathe without a conscious decision to do so. Reading is just part of us, a part we could barely function without.
Now try to imagine going through your day with the ability to read, but with a poor ability to do so. Everything would require deep concentration to understand. Those office memos couldn’t be glanced at and filed when you have to deliberately decipher each word. Just a few seconds of imagining how little you’d accomplish each day makes it clear that learning to read is something every child must do, and do well.
Of course, reading is taught in school, but the core of it usually starts at home. Many kids can begin learning long before that. Read to your kids, and they’ll start to love the idea of books and reading, and will want to be able to read themselves.
A great way to start is to go to your local library to the beginning books section. Look through the books with your child and let him or her choose one. Don’t make this choice for the child, even if a certain book is supposed to be better or one that you’d rather use. You can grab it, too, but be sure you have at least one book that your child shows an interest in. If you do this often, your child’s natural interest in the pictures or colors in that book makes him or her naturally more interested in the words.
Squeeze in reading where you can. Bedtimes stories are terrific, but why not have a morning story? Or an afternoon story break? The more you read, the more your child sees you read, the more likely your child will be to love reading, too. Learning to read doesn’t have to be in lessons—each time you read a book that interests your child, pointing to the words as you say them, giving them a chance to put the sounds together with the letters, you put your child one step closer to learning to read.
