On Reading and Children

Some time ago, a family friend ranted to me that her six-year-old daughter was getting too much daily homework. In Grade One. Equally appalled, I listened intently while she explained that, at least twice a week, the child had a math worksheet or two, but every night, she had reading homework. Reading homework? I had inquired, confused.

“Yes,” she relayed. "She has to read every night. It is becoming a chore and a battleground. I make her stay at the kitchen table after dinner every night, and she has to log 20 minutes of reading in a journal,” she explained. 

This woman could have just as easily written my next blog post entitled “How to Raise a Nonreader.” Reading is not homework. Reading should not be forced—well, unless you are still of the ilk that you must finish every book you begin. Reading should be savoured. 

Reading for children should also happen in cozy spaces: in beds, comfy chairs, and sprawled out on floors with cushions. Ideally, it should happen often with parents. Books should be colourful and scattered on side tables and in accessible baskets and bins—even alongside toys. 

My boys loved picture books, pop-up books, Usborne books, maze books, and Eric Carle books, then devoured Robert Munsch stories and the Magic Treehouse Series, or the ‘Jack and Annie’ books they fondly remember them as. I have neither a magic treehouse nor a magic formula. Frankly, only one of my adult children continues to read fiction with any level of consistency—though my youngest has recently revisited the Percy Jackson series with unabated enthusiasm—but what I can assure you is that the term ‘reading’ should not be synonymous in the mind of six-year-old with any compound word that ends in ‘work.’