The child's reading successes and satisfactions are enhanced if he is living in a home where reading is not occasional fun only, but an essential feature of family living. If he attends a school where the teacher, too, is a reader, one who actually enjoys reading stories to children, enjoys looking up information, brings in interesting pictures and advertisements found in papers, and encourages her pupils to do likewise, then he is doubly assured of a happy occupation as a reader.
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| The whole family reads together. |
All too often we act as though reading were something very important for children to learn, for use in school or on homework at home, but having no bearing on good, constructive, everyday living at home, work, or play. No wonder Carol, a youngster in the third grade, when chided by her mother for the low reading mark on her report card, said, "Why do you send me to school and make all this worry for both of us? If I stopped school, I could stop reading and then we would both be happy again." Such a response should not be treated lightly. If reading is important in living, are we, at home and in school, helping a child see its uses?
Pushing reading lessons at a child, plaguing or rewarding him with grades, scolding, nagging, and even bribing him are too often unsuccessful if we want the youngster to be an eager reader, who sits relaxed while voluntarily reading a book, or who looks up information with the avid interest of a real scholar and, of course, applies his zest for reading out of school as well as in school. To develop this type of reader, we must ourselves invest some effort in the enterprise.
It will even pay us to refrain from pressing children while we check up on ourselves; for then we may discover not only if and what we read, but under what circumstances we feel most inclined to read. The latter point is important, because children, sad but true, all too often act like adults. We will come to realize that if the home is noisy, disorganized, full of excitement, with a television or laptop adding to the general hubbub, we adults cannot settle down to a quiet period of reading. Neither can children. If we are interrupted with commands, reminders, and petty instructions, we do not feel like indulging in a quiet, pleasurable evening of reading. On the contrary, we may go to a movie as an escape. So, too, with children. If we relay a discovery made in our reading only to be told, "Old stuff. I've always known that," our ardor is dampened and we may keep ideas to ourselves, or our interest in reading may slacken. Children will react in the same way.
So, to help children get a good start in their reading growth, teachers and parents might begin by testing the reading climate of home and school.
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