Let me start by saying that my kids enjoy going to school and do really well in school. However, as they get older and the material that will be covered in school gets more difficult, I worry that they could possibly start to fall behind simply because they hate reading and think that it is boring. As a teacher myself, this is extremely frustrating, and honestly, it hurts my teacher heart. I love to read and have always enjoyed reading, so I just wonder what went wrong, why my kids are reluctant to read, and what I can do to get them to enjoy it and understand the importance of being a good reader.
I’m trying to figure out where it all went wrong.
I read to my kids when they were younger, although I wasn’t as consistent with it as I would have liked to be. Maybe I didn’t intrigue them enough or spark their interest in anything in particular. Is it my fault? We have plenty of books in our home and I have always tried to provide them with books that might interest them. They also spend all kinds of money on books that look appealing to them whenever the book fair comes around.
So why do they never sit and actually read these books?
It seems that reading is a little bit difficult for my kids and my guess is that because they find it difficult, they are reluctant to do it. How many people like to do things that they are not good at? I would be willing to bet, not many. It’s not fun to struggle with anything. I feel like my kids take shortcuts to figure out information instead of reading through a textbook. My 6th grader tends to think he can just Google everything and trust what Google says about every science and social studies topic he is studying in class. The kid has textbooks and all he has to do is use the index, find the page numbers, and read to find the information. He says that it takes too long to do that. So, is technology the problem? At the same time, using technology seems to interest my kids more than using a book. My son loves to read sports articles and Instagram posts from the sports world. Is that a helpful form of reading? Is that going to help him be able to dissect information on tests at school or on state assessments? Probably not.
Don’t get me wrong; my kids can read, but their academic reading skills are what concerns me the most. I feel like if they spend more time reading all of these books that we have, then they will get better at it. Practice makes perfect, right? The more you do something, the better you get at it. The better you get at something, the more you might start to enjoy it. My kids do not understand this and all they do is complain when I ask them to go read. You would think they are being punished. They just claim that reading is boring. I want them to enjoy it and appreciate it, but how? Will the day ever come that I will find either of my kids buried in a book, without me asking? I definitely have more questions than answers here.
