10 Reasons to Try Family Reading

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10 Reasons to Try Family Reading

Reading is something our children will need to do throughout their lives. Because it’s such a necessary part of life, they might as well enjoy it, right? There are lots of reasons why it’s important for our children to become good readers and plenty of ways it will benefit them.

So, let’s explore 10 reasons you might want to try family reading.

You’ll definitely find some reasons why kids should be good readers. But I hope you’ll also find some ways to help make that happen if your children don’t already love reading.

After all, family reading is usually fairly simple to incorporate into your week (or each day), and it’s a great way to help your children and teens love reading!

What Is Family Reading?

It’s probably exactly what you’ve already got in mind. It’s simply reading together as a family. That might mean reading aloud to your children. It might mean reading a book of your own while your kids read books to themselves. It could mean having your older children read to your younger children. Ideally, it will include a combination of all of these!

10 Reasons Why Family Reading Is Important

1. It’s a great way to model for your children that reading is fun!

If your kids see and hear you reading, they’ll be much more likely to view reading as something enjoyable. They’ll understand that it’s not only necessary for school work but also that it’s something they can do just for the enjoyment of it.

Here are a few themed book lists you might try reading with your kids:

2. It helps increase your children’s vocabularies.

As we read to our children, especially if we read books that are slightly above their current reading levels, we expose them to words and meanings that are (probably) new to them. This is a great way to help our children develop and expand their vocabularies! Having a larger vocabulary is often helpful for all sorts of academic purposes and for standardized testing.

3. It helps them enjoy learning and make better grades during their school years.

Reading is necessary during our children’s school years from the early years all the way through high school or college. There’s hardly a subject that doesn’t require reading. Reading is even necessary for math since our students need to know how to solve word problems.

And we all know that we usually get better results when we’re doing things we enjoy. If our children enjoy reading, they’ll pay better attention and learn and retain more of what they’re reading.

4. Reading is necessary for most jobs.

Whether your child grows up to be a business person, teacher, secretary, accountant, mechanic, entrepreneur, travel agent, or landscaper, or whether he or she chooses one of a million other career options, the majority of them require reading on a day-to-day basis.

5. Reading is often required in real life.

It’s important in many real-life situations. Think about how often you need to read instructions or directions. Need to make a grocery list? Want to make a list of chores for your kids to do? Need to make a note to remember to take out the trash or to remember to get gas in the car? Yep. All of those things require reading.

As long as reading is such a necessary and important part of life, I feel like it’s better if our kids can enjoy it and learn to do it well. Not all kids will love to read, but hopefully, we can make it as enjoyable and painless as possible!

6. It encourages family bonding.

Shared experiences (including sharing books) give family members something to do together, talk about together, and look forward to together. This is such an important point.

If you read meaningful and well-written books as a family, like The Wingfeather Saga, for instance, your kids will be entertained, yes, but something more important is going on here. You’ll be exploring important themes of forgiveness, family, courage, and faith in the form of a powerful story … and this isn’t something you or your children will soon forget.

7. It helps you get to know your children better.

Family reading gives you opportunities to talk to children and teens about topics that might not have otherwise come up. This is related to the previous point, and it is a wonderful reason to read together as a family.

Let’s say you have a quiet child with a rich inner life, one who doesn’t “come out of the shell” very often. Reading a good book together and connecting over the characters, storyline, and dialog is a way to get to know that child: what character is your daughter’s favorite and why, whether your son agrees with the choice the protagonist just made, etc.

8. It helps children develop better reading comprehension and become better readers.

Reading together and discussing what you read helps children develop an understanding of what they read. It gives them a reason to think more deeply about what they’re reading (or in this case, hearing) and a reason to discuss the story.

It also helps children become better readers by hearing the parent (or older sibling) model how to read well. For example, if the parent reads and emphasizes different words, pronounces words the children might not have heard before, pauses when necessary (at commas and periods, for instance) and when it’s important for dramatic effect, the children will understand how to read well and with emphasis and inflection.

In other words, they’ll know what “good” reading sounds like and will be better able to do it themselves.

9. It encourages families to learn together.

Family reading is a wonderful way to learn together! I know a family who read a story about a group of early American pioneers. The story mentioned that the group made their own soap. Because this was something they’d never really considered before, the family started researching the various ways soap was made back then and is made today.

Learning about soap-making caused the family to want to try making soap, so they did! Making soap eventually led to them making all of their own soap and selling it at local fairs and markets. Now, this family has a nice little side business that they use for extra income.

And it all happened because of something they read during their family reading time!

10. It helps children become better writers.

A great foundation (being a proficient reader) helps children become better writers. Even if your children aren’t particularly interested in being writers, writing is a skill they’ll need throughout their school years and throughout life, so it’s important that they learn to do it well.

What are some tips you have for family reading? Any favorite books you have enjoyed as a family?