Raising Kids Who Read

by Daniel T Willingham

  This result implies that your baby will be learning vocabulary even though he can’t show you that he’s learning it. So talk to him. Describe what you’re doing as you’re making dinner and he’s in his high chair. Ask his opinion about whether to buy yellow or white onions when you’re in the grocery store, even if the question draws only a solemn look. This talk from you doesn’t need to be didactic. It can (and, to my taste, should) be social.

  For older children—say, age three and up—there are lots of data showing that children mirror the type of talk that they hear—both talk directed to them and talk that they overhear. I remember being startled when my youngest child, then three, walked up to me and asked, “Daddy, is your lap available?” She had learned the concept of “availability” in reference to materials at her preschool and applied it to my lap, which she required at that moment for sitting.

  As always, common sense rules here. I’m not suggesting that you salt your conversation with words you’ve found on a build-your-vocabulary website. “Gosh, José, you’re turning into the house factotum, aren’t you, my boy?” I’m suggesting that you pay attention to how you talk to your kids, with an eye toward perhaps talking more as you do to adults. They can probably handle it and would benefit. And I guess I’m also suggesting not to speak motherese once they are no longer babies. (Part of that, I’ll admit, is personal. It makes my skin crawl to hear a parent in a restaurant use an overly loud, fake-joyous voice to shout in the face of a six-year-old, “Does Biwwy want some owange zuice?”).

  Building Knowledge

  Between the ages of two and five, your child is a terrific ally in the pursuit of knowledge because that’s when she’s constantly asking you questions. Sure, not all questions from kids are meant to learn things. Sometimes they want your attention (“Mommy?”) and sometimes they make a request (“Can you please open the window?”) or ask for permission (“Can I play Nintendo?”). But about two-thirds of the questions that kids around this age pose are meant to elicit information. They want to learn about their world. You can see their desire in the pattern of questions they ask. About half of them are sequenced; they ask for an explanation of something, for example, and the answer prompts a new question as the child digs deeper. And if the answer doesn’t provide the requested information, the child will ask again.

  So the obvious starting point in helping your child to build knowledge is to answer his questions. You are close at hand and know so much. Even better, you’re providing information that he’s shown you he’s curious about. Not only does your child actually get the answer to his question, but it gives you the chance to communicate to him that questions are valued in your family (figure 3.2).

  Figure 3.2. Eleanor Roosevelt on curiosity. “I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.” In fact every child does have that gift, but it starts to wither in most around age seven. The question for parents is how to ensure a sturdy curiosity throughout childhood. The answer is showing that you value curiosity yourself by honoring it in your child and modeling it in your daily life.

  Source: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2006678019/

  You probably think that you already answer your child’s questions, but even the most responsive parents don’t answer something like 25 percent of the time. It’s easier to understand when you think of the volume of questions that children pose between the ages of two and five. Researchers estimate it’s between four hundred and twelve hundred each week, depending on the child. I know that when my kids were young, my best parenting self understood I should calmly and carefully respond to every question, but there were times I whined, “Can’t I just drink my coffee for five minutes?”

  Here are some reasons questions might frustrate you, along with some ideas about how to cope:

  She tunes out while I’m answering. Trying making answers shorter. For example, if your child says, “Why are leaves green?” you can’t get into details about photosynthesis, not even a stripped-down version. Just say something like, “The food for the tree is in the leaves, and the food is green.” For this age group, the briefer the answer, the better. If she wants to know more, she’ll ask. (Data-free speculation on my part: dads seem much more prone to give inappropriately long answers to kids’ questions than moms.)

  She tunes out before I’ve answered. Sometimes a child seems to throw questions at you without listening to the answers, for example, asking “Why?” in response to everything you say. It’s tempting to close down the endless loop by saying, “You’re not really listening.” Instead, try posing a question of your own. Turning the same question back to the child usually won’t get you very far (“Why do you think leaves are green?”). Instead, try a question to which the child knows the answer, for example, “Why is your table red?” Answer: “Because we painted it.” “So do you think someone painted the leaves?” You may end up in a quite different conversation, but that’s fine.

  She keeps asking the same thing again and again. It’s not necessarily the case that she’s a bad listener or has a bad memory. She may simply have not understood the answer very well the last time you explained it. Or more likely, you’ve answered what she seemed to ask, but she had a different question in mind.

  I should know the answer but don’t. “Why is the sky blue?” I know I learned that at some point . . . ! If you have no idea what the right answer is, say so. Validate that the question is interesting and ask the child to help you remember that the two of you will look up the answer later. Even for young children, I see no reason that the responsibility for remembering to check the answer should not be shared. You’re telling your child, “You’re curious—great! You can be the agent to satisfy your curiosity!”

  When I look up the answer, she gets distracted. By what? By other entries in the encyclopedia? Well, that seems kind of cool. By photos on your phone? Then don’t look up answers on your phone. Learn from your child what works.

  The question makes me uncomfortable. “Is Grandpa going to die from his cancer?” “How come those two men are holding hands?” “Rebecca said her religion doesn’t believe in Jesus. How can that be?” Don’t shut questions down that make you uncomfortable. You don’t want to cordon off part of the world as unavailable for curiosity. And of course if your child senses your discomfort, this may discourage future questions on other topics. Bear in mind that he has no way of knowing which ones are off-limits. Three thoughts on this issue. First, answer the actual question posed. On sensitive topics, we have a tendency to assume our child is asking what we are afraid he’ll ask rather than what he’s actually asking (figure 3.3). Second, brevity is still to be prized. There is no need to tell him more than he asked. Third, if your child is unsatisfied with your brief answer and persists, requesting facts you feel he’s not ready for, try saying, “I’ve given you some information about this, so I’d like you to think that over. Think about it, and if you still have questions, we can talk about it more later.” The odds are good that he’ll forget about it, but if he doesn’t, you’ve bought yourself some time to consider how you want to discuss the matter.

  Figure 3.3. Discomfiting questions. When a two-year-old asks, “Where do babies come from?” we hear a question about the sex act, but that’s not what he’s asking. An answer like, “They grow inside a mommy’s body, near where food is in her tummy,” is probably all he’s looking for at that moment.

  Source: © Jordan Fischer, via Flickr, Creative Common License. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jordanfischer/483114005/.

  If you like the idea of your kids asking you questions and showing curiosity about the world, there is something you can do to cultivate it: ask them questions. Researchers have found that some parents talk to their kids mostly with directions about what to do (“Go to bed”) and what not to do (“Stop that”). Other parents engage in much more communication by question (“It’s Tuesday—where do you think we’re going after school?”). Natu
rally every parent does some of each, but individuals seem to lean toward one type or the other and in so doing set up a model for their child regarding the nature of communication. If you give a lot of commands, you’re showing your child that the purpose of language is for communicating one’s wishes to others. If you ask a lot of questions, you’re showing your child that the purpose of language is the acquisition of new knowledge.

  Some researchers have also suggested that question-asking parents tend to invite conversation even when they tell their children what to do. They do so by offering reasons along with their requests, and a reason invites a counterargument. For example, a parent might say, “You had better go to bed now, or you’ll be too tired to get up in time for school.” The child can then try to subvert the reason: “But remember, last week I stayed up until 9:30 and I wasn’t tired the next morning.” In contrast, the parent who simply says, “Go to bed,” offers no opening for the child to bargain or reason for a later bedtime.

  Reading Aloud

  When you think of activities parents might undertake to develop their child’s knowledge, reading aloud is probably high on your list (figure 3.4). Indeed, there’s good evidence that read-alouds help toddlers gain broader vocabulary and understand more complex syntax. Why? Think about the language that children overhear in the conversations of their parents. Even preschoolers’ books have richer vocabulary than that used by college-educated adults in typical conversation. Furthermore, conversations are full of interruptions and unfinished sentences, and when the sentences are complete, the syntax is usually quite simple.

  Figure 3.4. Reading aloud. When the National Academy of Education commissioned a report on reading in 1985 written by ten prominent reading researchers, they named reading aloud as the most important activity to get more kids reading.

  Source: © Alex Tihonov—Fotolia. For the report, see Anderson (1985).

  Since we’re talking about building background knowledge, it seems natural that we’d think about including nonfiction in read-alouds. It’s a great idea. It lets your child know that books are not only narratives and there are terrific nonfiction selections available. As always, I’d be sensitive to what your child likes. If my fabulous book about pond life made my child cry for Curious George, I’d read her Curious George. But I’d try a different nonfiction book a couple of days later.

  Read-alouds don’t help children learn how to read when they get to kindergarten, but again, we wouldn’t expect them to. In kindergarten children are learning to decode. The benefit of reading aloud is a benefit to the child’s knowledge and vocabulary, and so it appears only around grade 3 or 4.

  How Do You Get Started?

  There’s no reason not to read to a newborn, and by “newborn” I mean just home from the hospital. (That’s what the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends.) At the same time, while reading may be a nice reason to hold your baby, you should probably be aware that he can’t really see much of the book. At birth, babies’ vision is 20/500 (meaning they can see at twenty feet what an adult with good vision sees at five hundred feet.) They also don’t have typical color vision until three months (they can’t see blues), and it’s at that age that they start to be able to focus better. Furthermore, babies are much more social at three months than at three days. So for my money, three months is a good time to begin reading to them.

  The main (or, really, only) thing I was doing with my infant children when I read to them was establishing a bedtime ritual—something we both enjoyed and that helped them wind down and understand that it was time to sleep. So it was a simple matter of propping the child in my lap, holding the book so she could see it, and reminding myself that it was okay if she didn’t really pay attention or started chewing the book. If you set more ambitious goals for reading to an infant, you might think that the child is getting exposed to some vocabulary or that you’re laying the groundwork for the alphabetic principle (the idea that letters represent sounds) and that the book is guiding what Daddy says (figure 3.5).

  Figure 3.5. Learning vocabulary from picture books. If you want your very young child to learn vocabulary from read-alouds (which was never one of my goals), your best bet is a book with one object per page. Read the label while pointing to the object. Just say “cat.” Not, “Look, there’s a cat. You have a cat too, don’t you? Look this one is gray but yours is brown, isn’t it?” If you’re interested in your child learning something, make plain what is to be learned.

  Source: © Wichittra Srisunon—Fotolia.

  Dialogic Reading

  If you’re really concerned about maximizing the chances that your child will learn from read-alouds, you can consider using another technique, dialogic reading. You’ll recall that print referencing (discussed in the previous chapter) was meant to teach kids about letters. Dialogic reading makes it more likely that kids will learn new vocabulary and more complex sentence syntax from read-alouds. The steps of dialogic reading form an acronym, PEER:

  Prompt the child to say something about the book.

  Evaluate the child’s response.

  Expand the child’s response with new information.

  Repeat the prompt.

  Say you’re reading a picture book and there is a barnyard scene. You might point to a tractor and ask, “What’s that?” (the Prompt). The child replies, “It’s a truck.” You say, “Yes, it’s a type of truck” (the Evaluation). “That type of truck is called a tractor” (the Expansion). “Can you say tractor?” (the Repetition).

  There are lots of different prompts you might use; not all prompts ask the child to identify something. You might ask the child to relate something in the book to his own experience. You might ask him to describe what’s happening in the picture. You can ask at the end of a book what happened to one of the characters.

  Some parents find dialogic reading a bit formal. I understand; it does feel a bit teachy and as if it might take some of the fun out of read-alouds. Still, you should know that it’s been thoroughly studied, and dialogic reading reliably has a big impact. Not only does it show more benefit to kids’ language ability than simply reading aloud; the latter often doesn’t show much positive impact at all. I believe the research, but it should be borne in mind that these studies are of relatively short duration. I suspect that reading aloud, even if it’s casually done, is still of value over the long term. So if dialogic reading really rubs you the wrong way, don’t feel that’s the only way you can read to your two-year-old. Or do dialogic reading on occasion to feel it out; or your child may like it more than you think.

  Commonsense Read-Aloud Tips

  Even if you’re not going to use a prescribed method of reading aloud, I think some principles are worth your consideration. Here are some non-research-based ideas on reading to a toddler or preschooler:

  Preparation

  Having a consistent time for reading will help ensure that it actually happens. Before bed is a natural, but if that doesn’t work for your family, find another time. Maybe Dad reads aloud while Mom cooks dinner, or vice versa.

  There are terrific resources to help you find books for read-alouds, and I’ve listed some in the “Suggestions for Further Reading” section at the end of this book. But the best resource is a children’s librarian. Librarians not only have a comprehensive knowledge of children’s literature, they can help pick books based on your child’s interests and based on the sort of book that your child liked in the past.

  When selecting books, be alert to themes that may make your child uncomfortable (e.g., books that are emotionally intense).

  Don’t neglect your own preferences. My daughters liked the Amelia Bedelia books, but I couldn’t stand them. I was a better reading dad with other books so I picked other books.

  Bring home lots of books from the library so that you can quit a book your child doesn’t like.

  Reading

  If you want to snuggle, you’ll probably position the book so your child can see the pictures. If not, consider facing
your child so he can’t see the pictures as you read. Instead, you read what’s on the page and then turn the book so he can see the pictures. That way he’s focusing on one thing at a time (story, then pictures).

  Point out the title and the name of the author and illustrator.

  Read a little more slowly than you think you need to. Remember that even simple stories are probably cognitively challenging for your child. For that reason, don’t balk if your child wants to hear the same story again and again. It may well be that he simply didn’t get all the details on the first or even the third listening. If the repetition drives you crazy, suggest that you alternate the favorite book with a new one.

  Don’t demand perfect behavior (toddlers are gonna squirm), but if your child is obviously not listening, just stop reading. Don’t say, “Settle down!” or, “I can’t read it you’re not paying attention.” Just wait. If he doesn’t care that you’ve stopped, ask if he’d rather hear another book.