Books, Books, Books
I’m assuming, I hope correctly, that parents already value the presence of books in a child’s life. Making books accessible to young children and integral to their daily life creates the foundations of a literate person. Too often in my work, I am seeing the deterioration of routines as simple as reading aloud to a child before bed. While this may not seem to be of enormous importance or influence to some, those who do not see this as a critical time for connection and learning are truly misguided. Children learn many, many things from this basic routine. Snuggling up under a blanket with a good book and a safe parent should be one of the central joys and comforts of childhood. It helps children unwind and come down off their day, in a way much more effective than staring blankly at a computer or television, and it helps parents create a life-long routine for their children around reading. It also yields the opportunity for conversation around books. This is perhaps the most critical part of what is missing for many, many children.
Here are some basic steps to helping your child be an active thinker when being read aloud to:
1. Before you read, allow your child time to look through the book and talk about what he/she sees happening. Use this as a time to build vocabulary. For example, “That looks like a cave. Did you know a cave can sometimes be called a ‘lair’?”
2. As you read, stop intermittently and think aloud to your child. “I wonder why he did that?” or “I bet he’s going to…”
3. Ask your child questions about what he/she is thinking. “What do you think that means?”, “Why do you think they are…?”, “What do you think is going to happen?” So often, even well intentioned parents who ask these questions accept, “I don’t know,” as an answer. Gentle prodding is needed here. Children need to be encouraged to move beyond, “I don’t know,” and “I forget,” in order to know that thinking is important. Gentle prompts such as, “Well, what might happen?” and “I bet you could make a smart guess,” help children reconsider. If all else fails, and you can’t get your child to express a thought, model an appropriate answer for them. “Well, I think….”. And absolutely, positively, continue asking the questions next time.
4. Of course it should go without saying that this is a positive conversation between parent and child. A child should be rewarded for thinking and attempting predictions, inferences etc…If a child expresses a thought that is clearly not in line with what is being read, you can certainly redirect them to what you know is happening in the book. “Well, does that make sense with what just happened?” Reprimanding or responding harshly to them for answers we may not see as “right” will only create a dynamic where your child is hesitant to express his/her thoughts.
5. Quiet reading time. This is another routine that is so important. You can start this long before your child is able to read. In my house, we had this time before we read aloud before bed. We climbed onto the bed, my husband and me with our own book or newspaper, the kids with multiple picture books and magazines to choose from, and we spent 10 minutes “reading”. There is a great deal for children to gain from exploring books independently even before they know how to decode. They learn about the way books work, that text and books move from left to right, that there is a sequence in books, and that information can be gathered from pictures and photographs. As they develop more literacy readiness, they can also start to recognize letters, words and sounds that are familiar to them and start to connect the print to the story, understanding that print is words in written form. In addition, children learn that you yourself value reading as an adult. Seeing you read serves as a model for your child. Children want to do what their parents can do. Naturally, they will be motivated to learn to read.
Life Experiences
Again, more and more children are entering school without having had what we would historically have considered “basic” life experiences. When preparing for a trip to the zoo with my first graders, I asked by show of hands how many of them had been to a zoo. Three years in a row, one third of the class raised their hands. (This is, by the way, the same ratio of children who said they were being read to before bed.) This is astonishing. I work in a community where money is not the reason for children not having been to the zoo (not to mention that the zoo has “free” days” every week). How can we expect a child to make sense of what is being talked about, built upon as learning experiences, and read about, if they do not have the experiences that provide for the foundation of those ideas? Children have often not been to the post office, bakery, aquarium, supermarket, or local farm, or pond. They have not dug in the dirt, been to a museum, taken a train ride, walked down their street, or gone to a library. Students I have who are six years old, students with intelligent, successful parents, do not know that a duck is a bird and has two legs, not four. They do not know that pieces of trees are called logs, or that when people want to read a book, they can go to the library to borrow it. These are things that children need to know.
Time Together – Games? How about a game of cards?
I know you are exhausted. I am too. I know that at 7:00, I would never, ever want anyone to be a fly in the wall in my house. I know that at 4:00, many days, when I hadn’t cleaned up or even thought about dinner, what I wanted most was to stick my sons in front of the television so that they would be quiet and leave me alone, just long enough for me to think straight and figure out how I was going to get through the next four hours. But here is the problem. If our way of helping our children relax is only to put them in front of a screen, they do not develop the ability to relax, play independently, or learn the necessary skills to manage frustration or simply play with others. We don’t necessarily have to do this at 4:00 or 6:00. But we do have to do it.
It is our job as parents to help our children find ways to soothe themselves and play alone. Children need to have ways, as do adults, to relax and connect with themselves. Their interest in computers and games like wii and X-Box is understandable. I understand the wish to “veg out” at the end of the day as a way to unwind. Yet although these children will be working and living in an advanced technological world, hopefully we agree that this is not all there is to life. Children need to be able to manage their own self without a screen on in front of them. Blocks, tea sets, tinker toys, paper and markers, Legos, dress up clothes, pretend play, music and stories on tape. These are the things that can help children develop an understanding of the world around them and an ability to play by themselves, without a screen or an adult to entertain them. When my younger son was five, we struggled with this. We actually had to resort to making a list, which we posted on the refrigerator, and when he was unsettled and I was exhausted and trying to make dinner, I would say “Go check your list. Find a way to relax.” He would pick something, I would set the timer, and he wasn’t allowed to come down until the timer went off. These are not easy parenting steps. But we can find a way. It is important to turn off the screens and find a way.
It is also our job as parents to help our children be able to play with others and to understand that games (and life) have rules, and that there is such a thing as losing. Before introducing a new card game to my students, I asked them what card games they knew. The genuinely blank stares left me with self doubt about the wording of my question. “War?” I offered (3 hands), “Go fish”? (2 hands). Then I got curious. Who knows how to play games? I started listing: Sorry, Chutes and Ladders, Guess Who?, Trouble? I could go on, but suffice to say that never did I mention a game to which more than five children (out of twenty one) had been introduced. Whether it’s family game night or a Sunday afternoon or a half an hour after dinner, your children need to play games with you. They need to be taught to take turns, not cheat, not always win and not walk away from an unfinished game. They will learn, by playing with you, not just the strategies required in a game such as checkers, but how to interact with someone or something that is not doing exactly what they want in any given moment, and they will learn how to attend to an activity for an extended period of time. These are school skills, and life skills, which we need our children to have.
There is so much more that can be done. We can guide our children to play with magnet letters, chalkboards, water, and playdough. We can introduce writing into our day to day experiences, limit screen time to a half hour a day, not text message while we are reading or playing with our children. But we cannot do it all at once. What we can do is take steps. We can find opportunity after opportunity to talk to our children and to listen to them and read to them, to help them understand how to find the answers to the things they are questioning in our world. We question ourselves all the time as parents and we need to seek answers as to how to change the things that are not quite working. Let’s get started!
