GrannyG

I was not a reader as I grew up, but in my adult life I have developed a love of reading. As I raised my 5 children, I made reading TO them a priority in my daily schedule. From the time they were lap babies, I read to them. I scheduled 3 reading times a day with the children. Morning: Devotional readings usually Bible stories. Mid Afternoon: Secular reading - depending on what their age was from little Golden books to chapter books. They loved picture books when little and then developed a love for "word" books. Evening: Just before bed, we had our family devotions. Then I would tuck them in and read a short story to them.

I never had a problem getting them to read as they grew older. I think another plus to making this work for us was the fact that we watched very little TV. When they were very small and in the early grades in school, we watched Mr. Rogers, The Friendly Giant, and some similar types of TV. But very limited. Then when they were a little older, our TV died and we DECIDED NOT TO REPLACE IT. This sometimes caused embarrassment for them when their friends talked about the TV programs they watched and my children had not seen the programs. But now that they are grown, they do value the fact that they were not exposed to so much TV and also to the fact that their time was freed up for reading.

So "How do you get your child to read - Is your child required to read????" Instill it early in life and you won't have the struggle later.

Exception: There are truly situations where a child has difficulty with reading and that does pose a problem. However, if the desire is instilled by the parent actually reading to the child in a loving way BEFORE the child is actually expected to learn to read, then the desire to do it will sometimes help in overcoming the actual problem.

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KitsapGirl

We don't have a need to require reading...my son would live at Barnes & Noble or the library if they would let him...he's a total bookworm!

I was never forced to read either...rather when I was on restriction (which was sadly, a lot of the time) they would only allow me certain things...

School, Church, family functions, and my room. They would take everything else...I could read a book because this was part of school work, and church, but no telephone, radio, tapes, records, or TV...So since I could read I did...fell in love with it. Now it's the one earthly posession I have that makes me feel wealthy.

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I wish that I would have been "forced" to read when I was younger. Unfortunately, we were somewhat of a tv family, so when we were done with school, the tv is usually where we went. I actually liked to read, too, but that tv was more appealing most of the time. I think as a parent you can do your child a great service by making them read during a certain chunk of the day or at least limiting their tv intake.

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Mindy Lepp
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