Encouraging Your Children’s Love of Reading, Part 1: Fathers and Reading
Father’s can have a great impact on developing your children’s love of reading. As parents, much of what we teach are children is through our examples. When a father demonstrates through his example that reading is important, it will most likely have a greater impact on your children’s positive feelings towards reading, than the most well conceived reading programs.
What are some things that fathers can do to encourage their children’s love of reading?
- Be an example. Let your children see you reading for pleasure. Talk to your children about what you are reading.
- Read to your children on a regular basis.
- Give books as gifts and rewards.
- Take your children on outings to the library and/or bookstore.
- Talk to your children about their books and what they are reading.
- And, of course, maintain a positive attitude towards reading.
What about fathers who don’t like to read?
Be involved in choosing what book(s) you would like to read to your children. With so many good books out there, you are bound to find many that will appeal to both you and your child. My father is dyslexic, so reading was not his favorite thing to do, but there were a couple of books that he loved and would read those to us.
What about fathers who have difficulty reading?
When your children are young you can choose many books that have few words or none. One of our children’s favorite books is Nancy Tafuri’s Have You Seen My Duckling? which has about 8 different words in the whole book. You also don’t have to read the printed words. You can tell the story in your own words.
What about single moms?
If you are a single mom, there are probably men in your and your children’s lives, like an uncle, grandfather or friend, who can encourage your children’s love of reading. These men can be asked to do the same things with your children as were mentioned for fathers encouraging their own children. If distance separates you from good father figures for your children, you can ask them to read books onto tapes and CDs to send to your children. (We will be talking about how to do this next month.)
While I write this, my husband is reading to our children. I am grateful that he actively encourages our children’s love of reading. I am also grateful for my grandfather who encouraged my own love of reading. My grandfather loved to read, he was constantly in the middle of a good book. He would talk to me about the books he was reading and suggest ones for me to read. I traveled to many exciting lands while reading books that he recommended to me. My grandfather has passed away, but the love for reading that he instilled in me continues. Many years ago he told me about how much he and his school mates enjoyed reading Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey. Since then I have always had it on my mental list of books to read. I finally ordered it and am looking forward to reading it. Travels with a Donkey will be sitting on my bookshelf when my children are old enough to read it and I will tell them how their great-grandfather read it when he was a boy and how he told me about it...
Encouraging a child’s love of reading enriches generations.
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