Reddit Parenting Advice #11 – Reading Advice

As mentioned in previous posts, ensuring your child develops a love and aptitude for reading is one of the single most important things you can do for them educationally. Today’s reddit parenting advice comes from a parent wondering about a child who seems uninterested in stories.

I have a kid who doesn’t really care for story books. Almost all day long, he reads non-fiction books on butterflies, construction, flower, trees, bugs, ships, rockets, etc. Is this anything to worry about? Is this a phase? Btw, he’s 4. My concern is that he might become a bit robotic (like me).

There should be no surprises that this child is a boy. Boys tend to develop an interest in the physical world around them. They are often less interested in sitting down for story time than girls who from a young age tend to enjoy sitting on Mum or Dad’s lap for a story. This has been something I have seen in my parenting.

It’s also no surprise that boys tend to enjoy non-fiction books either. Consider your average adult male. What are they more likely to read? Of course you can come up with counter examples and exceptions, but men tend to be interested in non-fiction more than women. In fact one things I have noticed is that many adult women read little to no non-fiction, and where you do see women reading non-fiction it can often be trashy magazine articles that focus on relationship drama. No doubt this commentary will be seen as incredibly sexist, which to be honest makes it all the more enjoyable to write. But getting back to the point – boys and girls are different, and this extends to their reading choices.

Now as a man who does happen to enjoy fiction (whilst not neglecting non-fiction), I happen to believe that we need to encourage our boys to develop a love for narrative. Our faith itself is a great story made up of many smaller narratives. Narrative can teach us things in a powerful way. Good novels extend our experience of life in a way that broadens our understanding of the world and human nature.

From my experience, training a boy to love fiction does take time and patience. My oldest boy still tends to enjoy reading factual books about historical events or how-to books, and it has taken some years to develop his interest in narrative to the point that he will pick up and read fiction.

So how did we approach this? Well, first of all, I did ensure that I read to him. It’s important for boys to see men reading and enjoying reading. They need to see it as a masculine occupation. Secondly, reading became a part of our daily routine. Every night I would read to him, and as boys tend to like routine, this seemed to help. Thirdly I chose books carefully. I would repeat books to him regularly when he was a toddler so that they became familiar. Children seem to enjoy this repetition and knowing what comes next. Then as he grew older I began to read him chapter books. Although he has sisters around his age, I tended to choose books that I thought were more masculine than feminine. My theory, which seemed to work, was that if I find a book that he likes, his sisters will like it too. The reverse of this is not true. The few times I chose a more feminine book, for instance, Anne of Green Gables, he was not impressed and did not enjoy the story. Then as he grew older I set goals for him to achieve in his reading. This year I have set him the goal of 52 fiction books in a year. While his sister would probably achieve that in a month or two, this for him is a significant achievement. And since he seems, like many boys, to be task-oriented, he is intent on insuring he meets this goal.

So I don’t think there is anything to worry about in a four year old boy who loves non-fiction books. Yes you want to broaden his interests – it’s not great to leave him there, but it’s natural for boys to prefer non-fiction. They are the future dominion takers who go out into the earth under Christ extending his kingly reign.

The Best Thing You Can Do to Help Your Child Succeed at School

Every good parent wonders how they can best help their child achieve at school. Obviously, we can ensure our child is attending a first-rate school that provides excellent teachers. That’s not always possible, and even if we do manage it, the school and the teacher are only one part of the story. How can we as parents do our bit at home? What is the best thing you can do to help your child succeed at school?

The number one thing you can do at home is provide a knowledge-rich environment. Talk to your children. Have dinner together and let them hear you use ‘big words’ as you talk with your wife. Read aloud to them. Seems simple right? Yet so many children are short-changed in this area. It is more common for ‘families’ to eat dinner separately staring at screens, and few children are read to past their toddler years, but this has educational ramifications.

Really? Yes, really. The number one reason children from lower socio-economic homes fare worse in school is because they lack the vocabulary and knowledge that children from more wealthy homes have. These children go to school with a vocabulary that is hundreds and sometimes thousands of words fewer than children from more wealthy families. This gap tends to widen over time in the wrong sorts of schools. Since vocabulary size is the most important indicator of reading ability and comprehension, these children will find it more difficult to pick up knowledge at school. But let’s not just assume this is a problem for children from poorer homes. More and more busy two-parent working families are spending less time with each other.

I believe that providing knowledge is so important to success, that if you read to your children for an hour a day, taught and encouraged them to read every day for a few hours (ensuring the quality of books being read), provided them with basic numeracy skills while avoiding unnecessary screen time throughout the first six years of school, your child could miss school entirely, and enter the intermediate years in no way lacking. If you are not well educated yourself, become acquainted with your local library, and assign your child reading tasks every week. This is essentially what neurosurgeon Dr Ben Carson’s mother did, despite being unable to read herself. He links his future success as a neuro-surgeon to his mother’s strict reading regime of two books per week.