What NOT reading to your child can do

It’s amazing how many people tell me that their child is struggling in school. What is the biggest problem? Reading!

When children enter school they are excited about reading and learning to read! However, with each grade their interest in reading drops dramatically. Why is this?

What does NOT reading to your child do?

The main culprit is that parents and teachers STOP reading to them. Reading becomes a chore for children.

They only do it to get by and get a good grade or please their teacher. They no longer associate reading with enjoyable one-on-one time. They are mandated to read material that they don’t like or that is beyond their reading level and reading begins to lose it’s magic.

How sad is that?

More importantly, what does a decreasing interest in reading do to them? The more children dislike reading, the more they dislike learning.

10 effects NOT reading can have on our children!

Here are 10 ways NOT reading to your child can have an affect on their future.

1. Reading to children at a young age helps the brain develop, not reading to your child causes the brain to develop less and can lead them to have smaller brains. (1)
2. Children who aren’t read to have lower language comprehension, smaller vocabularies, and lower cognitive skills than their peers. (2)
3. Children with less access to books and other print materials express less enjoyment of books, reading, and academics. (3)
4. Without the nurturing and one-on-one attention from parents during reading aloud children DON’T form a positive association with books and reading later in life. (4)
5. Across the nation just under half of children between birth and five years (47.8%) are read to every day by their parents or other family members. (5)
6. 37% of children arrive at kindergarten without the skills necessary for lifetime learning.(6)
7. Surveys of adolescents and young adults with criminal records show that about half have reading difficulties. Similarly, about half of youths with a history of substance abuse have reading problems. (7)
8. The less reading materials there are in the home, the lower students are in reading proficiency, according to the Educational Testing Service. (8)
9. Where parent involvement is low, the classroom mean average reading score is 44 points below the national average. (9)
10. Among those who reach adulthood with the lowest level of literacy proficiency, 43% live in poverty. Among those who have strong literacy skills, only 4% live in poverty. (10)

I don’t say this to make anyone feel guilty for what they can’t do. I’m a busy mom myself and there are so many things on my plate. Sometimes the last thing I was to do at night is read to my kids.

However, I know that there is something simple I CAN do to give them what they need to succeed in life. It doesn’t cost a lot of money, it doesn’t have to take a lot of time (check out the free class at the bottom to learn more). I share this to give parents the hope that they have this amazing tool to use to bless their children!

In fact, studies show that reading aloud is the best way to help children develop word mastery and grammatical understanding even more than having conversations with them.

Reading is essential for everything in life, and studies show that children who read more, find more success. Currently 65% of America’s fourth graders do not read at a proficient level. This has huge implications on the future of our society!

Want to impact your children in a BIG way?! READ!

Join our FREE online class to learn how to raise children who LOVE to read!

1. De Bellis, M.D., Keshaven, M.S., Clark,D.B., Caseey, B.J., Giedd, J.B., Boring,A.M., Frustaci, K., & Ryan, N.D. (1999).Developmental traumatology.Part 2: Brain development. BiologicalPsychiatry, 45, 1271-1284.
2. Raikes, H., Pan, B.A., Luze, G.J., Tamis-LeMonda, C.S.,Brooks-Gunn, J., Constantine,J., Tarullo, L.B., Raikes, H.A., Rodriguez, E. (2006). “Mother-child book reading in low-income families: Correlates and outcomes during the first three years of life.” Child Development, 77(4).
3. Children’s Access to Print Material and Education Related Outcomes.
4. Reach Out and Read, Archives of Disease in Childhood, Reading Aloud to Children: The Evidence, 2008.
5. Russ S, Perez V, Garro N, Klass P, Kuo AA, Gershun M, Halfon N, Zuckerman B. Reading Across the Nation: A Chartbook (2007): Reach Out and Read National Center, Boston, MA .
6. Landry, S. H. (2005). Effective Early Childhood Programs: Turning Knowledge Into Action. Houston, TX: University of Texas, Health Science Center at Houston.
7. National Information Center for Children and Youth with Disabilities. (1998). Children with reading disability. Washington, D.C.: Robert Bock.
8. Educational Testing Service, 1999. America’s Smallest School: The Family.
9. U.S. Department of Education. 1996. Reading Literacy in the United States: Findings From the IEA Reading Literacy Study.
10. Literacy in the Labor Force: Results from the National Adult Literacy Survey. National Center for Education Statistics, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, 1999. [link: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=1999470]