On Reading to Children
Is the practice of reading to the little ones waning? These days, more and more people associate reading to work, not enjoyment. It is tiresome and tedious. Thinking this way makes teaching the new generation a more difficult task than it already is.
CARE
Nicole Lasam
6/4/20253 min read
Growing up a bookworm, I’ve struggled with comments from people who look at the book in my hand and tell me, “How can you read that brick of a book?” or “I know someone who reads double the thickness of the book you’re reading!” as if reading is a contest about who can read the longest story.
But reading has always been a pleasure for me. It is one pastime that I want my children to learn to appreciate as well. Since our eldest was very little, I have never tired of cracking open a book to read aloud.
Which is why this headline from The Guardian hit me hard: “‘It’s so boring’: Gen Z parents don’t like reading to their kids—and educators are worried.” Basically, the article talks about the effects of not reading to the kids—less vocabulary, less likely to enjoy reading, lower GPAs—and emphasizes that teachers do notice when a child is not being read to. These kids have more screen time, because the parents who don’t read to them are spending their time staring at the screen as well.
Screens as pacifiers
I’ve talked about living in a screen-immersed world, and if you’ve read my piece, you might agree with me that—like it or not—the screens are here to stay. They might even get bigger, better, faster, and smarter. (Save us!) That’s why modeling is an important part of parenting: model temperance when it comes to screentime, and the kids will learn from you. And for reading: model a love for reading, and the kids will learn it, too.
I like the suggestions of the article’s interviewees in encouraging tired parents to read to their little one. Becky Calzada, president of the American Association of School Librarians, reminds us that parents don’t need to read for “20 minutes to an hour”—actually, just a few minutes at a time for a toddler is plenty. And, as the child grows up, this time will grow longer, but the book options will also have grown, and it’s a good time to recommend the books you personally enjoyed.
Struggles
As a parent, I have experienced feeling too tired to read, but sometimes I convince my kids to read a book I like, and the feeling goes away. (We read The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien—all of it, yes, but across many many nights!)
I’ve also experienced being too tired to read the same story over and over. I have memorized The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle, Good Night Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, and Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney. (If I were a super-genius at memorizing I would probably have committed to memory many other stories my kids request over and over—Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst, The Little Fat Policeman by Margaret Wise Brown, Poky Little Puppy by Janette Sebring Lowry, and their favorite Filipino story, Hating Kapatid by Raissa Rivera Falgui.) It’s draining to read the same thing over and over, but I remind myself that reading is one way to get them all in one spot, sitting down (hopefully).
I say “hopefully” because I’ve dealt with the older ones being bored when it’s the 3-year-old’s choice of book, and I’ve dealt with being “treated like a smart phone,” according to my husband. What he means by that is he thinks I’m being used as background noise. A characteristic of their generation, perhaps?
Well, as I correct the behavior and persevere in the pursuit of reading, I hope that somehow they grow up to prove that their generation—the ones who have always known smart phones—do not live in the virtual world but in this one, in which it is possible for the pages of a book reveal, not only beauty, but also truth and goodness: the three that are at the heart of life’s greatest pursuits.