With all the suggestions out there on reading to your baby at a young age, while these are good ideas that I emulate I strongly believe to develop a healthy reading habit a child must have a reading parent, relative e.t.c.
My reading habit started when I saw my elder sister reading. As one who loves to copy her sister it didn’t take long before I started reading.
The statistic is scary how many children do not read. The truth is, parents are too busy to be good examples of readers, no matter how many times we read to them as kids a lot of times the habit fizzles out with the busyness of our world.
I strongly want my kids to read, I want them to read everything, expand their world, get away from parochial views to large perspectives. Read things they disagree with, read things you agree with.
I also love the idea of a broad vocabulary which comes from reading. Kids with small vocabularies always tend to curse, you can say I am aggravated instead of so f…ing mad.
As a parent who wants reading kids, there are a couple of tips I have been working on.
- I started reading to my kids as babies.
- Now they are grown, I read to them all the time but now I let them beg me for the stories, so we get the one more story mommy.
- I make the trip to the library an event, and most weekends I added a stop to the ice cream place as part of our ritual.
- I buy lots of books. My house is full of books. My children are not afraid of books.
- I spare time to read a book in front of my kids.
My kids are still too young to be categorical readers but I notice habits of wanting to go to the side and read a book, the moments of bringing a book and requesting a read a book to me mommy and piles of books on the side of their beds.