Rewards of reading together

Reading together is an ancient tradition that is being rediscovered with delight in the United States and many other countries. Many families vouch for the importance and pleasure of reading together. It is a family activity par excellence.

However, many people lack the ability and/or desire to read. Thus they read very little. Lack of skill leads to lack of interest and enjoyment, and lack of enjoyment leads to lack of motivation to improve one's skill. It can be a vicious circle.

Most children learn to read well enough to get through school, but then many of them stop reading any more than is necessary. Schools have produced schooltime readers, but not lifetime readers. While teaching students how to read, schools have failed to teach students to want to read.

Missing motivation to read

Why don't more people relish reading? The search for the answers to that question began in earnest with the 1955 publication of the book Why Johnny Can't Read. Since then much research has confirmed a major factor: The turned-off readers were not read to as children.

Since reading is the single most important skill in education, the National Commission of Reading was formed in 1983 to study what works and what doesn't work in teaching reading. After two years of intensive research, the members published their report in 1985, Becoming a Nation of Readers. Note their conclusion: "The single most important activity... for eventual success in reading is reading aloud to children" (emphasis added). If parents want their children to be readers, they need to read aloud with them.

Why is this so? First, success in many endeavors often depends most of all on attitude. More than any other single activity, in or out of class, reading aloud has the greatest impact on building positive attitudes about books and reading.

A secondary reason is that regular reading aloud strengthens children's language skills in reading, writing and speaking. Why is that so? Because it improves children's listening comprehension. Listening comprehension must come before reading comprehension.

In the United States, Jim Trelease is the most well known advocate of reading aloud to children. Those who read his book, The New Read-Aloud Handbook, will likely be sold on the value of reading aloud together. The book answers the common questions on this vital subject and teaches how to be a more effective reader when reading aloud.

Overcoming obstacles to reading

Why aren't parents, grandparents, older siblings and teachers reading aloud to children like they used to? Largely because of television, overly busy schedules and modern education that places too much stress on assignments that can be measured and tested. But parents shouldn't rely totally on schools to teach their children to read. And we can choose to turn off the TV and give children the full attention they long for and need. Busy and don't have time? A mere 15 minutes a day is often sufficient, unless you and your child opt for more. We all have the same 24 hours in each day. We choose to spend our time doing the things we think are most important. We each must decide: How high on my priority list is the academic, mental, emotional and spiritual development of my child? And how important is it to spend time with my child and nurture family love?

Youngsters need to be introduced at a very young age to the pleasure, joy and adventure of reading. Parents who tell stories, read to their children, and have their children read to them are molding them into devoted readers. They are instilling in them a lasting love of literature, a deep appreciation for prose and poetry, and a fondness for lifelong learning. Adults can ignite the spark of desire in their toddlers and continue to fan the flames throughout their youth.

Later benefits from reading to children

Some parents stop reading with their children as soon as the children can read for themselves. This is a mistake. When a child becomes a reader, he can take his turn at reading aloud, and reading together continues to have all the same benefits and pleasures. We never get too old to enjoy a good story.

As a child gets older, reading together is important in a different way. It helps to keep the lines of communication open. Children may open up more about a relationship problem after reading about a similar problem. As children face increasing moral temptations and dilemmas, the situation in a story and the relaxed togetherness with parents may lead to a helpful discussion.

Reading together helps bond families. Reading, unlike TV viewing, is a social experience. The family can stop at anytime to talk about the story and to laugh or cry together. Reading funny, sad and inspiring stories builds emotional bridges as members share matters of the mind and heart. And reading together is an ideal time to get close together, snuggle and benefit from the healthful tonic of touch. The whole experience creates pleasant memories.

Reading to your children is one of the best gifts you can offer your children. Strickland Gillilan illustrates this in a poem entitled "The Reading Mother:"

You may have tangible wealth untold:
Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.
Richer than I you can never be--
I had a Mother who read to me.

Fathers, too, need to be involved as much as possible. When mothers do all the reading, boys can subconsciously get the idea that reading is not masculine and then lose interest. This is one reason why most of the children in remedial-reading classes are boys. Clearly, fathers need to be fully supportive participants in the action of reading together.

What about the competition of TV? Spending significant time watching television has many negative effects. Even when a family avoids TV's moral trash, TV viewing usually takes away time that could be spent in more beneficial activities including reading, thinking and communicating. Unlike reading, passive TV viewing stifles imagination and creativity. Intellectual junk food will stifle children's mental and emotional development. Children's TV viewing time needs parental regulation and rationing.

Making reading aloud interesting

If mishandled, reading aloud together can be monotonous and boring. Here are a few suggestions to keep it interesting:

Make good choices for materials to read--not too difficult and not too easy for the child.

Read together regularly. Choose reading together frequently rather than a few long sessions. Don't let a session go longer than a child's attention span.

Be enthusiastic and put expression in your voice. Change your tone of voice to fit the dialogue. If a story contains words or sections that are boring or too difficult for the child to understand, just skip over them or change them. In other words, talk the story.

Vary the pace. Don't read too fast, and slow down during suspenseful parts.

Take time to discuss what you just read.

Suggestions for reading

What should you read? There is a vast variety of valuable literature to read--wonderful books, stories, poems and articles. Pick subjects that you know will be interesting as well as wholesome and profitable to your children. Choose literature that clearly communicates right versus wrong, that glorifies virtue and condemns vice. We can learn so much about how to live and how not to live by the heroes and villains of fiction and nonfiction. The New Read-Aloud Handbook gives many suggestions for good read-aloud books (not all good books are good for reading aloud). Author, Jim Trelease, also edited a book entitled Read All About It! The subtitle is "Great read-aloud stories, poems, and newspaper pieces for preteens and teens." Both books are published by Penguin Books.

The most highly recommended book is a perennial bestseller around the world--the Bible. Even when the Bible is judged only as literature, the literary scholars of the world collectively rank it as the world's greatest piece of literature.

A number of great men and women of history have revered and read the Bible. Notice what the following U.S. presidents have said:

George Washington: "It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."

Abraham Lincoln: "This book... is the best gift God has given to man... But for it we could not know right from wrong."

Theodore Roosevelt: "A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education."

Franklin D. Roosevelt: "I feel that a comprehensive study of the Bible is a liberal education for anyone. Nearly all of the great men of our country have been well versed in the teachings of the Bible."

Family Bible reading

Everything that has been stated in this article is applicable to reading the Bible aloud together. When families read the Bible together, they are drawing closer to each other as well as to their Creator, who inspired the Bible.

Children and adults love stories, and the Bible is largely a collection of stories. Even most of the instructive parts are presented within a story flow. The Bible has an abundance of action and adventure, heroes and villains, tragedies and triumphs, drama and emotion.

Some have made brief attempts at reading the Bible and concluded it is hard to understand and boring. When reading to children, remember the suggestions above for making it interesting. One can skip sections that are less interesting or hard to understand without distorting the overall message. Also, sections can be paraphrased or summarized in one's own words.

Children will understand much better when a parent chooses a modern version of the Bible. Though some versions of the Bible are more accurate than others and should be relied on for serious study, almost any version of the Bible conveys the overall lessons fairly accurately.

What does the Bible say about itself? The apostle Paul reminded Timothy, "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching the truth, rebuking error, correcting faults, and giving instruction for right living, so that the person who serves God may be fully qualified and equipped to do every kind of good deed" (2 Timothy 3:16-17, Today's English Version). Paul knew that reading the Scriptures was and would always be the most profitable reading possible.

Paul told Timothy, "from childhood you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation..." Timothy was greatly blessed to have been grounded in the Scriptures during his early years. His grandmother Lois and his mother Eunice had taught him God's Word and had been his role models of faith (2 Timothy 1:5; 3:14-15).

The importance of teaching children

In Matthew 22:36-40, Jesus Christ revealed that the two greatest commandments are to love God and to love our fellow man. The Bible can be summed up as the Instruction Book that teaches us how to love God and how to love our neighbor. In stating the first great commandment, Jesus was quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5: "You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might." Notice what follows: "And these words which I command you today shall be in your heart; you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down, and when you rise up" (Deuteronomy 6:6-7).

Words are "in your heart" after you repeatedly hear them, think about them, believe them and apply them. To "teach them diligently" is partly accomplished by parents reading the Bible to their children and explaining its passages. To "talk of them" shows the importance of encouraging interactive responses, comments and discussion during Bible reading time. It also indicates that parents should frequently point out biblical principles and their applications during each day.

In describing the new covenant God said, "I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts" (Hebrews 8:10). Parents can greatly aid the process through family Bible reading. Another help to internalizing God's Word is memorizing key scriptures. Encourage children to learn important verses while they have strong memories.

Why is family Bible reading so important? First, God's Word is the most important subject by far for our children to learn! Secondly, childhood is the best time to start learning God's Word. Children are naturally more teachable and pliable then. As the saying goes, "As the twig is bent, so is the tree inclined."

The Bible also verifies that information and lessons taught during childhood can have a lifetime effect. "Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it." (Proverbs 22:6, New American Standard Bible).

Parental responsibility to teach

The value of fathers reading to their children was mentioned earlier. Notice that the Bible, too, emphasizes the need for fathers to be fully involved in the spiritual education of their children: "Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord" (Ephesians 6:4, Revised Standard Version).

Family Bible reading and family prayer are two vital ways to fulfill this admonition. Fathers reading with and talking with their children helps "turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers" (Malachi 4:6).

According to the Bible, teaching children is a top-priority parental responsibility. It is a priceless accomplishment when children establish a habit of reading and studying the Bible that lasts for life. It's even more wonderful when this gratifying family tradition carries on from generation to generation.

The apostle Paul wrote of the need for people to have "the love of the truth, that they might be saved" (2 Thessalonians 2:10). Parents can help cultivate in their children a love for the truth of God's Word which, in turn, will lead to wisdom, faith, character and eternal life.

When families read aloud together, and especially when they include reading the Bible, they truly are spending quality time together. Their minds are enriched and expanded as they explore great literature. Their personalities and character are molded both by the wonderful words and the way those words are spoken and shared. Very likely, the children will become better readers, they will enjoy reading more, and they will become lifetime readers.