I’d like to hear other people’s answers to this, especially those parents with kids who read chapter books to themselves for a few hours a day, out of their own desire!
Well, he didn’t start reading a lot, independently, until I made him. That’s the honest truth, and I try to be honest. But his favorite toys when he was one and two were books, he made a complete mess of the living room (where we had the books) as the books were always all over the floor, and he was looking at them a lot. But he rarely read anything cover to cover (but he did, sometimes, I think–rarely, at that age). When he was three and maybe a bit after his fourth birthday, I remember him reading a number of Magic Tree House books to himself, although never that much. From about age 4 1/4 until around his fifth birthday, he read almost nothing to himself–I had few books to clean up. He was very cool to the idea of books in general. Occasionally he even resisted me reading to him (although that was rare). Since his fifth birthday or so, however, he’s gotten back into them more and more, and now I see him reading books to himself outside of the appointed time once again. For example, this morning I came downstairs to find him reading the beginning of R. L. Green’s Robin Hood, and then pointing out what Robin’s real last name was.
But after he turned five, I felt licensed to start making him read for an hour a day. (I never required him to read, or do much of anything, long before his fifth birthday.) I knew he could, very well, and that he would enjoy it when he got into it. So with a combination of incentives and threats of sitting in the corner, I got him started reading for an hour a day after lunch. What really did the trick is that I let him read instead of taking his afternoon nap. So that wasn’t a problem at all. Incentives and threats became necessary after a couple of weeks and he forgot that he was reading in order to escape naptime. At first I let him read whatever he wanted, including picture books. Later, I encouraged (rarely if ever required) chapter books.
I feel it’s safe to say that he now likes his reading time–he came to like it gradually. He doesn’t need incentives anymore, and half of the time he goes over an hour, which means he isn’t eager to finish when the 60 minute timer starts beeping. Another clue–I’ve been reading Little House on the Prairie to him for bedtime reading lately (what a great book, well deserving its classic status–I read it as a kid myself but forgot how good it is), and while waiting for his Mama to come in to say good night, he was reading on in it. As I write this now he is downstairs for his hour of reading, reading on in the book. When I expressed disappointment that I wouldn’t be able to read it now, he said, “That’s OK, you can read it to me again for chapter book reading at bedtime!” Finally, he declared recently that he likes reading.
So while I’m not at all displeased with how he’s doing vis-a-vis reading, I do wish he would pick up books more, and read them cover to cover, more often. I’m guessing he’ll do more so when he gets older.
As to what to do to encourage younger kids to read to themselves (if they can), I think the most important thing is to make sure they have plenty of books to choose from, books that they like. Also, as far as I can tell, small incentives can work and they don’t really hurt anything. What incentive scheme might work for you and your child depends on you and your child. I have found that reading a lot to H. seemed to take up some of the “book time” that he might have used to read to himself, so possibly, cutting back on the amount of time spent reading to a child might cause the child to read to him/herself. But maybe not…for H. at age four, it would have caused him to play with legos more!
