How To Help Your Children Develop A Love Of Reading

As a parent, you will always be on the lookout for ways to foster healthy habits in your kids. After all, the lessons you teach them during childhood can shape their habits and behaviors for the rest of their life. However, it’s important to remember that health habits include far more than following a healthy lifestyle and forcing them to eat vegetables. You should also ensure they find plenty of ways to stay in touch with their imagination and challenge themselves intellectually. One way in which you can achieve this goal is by helping your children to develop a love of reading.

While you yourself may be a bookworm, getting kids excited about reading can be challenging. This could be due to a multitude of factors. For example, their peers might not think reading is cool, or they may be more interested in the latest Netflix special than whatever is lying on your bookshelf. With that in mind, here are some easy ways to help your children learn to love reading!

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Reading together

If you want to develop a love of reading in your children, you need to make reading together a part of your daily routine. This way, it becomes less of a chore and more of an activity that the whole family can enjoy. While their reading journey may begin with you reading to them, as their skills expand, you should also encourage them to read out loud to you. Following this, when it’s time for them to read their own books, you could grab your latest novel and sit close by.

Ensure they have easy access to books

As your children grow, they will likely go through phases where they read book after book and times where they will struggle to finish a single story. While this may seem disheartening, it happens to even the most avid readers. However, you can mitigate this issue by always ensuring that your children have access to books. For example, you could sign them up for a kindle membership or your local library.

Help them find their favorite genre

Sometimes, the reason your child may not feel excited about reading is the fact that they simply haven’t figured out what they like to read yet. There are thousands of genres and authors out there for them to discover – and sometimes, finding a single novel they enjoy can open them to a whole new world of adventure and imagination. Therefore, before purchasing them a new book, spend some time talking about what they like – even in regards to films and TV shows. For example, if they are big fans of Harry Potter, then you should look into purchasing some of the best fantasy books for them to read.

Ask them questions about what they are reading

While reading is a great way to keep your kids entertained, it can also become an interesting conversation point at the dinner table. Furthermore, asking your children questions about what they are reading can help them develop their critical analysis skills – which will help them when it comes to performing similar tasks at school.

Start a reading challenge

While your children may enjoy reading when it actually comes down to it, they may not feel any motivation to pick up a book – especially when their games console and TV are right in front of them. Thankfully, there are various ways in which you can get around this. For example, you could put together a reading challenge that the whole family can get involved in. For example, you could set a goal for the number of books you aim to read within the year, and whoever reaches this number first wins a prize. Alternatively, you could base it on the number of pages you read instead of entire books – as this alleviates a little pressure from the situation while encouraging healthy competition.

Try out audiobooks

Paperbacks and hardbacks are no longer the only way to consume stories. For example, if your child finds it hard to read entire books alone, you may also want to look into audiobooks. This way, they can still enjoy their favorite stories and develop a love of reading without any pressure or confusion. If possible, you could also purchase a paperback copy of the book they are listening to so that they can follow along with the story and develop their own reading skills.

In short, there are various steps you can take to help your children develop a love of reading – and once that door is opened, it’s likely that they will never stop.