I get asked a lot about, “What about reluctant readers?” A lot of parents are concerned that my kid is a reluctant reader. No matter my best efforts, what can I do? I think there are many ways to help reluctant readers to bring them along to reading and to rediscovering the joy of reading. It only takes one book to hook them in.
It only takes one really successful, thrilling, joyful, wonderful, losing oneself in the magic reading experience to captivate that child’s imagination and then if we’re smart to take that moment and that opportunity and parlay it into other wonderful reading experiences. So it’s not about a relentless journey. It’s about finding that one thing that will help that reluctant reader spark their imagination and be the portal into opening their curiosity to other reading experiences.
There are some very practical ways that we can encourage reluctant readers. Anything from reasoning with them. Quite simply saying, “Look, I understand this is something that you feel that you’re not particularly interested in at this time. This is hugely important to us. This is a value we hold as a family. Let’s just for one week, let me read you this story, and if at the end of the week you’re miserable and you don’t want to read it anymore, that’s fine. I’ve done my part.”
Chances are if you pick the story right, by the end of one week the child will be begging for more. That’s one way. Another way is to suggest, to use a little bit of incentive. You can stay awake a little bit longer, you can as long as you’re reading in bed you can stay up until such and such a time tonight, using reading as a motivation. Giving books as gifts is a great way to associate reading with receiving a gift and love and pleasure for any age reader.
The reluctant reader oftentimes resists the read aloud experience because they think they’re too old for it or they’ve outgrown it or what have you. Bringing in altruism — asking them to perhaps read to a younger sibling or read in a Big Brother/Big Sister Program. Read if they’re babysitters or their mother’s helpers or so forth to their younger charges can be a great way to get them involved in the story without their realizing that they’re actually becoming involved and thinking that they’re doing it for other reasons.
I think we have to be very careful not to use reading as a weapon or as something that we hold over their heads. For example, we have to be very careful not to say, “If you don’t stop that behavior, no bedtime story tonight. If you don’t do such and such and such, no reading tonight.” That then is creating a negative association with reading.
That’s then building the connection between reading and pressure or reading and punishment or reading and something negative, and though it might seem like a logical consequence, there are plenty of other logical consequences that I think we can choose that aren’t intentionally eroding that connection between reading and joy for a young person which is so important to keep feeding and nurturing and to keep alive.
