Research and Musings

Parents of young children are often reminded that play is how they learn. Play offers them opportunities to use their imagination and work out how the world works. I’m beginning to think that that is exactly what reading good stories does for older children and adults. Through stories our eyes can be opened to events, places, personalities, problems and solutions that are not in our normal sphere of experience. In short – it’s how we continue to learn.

If our young people are to be given the best chance to be readers as adults, they need a good solid foundation to build on. They need to fall in love with reading while they have a natural inclination to learning, listening and trusting. No one accidentally learns to read, and I don’t think they love to read accidentally either.

So when I came across the following statistics (from the Australian Bureau of Statistics website) I began to think about the reading life of my kids and the potential challenges which might be in front of us.

“The 2009 survey of Children’s Participation in Selected Cultural and Leisure Activities (ABS 2009a) was conducted in regard to the activities of 5-14-year-olds and showed that girls were more likely to read for pleasure than boys at any age. Overall, 80% of girls read for pleasure during the two-week reference period compared with 65% of boys. Girls also read for longer than boys – the average time spent by girls who read for pleasure during the two-week period was 7.8 hours, compared with 6.4 hours for boys.”

The statistics show that after 11 the amount of time a boy will spend reading for pleasure decreases steadily with about half of the 14-year-old boys surveyed having read a book for pleasure in the 2-week survey period.

More recently, Roy Morgan published results of children who reported that they agreed with the statement: ‘I enjoy reading’. The 2015 figures show that while 71.5% of 6-9- year-old boys agreed with this statement, only 63.6% of 10-13-year-olds agreed. These figures are around 12-15% below girls of the equivalent age. This survey is clearly showing that a higher percentage of girls enjoy reading as compared to boys. Which is interesting when you remember the much higher percentage of children’s books that feature male lead characters.

Dr Diane Dickenson in her literature review, Children and Reading, has found that the key reading age for children is between 9 and 11 yrs old. During this age bracket children devour books, then they begin to lose interest in the activity.

As the mother of a boy bookworm racing towards his teenage years these stats really got me wondering: will my boy lose his love of reading? how can I keep him interested in reading for his own entertainment? and, what are these kids doing instead? They have the same amount of hours in their week, but they are not using that time to read. You might argue that a high schooler has more prescribed reading than a primary schooler and more demands on their time. But almost 80% of the 14-yr-old girls found time to read for pleasure, so what are the boys doing?

I found also this eye-opening article by Jacqueline Manuel and Don Carter which discusses the reading practices of Australian’ teenagers. They cite that screen time, sports, work, music, and other leisure activities will often take time away from reading for pleasure, but that for keen readers these barriers will not stop them. It is a different story if the teenager is a reluctant or uncommitted reader.

So what can be done? What strategies can parents implement to encourage, facilitate and motivate our children to love reading so much that they will do it without out encouragement, facilitation or motivation?

Again the 2012 publication from the UK Department of Education can help. There is evidence linking the number of books children have in the house with their attainment, “children who have books of their own enjoy reading more and read more frequently.” Linked to this is the fact that children need choice in reading, they need to be able to read what they are interested in. Children report that the book they enjoy reading most is the one they have chosen for themselves. This is perhaps because the book they chose themselves is most likely a book they have an intrinsic and subconscious desire to complete reading. One source stated the 89% of kids are most likely to finish reading a book if they have chosen it themselves.

I’m am not a huge fan of rewarding children for doing something I expect them to do all the time, otherwise, I’d still be doling out stickers galore to any child of mine who successfully uses the toilet. For me, reading falls into that category of things I expect you to do because it is itself worthwhile and entertaining. This research shows that if you are going to go down the rewards path, that rewards relating to reading, such as book vouchers, have a greater effect.

Something else parents can be doing to foster reading is using the local library: “young people that use their public library are nearly twice as likely to be reading outside of class every day“. For more of my thoughts on using the public library click here.

But unsurprisingly the research suggests that family relationships, teacher relationships, and the home environment have an enormous impact on the reading life of a child. If books are valued in the home, children are more likely to become and continue to be readers.

To add to this a lengthy, but interesting, publication from Scholastic, gave some insights into parents, children, and reading. They claim that a key predictor of reading frequency was the age at which they began being read aloud to by parents. Also that 51% of the 6-8-year-olds whose parents no longer read aloud to them wished they still did. As children get older parents are still really important as having parents who read is a key predictor of the reading frequency in the 12-17 year age bracket.

This publication also found that 74% of children claimed they would read more if they could find more books that they liked. Coupled with this, 40% of parents said they needed help finding books their children would like.

A 2012 publication from the UK Department of Education reports a really interesting finding: “Reading enjoyment has been reported as more important for children’s educational success than their family’s socio-economic status.” Dr Joe Price has some interesting (though tough to read if you’re not a hardcore stats person) research that can help us understand this a bit more. It is well proven that children from higher socio-economic families have a greater statistical probability of having higher test scores (and thus presumably better opportunities educationally and professionally). However, it is suggested that parent-child reading has the same impact as increasing your family’s economic status. He even puts a value to it. You can consider that every hour you spend reading with your child is the same as earning $45 (AUD) towards your family income. So if you can manage 30 mins of reading to a child 6 times a week, over the course of a year that’s over $7000 worth of income.

While I have been highlighting the ways parents can make a positive influence on their children, there is also a suggestion that parents are the ones potentially responsible for the drop in reading frequency. The statistics show that as a child grows older a parent will less frequently do things that encourage reading. As an example, almost 50% of parents will take their 6-8-year-old to the library to browse for books, but that figure drops to around 25% of parents of 15-17-year-olds.

In her podcast series, The Read Aloud Revival, Sarah McKenzie (and her guests) often highlight that children need to see reading as a pleasure and a privilege. When we assign reading or reading time to kids this has a tendency to lessen their enjoyment. Unfortunately, today’s schools seem to not realise this. Logging minutes of reading is not really sending the message to kids that reading is a valuable endeavor, worthwhile in and of itself. Reading should be something you get to do, not something you have to do.

The question then is: are children losing their interest in reading? are they being distracted by devices or other activities? or are parents not doing enough to encourage reading past the stage where children become independent readers?

The likelihood is that there is a multiplicity of contributing factors that vary for each individual situation. But what I’ve noticed is that if a parent wants their child to become an adult who loves reading and does it for entertainment and enjoyment there is a whole lot they can do from the time the child is born to give them the best chance. To quote Daniel Willingham, from his detailed book Raising Kids Who Read: “Your goal is not for her [or him] to be a good reader; it’s that she [or he] enjoy reading.”