Top 10 Reading Tips For Parents
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Do you worry about bedtime stories your toddler is going to demand at night? Are you in a fix on how to inculcate good reading habits in your child? If yes, then you are not the only parent worrying about such things.
A lot of effort goes into making your child adept at reading. Starting from bedtime stories to the preschool phase, you have a major role to play as a parent while inculcating effective reading skills into your child.
Most of the time parents are worried about finding effective means to engage their children in reading. Studies state that your child often emulates you as a personality. Hence, your role in making your little one enjoy reading becomes crucial.
Your child should enjoy reading, without which the whole exercise becomes dull and tiresome. Being a parent you have to make sure that first steps of learning look interesting to your kid.
When Does Your Child Learn To Read?
Did you know your baby is a linguistic genius? You must be wondering how because babies don’t speak at all as they only make incoherent noises. Once they are two to three years old, they start learning their mother tongue, which is quiet foreign to them. If you start teaching any language to them they will grasp it really well. So the first five years of a child’s life is the best time to teach them any language.
Generally babies learn to pick up words they hear when they are spoken to; years later they learn to read. However, this trend may vary, the child may learn to speak and read simultaneously.Many are not aware that babies can learn to read even before they start to speak. This happens because the baby’s brain is capable to acquire the knowledge at that point of time and is not selective about the language he or she is learning. So this means that baby can learn to speak when spoken to and also learns to read if he is read to.
If a baby is born to a home where two languages are spoken, he will learn both the language if he is taught both. Similarly, if the baby is in touch with written language, he will also learn to read. So parents can introduce reading to their children as early as three months. At this time the baby’s vision is developing and it is becoming clear,
How To Organize a Baby’s Reading Session:
First check that the baby is able to track a visual object. Hold the object 8-10 inches from the baby’s face and swing it gently. If you see his eyes are moving at the direction of the object, then you know he or she is ready to learn reading.
A reading program should be a fun activity for both parents and the baby. Some parents start reading to their babies when they are only few months old, this is a perfect time to interact with the baby. Since, the baby is not very active physically; he is listening to you with rapt attention. You can read to them very short stories or show them picture books. You can also play nursery rhymes in your music system and see your baby smile!
When the baby is 18 months old he can interact properly and they will respond to your instructions. However, start reading to them when they are really young.
Pre-Reading Skills:
Pat Wolfe, an education consultant and the author of ‘Building the Reading Brain’ states that as a parent you will be able to understand if your child is having reading difficulties.
The signs to show the child is having reading difficulty are:
- Confusing letters
- He or she is not able to connect the word with the sounds.
- He is not being able to remember words and he is skipping them.
- He is guessing at random words but is not able to say them aloud.
If your child is facing these reading problems at the pre-school stage you must resolve the problem immediately and try to analyze why he is facing these problems.
So how do you go about resolving the problem? Before you start analyzing the reason behind the problem, you need to know what the milestones children covers in terms of reading.
When the child is four to five years of age he or she learns to develop his vocabulary, pronounces words in rhyming patterns, can write some letters and can only say some words.
Children between 6 to 10 years learn to read simple books and even give his opinion about characters and storyline. He loves to read different stories. His vocabulary has increased to about 100 words. He remembers all the sounds that each letter makes and tries to read out unfamiliar words. He also learns about capital and small letters by second grade and by third grade your child can learn to read independently. Maximum support is needed when the child is trying to grasp the language skills.
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