Our home was filled with books and the books stuffed shelves, covered tables, and were stacked by the chairs of readers. It was the same at my grandmother’s house.
We learned early that books were magic carpets to any place in the real or imaginary world. My Father’s last chore each evening was to turn off bedside lamps and close books as we literally read ourselves to sleep each night. We still do.
Our parents read. They took and read newspapers, magazines, borrowed books from several libraries, subscribed to newspapers from faraway places like New York and England, belonged to book clubs, joined reading societies, attended (and wrote) book reviews, and most of all, they read to us. We didn’t know it, and I’m not sure they did either, but they were role models showing us that reading is pleasurable, informative, interesting, necessary, important, recreation, entertainment, and more.
They introduced us to a lifetime of reading skills that are the cornerstone for any educational or professional career. They didn’t wait for us to attend school or for a teacher to teach us reading; they read, and they read to us, so we learned to value reading, long before entering the school doors.
The greatest pleasure I can recall of my youngest days is that of being read to by my father. Mom read to us daily, but evenings, before bed, Dad read from a long book, a story continued each evening over several weeks. It sounds corny, but we all sat around my dad on the couch and listened to him read. Even kids really too small to understand all the words were lulled to sleep by his voice and the patterns of sound made by the words.
Reading is not genetically transmitted from parent to child. Reading isn’t a separate subject taught only by teachers in schoolrooms to children who work to sound out letters. Reading begins with one person who reads, reading to another who doesn’t. Reading to a small child isn’t weird, it is teaching reading.
When my 18-month-old son noticed I read books that looked different from his, he asked, “Where are your pictures?” I explained, and said I read letters. “Show me one,” he demanded. I pointed to an O, and he showed me all the O’s on that page. “Show me another one,” he said. And as easily as that, the connection between the written word and the spoken word was made.
Read to your child. Read a lot to your child. Read every day and every night. Go to the library with your child and check out the millions of books waiting to be read. Look at magazines and talk about the pictures with your child. Turn off the tv, both for yourself and for the future of your child’s education.
Reading is a shared experience between parents and children that opens a world of opportunities. The last lines of a poem by Strickland Gillian really say it best: “… Richer than I you can never be … I had a Mother who read to me.”
Darby Kethan has a master's degree in child development, and has experience as a social worker, educator of young children, educational consultant, and as a professional trainer for a national educational foundation providing professional development to teachers. Visit her website at darbykethan.com.
