The ability to read is essential in American society today as it can be difficult to go through one’s daily tasks without coming across print that needs to be deciphered. Reading is one of the first educational subjects that parents begin to teach their children because it has such a grand impact on the rest of their lives. Parents begin reading to their children as early as infancy—some begin reading to the mother’s belly before the baby is even born—and many continue up through elementary school. However, experts have observed that at the end of elementary school—around grades fourth through sixth—this parental role seems to decline (Klauda, 332). The interest that fourth through sixth grade students have in reading seems to be much less than that of previous grades, and this may be caused by the lack of parental involvement in their reading development because stereotypically students seem to get more involved with the learning process when their parents take an active role in their academic career (Klauda, 330).
Many parents seem to believe that reading with their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students suffices for the learning support for the entirety of their children’s reading lives, but children need assistance while they are adolescents as well. Dr. Penny Soboleski, head of the Clubhouse, a children’s literacy program at The University of Findlay, says, “Reading to children while they are adolescents is highly important because parents can read them a more complex text and help them understand it.” There is such a push in American society to concentrate on reading with children at an early age with programs like Your Baby Can Read that many parents seem to worry only about the young ages and once their child grows up they allow them to learn on their own (Klauda, 327). Parents’ involvement in their children’s education is crucial when it comes to reading. Soboleski says, “Parents must model what it means to be a reader as well as showcase the variety of reading materials available to their children.” This modeling can occur at any age, but studies show that one age is more important than the rest. It is just as important to read to babies and toddlers as it is to read with elementary students and adolescents. However, the decline in reading interest that is occurring at the end of elementary school makes it most important for parents to continue reading with their children as they become adolescents to ensure that children never lose their interest in reading.
In order to understand the importance of parents reading to their adolescent children, one must first understand the importance of reading to children at a younger age. Therefore, I will delve into reading with babies and toddlers and elementary school students before I get to my main focus of parents reading with their adolescent children. By doing this, it will be easier to see how all three groups are similar as well as different. The groups will be broken down specifically into baby/toddler years from birth to age four, elementary school years from age five to age twelve, and adolescent years from age thirteen to eighteen. These groupings will allow for a clear distinction between the age groups that are being read to by parents the most and the age group that needs to be read to more. In setting the argument up in this manner the importance of parents reading with their children at all ages will be seen with an emphasis on parents reading with their adolescent children.
Reading with babies, children age birth to two, seems to be the easiest for parents to do because babies spend a lot more time with parents than older children and babies don’t have any responsibility, so the opportunity to start molding their mind is perfect at this time. Susan Straub, the developer of The Read to Me Program, agrees with this as she believes that having all this time allows for a system of familiarity to be set up with the child. She states:
Babies often choose a favourite book and demand to hear it frequently. Why? Besides enjoying its familiarity, I suspect the repetition is akin to the practicing which leads to mastery. If the reader is the parent, the reader is helped to master the art of being a good parent. Additionally, because so much in a baby’s day is out of his control, even chaotic, I think the faithfulness of a favourite book is reassuring (Straub 350).
Straub’s idea of familiarity as the baby picks out their favorite book goes far beyond the fact that they have something they can recognize as their parents continue to read to them. Soboleski would agree with this idea of recognition in regards to the children recognizing their parent’s voice as she says, “Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read.” Straub also relates this continuous reading with the child to practicing the skill of reading. Mastering the skill of reading with their child is important when it comes to Straub viewing them as good parents. She asserts that parents who bring literacy into their children’s lives at an early age are only setting up their learning process for many more years of reading together. Parents who continue to read with their children from infancy to adolescence are good parents in her view as they are taking the time and effort to read with their children in order to help strengthen their reading skills and motivation. Concept-Oriented Reading Instruction research specialist, Susan Lutz Klauda, believes that babies don’t necessarily have the mindset to be motivated readers just yet, but if the parents are motivated to read to them this learning process will stick with them in following years as parental motivation is contagious (330). This idea is one that is backed up by many theories and research studies while looking at a variety of age groups of children. Parental motivation will get the child interested in the book, but still the process of the parents reading to their children is of the upmost importance.
When it comes to reading with babies, the process is what matters most. Obviously babies can’t read, but they’re able to gain knowledge from the books that their parents read to them because they remember the pictures and the words that go with them. This sharing process helps set up the children’s reading ability early on because their brains start retaining all the information. If a parent were to read a book such as Dr. Seuss’ One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish to their baby, the child is going to remember the different fish in association with the number of them or their color because often times it only takes hearing the word for the baby to retain the action or description that goes with the word. At eighteen months, babies only need to hear one instance of a word to create a memory of its association with a specific event. This is evident in studies that have shown that a researcher can play with a child in a room full of toys. Then they leave the room, and someone else comes in and places another toy in the room. If the researcher comes in and shouts, “Look! A dax!” the baby will assume that the new toy is the dax (Curzan and Adams, 341). The baby in the study has figured out that usually new things are talked about rather than familiar things, so when the word dax comes up again in dialogue they will remember that new toy and associate that word with the toy. This brain activity also seem to be heightened when working with parents as research has also shown when babies hear a variety of words from their parents their brain development is enhanced, and, on the contrary, those children who are not read to at an early age enter school with a major deficit due to this lack of development (Straub 352). Straub states, “The ‘reading’ babies are so far ahead and will continue to grow that the ‘nonreading’ babies really struggle to keep up. Perhaps, then, this is the key to making school successful for all of our children: get parents to read with their babies” (Straub 352). This research, as Straub has described, aligns with the view that reading with children at all ages is important because learning how to reading and to continue reading is a building process.
The toddler years, when children are ages three and four, are just as important as the baby years because the minds of children are still growing and schedules for parents to read are still there. Parents of toddlers may have more responsibilities and busier schedules than parents of babies as their children may start getting into daily activities such as dance classes and piano lessons, but they should still have time to sit down with their child to read a book. Parents should be able to talk with their children at this age after reading a book as their children will be verbal, and this will help convey that parents are interested in their children’s opinions (Layne, 34). Many literary scholars believe when parents talk with their children about what they are reading, they are reestablishing the importance of literacy in their lives. Isabel Schon, the director of the Isabel Schon Center for Spanish Books for Youth at the San Diego Public Library, states, “Children naturally respond to their parent’s tone, affection, and concern. Books are a loving way to build that wonderful connection between parent and child that lasts a lifetime” (Schon, 35). This connection that she is talking about in regards to parents reading with their children should be set up to last a lifetime like she suggests, but sadly many parents don’t stick with it when their children get older. However, still more scholars advocate for parents to read to their children while young in order to prepare them for the future. Michael Strickland, a reading and writing professor at College of South Idaho, states, “Children who come to school having rich experiences with oral language, storybooks, and print concepts will be better students…” (Strickland, 35). Therefore, the toddler years are of high importance when it comes to parents reading with their children because they make up the last couple of years before children enter elementary school.
The elementary school years, when students are age five to twelve, are also very important as children are continuing to learn new literacy skills daily from their teachers. Many parents might believe that the students have teachers in their lives now who can do the reading work with them, but it is just as important for parents to continue with their support. Elementary schools have begun to set up programs in which teachers and parents do reading activities such as paired reading, reading discussions, and phonic awareness exercises just to name a few. Frances Imperato is a reading specialist at Martin Luther King School, a K-5 school in Edison, New Jersey, and she has set up a program for kindergartners at her school in which parents and teachers read with children. She has always suggested that parents simply read with their children, but due to the rise of English language learners in her school she knew that she had to try a different method. After speaking to a presenter at workshop she was able to implement his ideas at her school as “he recommended a parental involvement and reading instruction routine that involves a daily rhyme that children read repeatedly with their parent and that is followed by one or more simple and quick phonics or phonemic awareness activities” (Imperato, 342). She has high hopes of her program branching off to other grades at her school if it proves to be successful, and by the looks of her results this program will soon be implemented elsewhere. During her first year of the study, 2007, she had a decrease of 66 percent of kindergartners not being able to read to only 19 percent not being able to, and this was due to their parents’ involvement in the reading process (Imperato, 344). She also found the 89.5 percent of the students would leave kindergarten as readers if their parents were able to get involved with the reading program (Imperato, 344). These numbers help show that programs like this are working in school systems today. If parents work with their children as much as their teachers are, then there will be a positive influence on the reading abilities of the students. Imperato states, “I have found that simple, at-home literacy programs that feature authentic and engaging reading activity and that are easily understood, implemented, and administered show positive results in literacy learning…” (344). If students in every grade in elementary school were able to have dedicated parents, or other positive role models, like this, reading scores would continue to be high as Imperato’s study suggests, but near the end of elementary school the motivation of parents and students seems to decline.
It has been suggested by students that the support of their parents seems to decline as they aren’t as involved in their academic and non-academic lives (Kluada, 327) starting at the end of their elementary years from grades fourth to sixth (Kluada, 332). These years are crucial as they are the last years before the children reach adolescence, ages thirteen to eighteen, in which parental involvement seems to continue to decline. The majority of children are used to their parents helping them with their reading assignments, and then many children go from getting a lot of parental support in elementary school to getting little to no support at all in middle school and high school. (Kluda, 327) This leads to a lack of reading motivation and a decrease in reading activity for adolescent students, so it is important to change the way that many parents are acting at this stage of their children’s development in order to get their children’s reading processes back on track (Klauda, 330).
Two theoretical models help back up the point that if parents continue to read with their children at this age the effects will be positive. McKenna’s model for reading acquisition describes how reading attitude affects one’s decision to read, and Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading looks at the characteristics of people who are dedicated to reading (Klauda, 329-330). By applying these models to adolescent students, it is easy to see that parents should continue to play supportive roles when it comes to their children’s reading.
McKenna’s model shows that the students are going to have an attitude towards reading based on significant factors in their life, and these factors will either cause them to have a positive or negative outlook on reading. The first factor includes how the student views their past reading experience. This factor brings a lot to their attitude because they are going to be more familiar with what they know; their views on the past are going to produce an “immediate impact on attitude without cognitive meditation of belief change” (Klauda, 329). The student will have a hard time thinking twice about changing their views on reading because they have already been set up; that is why it is important for parents to start reading to their children early and to continue throughout their childhood. If a child has enjoyed being read to throughout life and their parents continue to read to them during adolescence then their positive views on their parents’ reading to them will be associated with the time in which their parents are presently reading to them.
The second factor looks into the student’s belief of the outcome of their reading. This connects with the first factor in that adolescent’s past reading experiences are going to influence whether they have a positive or negative view towards reading. Likewise as with the first factor, it is important for parents to provide positive reading experiences for their children through life as their children’s attitude will continue to improve overtime, but if their experience is on the contrary their attitude towards reading will worsen as time goes by (Klauda, 329). For example, if a child’s parent read to them in elementary school to help them prepare for reading tests and the child received high scores on those tests, then they are going to have a positive view on the outcome of their parent’s involvement in their reading process. The child will be able to make a connection to that positive reading outcome, and, in turn, connect it with their parent reading to them during adolescence. The idea of parental involvement in the first two factors also carries over to the third factor as it looks at how the student will view whether or not their significant others value reading.
This last factor of McKenna’s model stresses that it is critical for parents to continue to read with the children as this repetition of reading will show that the parents hold reading in a high regard (Kluada, 331). If parents model that reading is important, then it will resonate in their child’s mind that it is important as well. Therefore, that is why it is important for parents to continue reading to their children when they are older. If a parent were to just stop reading to their child because the child had reached middle school or high school, then the child is going to view that action as one that suggests their parent no longer values reading. Soboleski would agree with this as she states, “Modeling reading is of the highest importance. If a child grew up in a literary-rich environment in which their parents always read to them, they are going to view reading as a positive experience for the rest of their lives” (Soboleski). The factors of McKenna’s model and along with Soboleski’s view point flow into the next model as students who have positive attitudes about reading can start to become engaged readers.
Guthrie and Wigfield’s engagement model of reading sets up four characteristics of engaged readers. Readers who are engaged know how to use reading comprehension strategies, are knowledge driven, are highly motivated, and regularly interact with peers, family members, and others with reading activities (Kluada, 330). This model backs up the point that it is important for parents to read to their adolescent children because that interaction will keep their children motivated and engaged while reading. Guthrie and Wigfield’s model is grounded in the self-determination theory because it looks at how individuals are motivated when they feel like intrinsic agents, such as their parents, are going to positively affect their work (Kluada, 330). Adolescent students need this extra motivation from their parents. When adolescents work with their parents on reading and see that their parents are mirroring that reading is a positive activity then they are more apt to be motivated to continue with the reading activity as these theories suggest.
The other characteristics of knowing how to use reading comprehension strategies, being knowledge driven, and being highly motivated also connect with the parental support in reading. Parents and other agents of support such has teachers have done their part in reading to the children throughout life. Therefore, stereotypically by the age of adolescence the children should have mastered how to comprehend the text in which they read although this can still be a growing process as literature gets tougher as the years go by. Soboleski provides a side story to back this point up as she says, “When my boys were in high school, I would read Lord of the Rings to them. It was a more complex text with tough vocabulary, so I was able to pause at places and provide them with help with the difficulties in the book” (Soboleski). This constant learning of comprehension strategies based on this model suggests that the readers will become more engaged in the literature they are reading because they are learning how to understand it.
Soboleski’s example can also be connected to the last two characteristics of being knowledge driven and highly motivated. Students are going to become engaged readers after spending time reading with their parents because that model of reading is going to leave them craving more knowledge while motivating them to read more and more. Soboleski says it best when she states, “No one can read to a child like a parent. A parent and child have a connection like no other. Children recognize the voice of their parent and gain an immediate recognition of what is being read. Even reading with a great teacher can’t compare” (Soboleski). Just as when they were babies, toddlers, and elementary school students and their parents would read to them, that connection needs to remain through adolescence to help motivate the children to continue to be engaged readers under Guthrie and Wigfield’s model.
Parents who read to their children while they are babies, toddlers, and elementary school students need to continue reading with their children into the age of adolescence. The parent’s model of reading will help the child connect back to all of their positive reading experiences throughout the years. As a parent of an adolescent sits down to read with their child, the child will be reminded of the literacy connection they have with parent as well as how much their parent values reading, and these combined motives will help the child continue to become an engaged reader. As experts from each age group have suggested, reading is a growing and continuous process as the brain continues to gather new information, so when parents of adolescents take the time to sit down with their children to read a book they are making a large difference in their child’s life by giving them the gift of the importance and value of reading.
Works Cited
- Curzan, Anne and Michael Adams. How English Works: A Linguistic Introduction. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2009. Print.
- Imperato, Frances. “Getting Parents and Children Off to a Strong Start in Reading.” Reading Teacher 63.4 (2009): 342-344. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
- Klauda, Susan. “The Role of Parents in Adolescents’ Reading Motivation and Activity.” Educational Psychology Review 21.4 (2009): 325-363. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
- Layne, Steven. “Features: Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 34. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
- Schon, Isabel. “Features: Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
- Soboleski, Penny. Personal Interview. 15 April 2011.
- Straub, Susan. “The Power of Reading with Babies.” Infant Observation 12.3 (2009): 349-352. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
- Strickland, Michael. “Features: Give the Gift of Reading—and Your Time.” Reading Today 27.3 (2009): 35. EBSCOHost. Web. 20 January 2011.
