My Focus on Family Life and Parenting

How to Get Children to Read – 3

Read to Your Kids

Read to your young child.  The old practice of reading bedtime stories should not be a lost art.  Young imaginations are easier to capture this way and children are likely to thirst for more.

Learn to use your voice to emphasize some points or add to the mood of the story.  Sing, if it enhances a scene. 

Reading can be great fun it accompanied by extra stories on the side.  Dramatize the events in the story, so images become clear to him.  Of course, the illustrations in the books may help a lot, but the toned of your voice, its rise and fall, as well as your gestures, can add emphasis and stress. 

Don’t over-dramatize things, however, because you might scare him and if he’s sensitive and intense, he might get traumatized. 

As you read to your child, or before you read to him, tell your child a related story from your personal experience.  This way, you open up his mind to the fact that what he’s reading is not just a story but something that can happen in real life.  And if the story is a true one concerning you, think how happy he’ll be that his mom or dad was part of it.