OPINION:
If you knew a way to guarantee your child’s academic success, would you do it? Reading aloud to children has been proved to boost children’s vocabulary and improve reading, but data shows children are being read to at home less than ever before.
Before the dramatic learning loss caused by COVID-19, two-thirds of American fourth graders and two-thirds of American eighth graders were reading below grade level. Unfortunately, the mainstream media did not report this newsworthy story more extensively.
If only one-third of doctors performed at their minimum expected level, wouldn’t we call it a huge failure? Yet we’ve continued down this path of allowing children to fall further behind in reading without calling the situation what it is: a crisis.
In fact, some research shows that, on average, children in care outside the home are being read to for as little as 90 seconds per day. This should be of great concern since studies have shown that children with the smallest vocabularies were exposed to the fewest words from books.
The influence of the home on success at school cannot be overstated. It is critical that parents understand that relying on teachers is not enough. Experts agree that parents are children’s first and most influential teachers.
According to the National Association of Elementary School Principals, children spend 86.64% of their time out of school, mainly at home. As the new school year kicks off, it’s important to remember that parents play a key role in the success of their children at school.
Parents who read to their children, preferably beginning in infancy, will give their children the advantage of a richer vocabulary. This is crucial since having good reading comprehension and a good vocabulary go hand in hand.
Children’s picture books are more than twice as likely as parent-children conversations to include a word that isn’t among the 5,000 most common English words. As children continue to learn more words and their reading improves, they will increase in confidence, be more curious and imaginative, and will be able to keep themselves entertained for longer. It has also been shown that kids who are read to often develop better skills at listening and relating to others.
The more joyful parents make reading, the more excited children will be to read.
Children’s screen time increased during the pandemic; unfortunately, it remains too high. If you are not reading to your kids and do not have reading materials for them at home, you are setting them up for failure.
While the benefits of reading to children are astonishing, too much screen time has been shown to negatively affect children, both physically and mentally.
The good news is that family history need not determine a child’s future. If you’re worried about getting a steady flow of children’s books to read without paying high prices, public libraries are an excellent resource, and no matter how many books you check out, new books are always coming.
When put to good use, utilizing public libraries helps children explore exciting topics in a full range of content areas. Your child will be learning and you as the parent will enjoy learning as well. More importantly, with every book you read aloud, you will be building your child’s vocabulary, which is the foundation of their success in reading and writing.
Reading with our children is not just a mother’s job. A father’s interest in a child’s education has been found to have more of an influence on educational success than family background or poverty. Children are motivated when they see their most important male role model reading, including picking up a book and reading aloud.
Fathers are a major factor in a child’s academic success, even if they might not feel like one. For fortunate, successful kids at every socioeconomic level, being read to by both mothers and fathers is a way of life. The saying is “pleasure is more often caught than taught.”
Instead of asking why our children are not doing better in school, we need to show our kids they are worth the time it takes. Every child deserves the chance to be successful.
Ironically, when parents start reading with their children, many of them find that some of the richest conversations they can have with their children are the ones they share while reading a book together.
We can change the world for our children — reading one book aloud at a time.
• Kyra Burton is a teacher, author and television programming executive. She is the author of the children’s book “America, Here I Come,” which chronicles the hopes and dreams of a brother and sister emigrating to the United States.
