Motivation: Reading for Pleasure (You Asked)

by Becky

Angie Asks:

I need help motivating my son to read for pleasure. He is finishing up 6th grade and has never read a book on his own since we began homeschooling 2 years ago. He loves for me to read to him and although I enjoy this too and would continue even if he were reading for pleasure himself, I can't get him to read without absolutely making him. We have subscribed to magazines that should interest him and he has access to many, many books at home. I do not have him to answer questions after reading as he did in PS, but I am thinking this was the burden that killed any interest he may have had. Any suggestions?

"Read lots and lots of books." 

This advice was given to my 7 year old son last week on his birthday.  I wrote about it in another post recently and have been thinking about it a lot since.  The woman who said these words, while patting my son Charley on the head, owns a bookstore and used to be an elementary school teacher.   She was shocked to learn that my bright, capable, happy 7 year old was not yet a reader.  The context of our meeting and the short time we ended up spending together did not lend itself to lengthy discussion of educational philosophy, but I have found myself carefully outlining  in my head what I would have said to her, had our time together been more lengthy.

It's really hard for many people to believe that kids really will learn to read, and read well, if left to their own devices.  Our system of educating children at school has taught us that kids need to learn to read by the end of First Grade.  When I was teaching elementary school, I loved teaching 2nd and 3rd grade, because they came to me already reading.  And if for some reason a child didn't quite catch on by the time they began Grade Two, they were shipped off to remediation and "special classes" so they didn't (gasp) fall behind!  The notion that kids all need to acquire skills at the same relative rate makes no sense to me now.  My three kids have never been to school, and no one (aside from well meaning librarians and book shop owners) has ever told them they had to read.

Motivating a child to read, in my house, looks like this:  I read.  I read a lot.  I read silently to myself.  I read aloud to my children.  I spend hours in bookstores.  I give books as gifts.  I write letters.  I read letters.  I write in my journal.  I read magazines...you get the idea.  My point is, children don't need any other motivation other than modeling.  A child who is raised in a home where reading is valued, will likely grow up to be  reader herself.  But here's the catch:  it may not happen as early as age 7.  It might not even happen by age 9 or 11.  I know of some unschoolers who did not begin to read independently and easily until age 12.  But they eventually did.  And they didn't do it because someone told them to.  They began to read because they were ready and because they wanted to.

My 7 year old son has two older sisters.  At 9 and 11, they are readers.  No one taught them to read.  They just figured it out.  The motivation came from a place of curiosity, wonder, and excitement.  Reading for them has always been a pleasurable activity, mostly because no one has ever required that they do it.  I love to read.  I always have.  However, my worst memories from high school and college are of the last minute cramming I did the night before a book was due.  I have horrible scars associated with classic novels such as The Scarlet Letter and Catch 22, all because I was required to read them.  There was no pleasure there, only pain.

My guess is that a child that has been required to read a certain number of minutes a day or a certain number of pages per week, will probably go through a period of withdrawal when those requirements are no longer present.  I can imagine that child, particularly a pre-teen, needing lots and lots of time to choose not to read, so that he can eventually make the choice to read.  Developmentally, children at this stage are testing the limits of their own autonomy.  Choosing not to do something is just as powerful for them as choosing to do something.  If the child is open to being read to and interesting reading material is ready and available when he is ready for it, there is nothing else that needs to be done.  Keep on reading aloud.  It's good for all of you.  Let him choose.  He'll be a reader someday.

Becky is the unschooling mother of three (Janey, 11, Macy, 9 and Charley, 7) attempting to raise her children with compassion and respect.  She taught elementary school for 9 years before discovering unschooling when it was time for her oldest to go to Kindergarten.  She credits Sandra Dodd, Mary Griffith, Jan Hunt, and just about every other person she interacted with at her first HSC Home=Education conference 6 years ago, as her inspiration to find a more natural way of living and learning with children.  She is a Homeschooling Consultant, offering support and guidance to families looking to clarify their vision as a family of learners.  You can read more of what Becky has to say at http://lifewithoutschool.blogspot.com   She can be reached at homeschoolconsultant@gmailcom.

Comments

[heather]

I have had the same experience. We have homeschooled since day one however as a former teacher I spent many years working on my oldest trying to work her through her dyslexia and make her be a reader because I am a reader. I had it backwards. With my other two I relaxed and let them go at their own pace (we have been unschooling for a little over a year now).

My oldest is 10 loves to have me read aloud, and as often as possible. She has heard some of the best books that way. She also loves to listen to audio books which we get from the library. She does not, however, enjoy reading for more than 20 minutes or so unless it is a book she has listened to many times. My middle child, age 8, adores reading and reads as often as I do, which is a lot. My son who just turned 6 has on his own and because he wanted to, taught himself to read using Hooked on Phonics and reading from Hymn Books (he likes that the song books break the words up into syllables so he can read the bigger words.) I have only helped him when he asks and has learned more easily than the other two.

The best thing to do is to read a lot if you want your children to read a lot.

[Ophelia]

This is a great question, and I agree about modeling reading to your children. My personal suggestion (in addition to reading a lot, and modeling this to your children) is to watch movie adaptations of popular books, and read the book, either before or after watching the movie. Although some people may think that watching film versions of books are a bad thing, I think it only becomes so if a person chooses only to watch the movie version and not read the actual book itself on which the movie was based.

I suggest this because it has been my experience that watching the film version makes the reading of the book more exciting - for me and for my son, who is now a high school sophomore. (We've been homeschooling/unschooling since he was in 2nd grade). There are more and more books that are being turned into movies nowadays, so there is a long list that one can go through and then do a comparison/contrast between the book and the movie, if one wanted to. I imagine that this could help get a reluctant reader to want to read more, especially if the child finds the story of the movie very interesting.

Just a few good books that have been turned into movies that come to mind right now are:

Charlotte's Web
Tuck Everlasting
Holes
Ella Enchanted
Harry Potter series
The Lord of the Rings trilogy
The Chronicles of Narnia
A Series of Unfortunate Events
Beowulf

And of course, there are many, many more. I'm currently looking forward to seeing "Inkheart" when it comes out in the movie theaters!

[Pass the torch]

This is such a great post. So often we continue to focus on the child to try to "fix" something, when what we need to do first is look at ourselves.

Reading for pleasure is one of the 40 Developmental Assets and I think it's so important.

I think it's very interesting when I look at my own kids. The year I homeschooled, my daughter read about 500 pages per month - for pleasure. Now that she's back in school - very little. I'm hoping we can turn the tide again when schools out for the summer.

Great post. (Here via Carnival of Ed.)

[JHS]

Thanks for contributing this post to this week's Carnival of Family Life (www.jhsiess.com/carnival-family-life), hosted at This Full House (www.thisfullhouse.com). Be sure to stop by on Monday, March 10, 2008, and support your fellow participants by checking out all of their wonderful contributions.

[Pat]

I think you should start him with his own blog or creating his own books of things that interest him. Have him dictate the story to you and have him illustrate it. Then he can read his book to others. As he does more and more, his reading will increase. Eventually he will move onto books that interest him. My nephew was that way and once he found something that interested him, he wouldn't stop reading but it was the starting that was the problem. LOL

[Linda]

Over and over and over I have heard the same sort of story from unschoolers. It's been our experience as well, with both of our eldest children learning to read around age 9.