How important is it to inculcate reading habits in your child?

How important it is to inculcate the habit of reading in your child?

Today the story is a little different. I was invited by a few of my friends to join a Woman's Day celebration party. Before this, Women's Day had been just exchanging messages over social media for me. Today I could understand that every drop counts. As my friend Aditi Sayal said, "let your initiative be small, but what matters is you start, be it your hobby or your job or anything that makes you happy, just do it." She quoted a line from a Hindi movie, 3 Idiots, where Amir Khan says, 'what it takes to go to school is just the uniform.'  These lines have personally motivated me and I hope to have the same impact on others present there as well.

Among the speaker of the day, we had Ms. Aditi Mitra, Ms. Sweta, Ms. Monika, and Ms. Juhi Saxena. All of them were truly inspiring and excellent in their respective field. Their path may be different but they walk together towards the path of empowering women.

From all this that I learned today, I have chosen to write about a topic which is related to parenting. It mainly says how important is it to introduce your child to reading habits and a full insight on this.

The speaker on this topic today was our very own Aditi Mitra who is an educator in Singapore for almost a decade now. She deals with the most volatile age group of children that is between 1.5 years to 6 years. Being a teacher at a kindergarten is not an easy job as it requires immense patience, tolerance, and dedication, but Aditi has pulled all this together along with her family commendably.

When asked how to introduce reading to our kids and at what age? She answered, that we can start by showing kids pictures and books that are colorful and attractive at a very early age. A better way to introduce learning abilities in children is by introducing them with pictorial books and flashcards. Flashcards do wonder according to her. By the age of 3-4 years, kids will pick up recognizing alphabets and will start associating letters with pictures.

Next comes the phonetics which is the understanding of a child about letter sound. According to her a child learns sight words and letter sounds and thoroughly relate word letter sound with words by the age of 4-5 years. There are many books available in the market which helps children to learn sight words. This also motivates a child to read and gives confidence over reading. This must be the first step towards independent reading for kids.

Now, the third and the last part of basic reading abilities among children is thorough reading with the ability to comprehend. Aditi says that a child from an age group of 6-8 years should be able to read of their own. The problem is many kids can do this at this age but they cannot comprehend. It is important to read and to understand to comprehend what they read and only then the motto will be fulfilled. She says, “It is important for children to read a text, analyze it and then give their own views on it.”

Aditi was asked a few questions from the audience which says:

Q: How reading has helped her as she loves to read and own a mini library at her home?

She said, we individually grow in a specific context where we have a limitation of thinking. Our thinking is influenced by many factors such as social, religious, geographical etc. according to her, all these parameters are boundaries which restrict our thought process. SO, to open up and widen your thought process or vision it is very important to read. Reading will take you to different possibilities of life where you can imagine out of the box beyond any limits. She enjoys reading herself and read from an array of books.

She further added, it is important for us to read for ourselves and also for our kids to show them the broader aspect of life. The world has advanced and our children have to start from a much extensive perspective of life.

Q. How to make our kids settle down for study when they don’t want to?

Our friend picked up a genuine question which all mothers go through. Kids at the age of 2-3 years are so playful that they don’t want to settle down for anything and especially studies. She says her son will not sit for a minute with books. Aditi said, start with a minute on the first day or even 30 seconds and then gradually increase it from 30 seconds to a minute and then to 5 minutes and so on.

This thing really helped me a lot personally. When my daughter was around that age, I faced this problem and actually, I practiced sitting with her for a minute and then gradually increase the time and today she is okay to study for an hour at a stretch. What Aditi said to this was really important, “consistency is the main key towards success”, and if you want to achieve something be consistent upon that. Don’t give up and repeat your practice every day until it becomes a habit for your child.

Q. How to choose the perfect book for my kid. How to understand that the pictures and texts appropriate for my kid to read?

Aditi said parents are responsible for buying books for their children. So till a certain age, we are responsible for what they read and exposed to. It is very important for us to surf through the book while we buy it to understand its appropriateness for our kids.

Most importantly, she says on a personal note, don’t restrict your child from reading from your personal point of view. When your kids are grown enough to choose their feed for knowledge, let them choose what they want to read. Extensive reading will open up your kid’s perspective towards the world.

Q. How to keep children away from worldly distractions like screen and other temptations?

Well, this seems a repeated question to many of us. In this tech-savvy world where kids spend hours in front of screens, it is really important for us to take their attention away from there. She suggested that irrespective of showing them nursery rhymes on TV it is preferable to sing and dance along with expressions with your kid on the same nursery dance. Personal involvement of the parents and especially mothers will slowly lower the interest of television or mobile or computer for a kid. This way you can share quality time with your kids and also inculcate good habits in them.

She also added, reading at home for mothers is very important. What children see us doing, they repeat. So if we sit with TV or mobile phones then we cannot expect our kids to leave the screen and study. And most importantly to inculcate reading habits among kids it is very important for mothers to read in front of their children. This will give the children a feeling to try to read. So it is a long and process which needs dedication and of course consistency.

A special thanks to Sweta who is a Company Secretary in Singapore and enlightened us about business perspective for jobs etc. in Singapore, and also a big thanks to Monika who let us know how her domestic help became a family member and how she can build that relationship with her that connects a bond of humanity between the two.

Apart from serious discussion we also had a fun time where our friend Juhi Saxena made us groove on some dance steps and a special thanks to Aditi Sayal to host the party, and thanks for all those lovely ladies who cooked sumptuous food for us and to all of us as we celebrate womanhood together.