Reading For "Pleasure" From An Early Age Will Ensure Your Child’s Success In School and In Life Itself

by Robert Kirwan

CASE
STUDY

A young mother who we will call Jennifer (not her real name) came to my office the other day and started the conversation with the following: “My three-year old daughter will be starting Junior Kindergarten next September. I would like to make sure that she has a good start. Can you help me?”  

ANALYSIS OF THE SITUATION
  
   I would like to share my response to Jennifer with other parents who may be facing similar concerns with their own sons or daughters.  

   My advice to you, Jennifer, can be summed up in one single word…READ.

   That’s right. Start buying as many books as you can for your daughter, especially books that are about subjects in which she is interested. My own granddaughter is interested in princess stories, so I am starting to buy up every book I can find that is geared to pre-school children on princesses and fairies. I would suggest you do the same for your daughter.    

   While it won’t come as much of a surprise to most of us in the education field, there are now studies done that confirm the fact that North American youth in Canada and the United States are spending less time reading for fun in their free time than the previous generation.  Experts may differ on what must be done to encourage reading and to instill more positive reading habits among young people, but they all agree that this decline in the “love of reading” by our young people will have a serious affect on not only their academic performance and career prospects, but will also present challenges to them as they attempt to take up their place in society.
  
   Education Week Newspaper published a report released by the National Endowment for the Arts, a
United States based organization, which indicated that increased use of electronic media is the greatest cause of the decline in reading for pleasure among young people.  The report also stated that the efforts of school systems to improve functional reading skills in curriculum subject areas among young students is not resulting in a “lifelong love of reading” and this is leading not only to less time reading for enjoyment, but also to the loss of reading-comprehension skills.
  
    The study found that less than 25% of all 17 year olds read every day for fun, and young people between the ages of 15 and 24 read an average of ten (10) minutes or less per day on articles and books that are not required reading for school or work. This age group prefers to watch television, listen to music or spend time on the internet or cell phones.
 
     The report also found that there is a strong correlation between reading for fun and success in school and the workplace. The more time people spend reading for enjoyment, the more successful they are in school and in their careers.
 
  
 “People who read outside of school or work volunteer at twice the rate of those who don’t, they are three times more likely to participate in the arts, they earn higher wages, they are twice as likely to exercise, they vote at one and a half times the level of people who don’t read,” stated Mr. Gioia, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. “Among people who read, there is not merely a cultural transformation going on, but the habit of reading does seem to awaken something in the individual.”

   In another study of 36,000 school children from the United States, Canada and Great Britain, it was found that the most important predictors of academic success of children by the junior grades are the early reading and math skills that these children bring with them to Junior or Senior Kindergarten.
 
   Therefore, Jennifer, if you can instill a love of reading in your daughter before she enters Junior Kindergarten, there is a very good chance that she will maintain that passion for the rest of her life. She will likely retain a positive attitude towards school itself simply because she has a better than average chance of being successful as a result of her love of reading.

RECOMMENDATION
 
   If you decide that you would like me to provide you with a "learning coach" for your daughter, I will assign a personal tutor who will meet with your daughter once a week to help her develop interest in reading through some strategic activities that will show her that reading for fun can open up a whole new world.
 
   The tutor will help you develop a regular program which will include daily reading sessions where you read orally to your daughter to help her develop her attention and focusing skills. You will also have an assignment which will require you and your daughter to look for things around the home and in the community that can be read together. Show her that reading is everywhere. You will build up a weekly vocabulary list which can be reviewed by the tutor each week. Your job as a parent will be to demonstrate to your daughter that reading has a purpose and that you can have “fun” reading together. You should also make sure that your daughter sees you reading for pleasure yourself every day. Try to have some “quiet” time after dinner where you read your book and your daughter plays or reads her books. As long as she sees you reading your books she will get the message.  Spend time talking to your daughter about what you are reading so that the two of you can share your “discoveries”. You have a tremendous impact on your daughter, so if she sees you reading for pleasure, she will want to be just like you.
 
   The best thing you can do to ensure your child has every opportunity to enter into a successful career as a young adult is make sure that she starts off in Junior Kindergarten with a strong foundation in reading. Her early reading skills and her love of reading will certainly help her get to the top of the class immediately and stay there as long as she remains in school.  

 
 

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