When I thought about having children, I never thought about the places I would like to travel with them. I didn’t have One Tree Hill-esque dreams of teaching my kids to play sports. The thing that I always looked forward to sharing with my children? Books. Whenever I am pregnant, my head swirls with the pages of tales I cannot wait to share with my growing child. From The Borrowers to Famous Five to Harry Potter to Dickens and Austen, I have collected special editions and welcome additions for them from the moment I knew we were growing a baby. But here’s the thing – I have four wildly different children, and getting kids to love reading sometimes takes a little encouragement.
With that in mind, I thought I would share how I’ve encouraged my little ones to earn their Bookworm status.
My kids are two, three, eleven and sixteen and I promise you – the younger they are when you make books a part of their lives, the more likely it will be that they will choose to read on themselves. But fear not, it’s never too late when it comes to getting kids to love reading!
Matilda dress linked here
1. Bedtime stories
It sounds so simple, but making time to enjoy a book together at the end of each day is so important. I have so many friends who don’t have story time just before bed, and it’s thoroughly understandable. Let’s face it, our children put a lot of demands on us. They require all of our attention, all of the time. There’s no days off, no leave, and frankly most of us feel quite touched out by the end of the day. A lot of the time they’ve spent the whole day trying to learn to regulate their emotions with little success, and have taken the whole rainbow of their feelings out on you, their safety net and emotional punch bag. While I feel very lucky to be a mother, there are certainly days when I look at the clock and wonder whether 4pm is too early to start the bedtime routine.
But.
Ending every day by giving your child fifteen minutes of your undivided attention to take a little adventure into somebody else’s world together… it will mean the world to both of you. It will end the day on a good note. You can inhale their freshly-washed hair. Listen to their belly laugh. Hold hands and talk about the pictures together. It really allows you both to let go of the day and embrace the best of your bond. On the days where they’ve shaved the cat and refused to leave the house with clothes on, just grit your teeth and pat yourself on the back for doing something for them. Maybe take a glass of wine up to snuggle with.
* If your little one is struggling with an indecisive phase and choosing a book is likely to cause a ruckus, go upstairs while they’re getting into their pyjamas and lay out 3 books for them to choose from. It will give them the sense that they have the control they feel they need over the situation without making them feel overwhelmed with choice.
2. library trips
We have a library trip day, and my three year old counts down to it. Woe betide me if I double book that day! If you’re lucky, you’ll have a great little local library with a decent selection of classics and obscure new releases, and hopefully a sweet reading corner to boot. We read a lot, so we take a wooden crate with us, and the children help to return the books (‘I won at scanning. mummy!’) before we spend a couple of hours filling the box with what we’re taking home with us. It’s lovely seeing the kids play with other children their age, nattering and sitting with the big books on their legs with just their feet poking out of the top.
*Definitely get your child a library card. They’re free, and make children of any age feel very grown up!
3. Let them see you read
Children really are fantastic mimics, and they think you hung the moon. I’m not saying that everything they do is mirrored behaviour (I have certainly never ran around the kitchen naked, slapping my own arse and screeching ‘PANTS DOWN PANTS DOWN HAHAAAAAA!!!!’) but if you watch how much they do copy, you’ll see how it will help.
*I actually think this is a good way to take some guilt-free time for yourself. I’m prone to feeling mum-guilt about everything, so taking a book into the garden and suggesting that the kids do the same can be quite a sanity saver.
4. Pass on books that were yours as a child
Now obviously you can’t control whether your parents kept your belongings as you grew and flew the nest… but if they did, raid them! I don’t know why, but my children love listening to stories of when we were young. I was exactly the same with my parents. I really loved to hear about what they got up to in the holidays, what toys they had and, best of all, tales of their naughtiness! Fortunately, the same holds true for books.
*If you don’t have the originals from your childhood, it’s easy to order specific editions online as the internet is full of second hand bookstores now. Seeing how small books are that used to feel so enormous in your hands will give you a wave of nostalgia, for sure. I remember giving my eldest daughter my copies of Sabrina The Teenage Witch, Matilda and The Worst Witch and it was wonderful to see her curled up reading them.
5. create a book bingo/treasure hunt
Now, you can be as invested in this as you want (I laminate ours… much to the mockery of everybody else in my household) and set it to any budget you want.
I draw a table of squares, and draw things for the children to look for in them. So if there’s a pig, a train, a frog, a cake, a bed, a book and a lion, the kids have to find books with all of those things in them before shouting ‘BINGO!’ As we do ours in the local charity shops, most of the books are about 10p and the winner gets to bring their pile home (which, last time, totalled £2.70.) Realistically, playing with young children means that we buy both piles and everybody comes home delighted, wanting to dive into their new little libraries.
*I got the idea for this when I remembered a primary school teacher who used to create a maths bingo for us. I personally much prefer mine as maths really doesn’t delight me, but I appreciate the inspiration!
6. Invest in books which feature their favourite tv/film characters
While I don’t relish the thought of more Peppa Pig in my day, it’s a foolproof way to get them interacting with books. Supermarkets know this trick well (remember when Disney bought the Star Wars franchise and literally sold Star Wars oranges?) but if you can’t beat them, join them, and those annoying critters can be a great help in getting kids to love reading.
*This actually works for adults, too. If you ever find yourself in a bit of a reading slump, or if you’re just somebody who just isn’t into reading but would like to be – get a copy of the book that one of your favourite films was based on. Whenever I’m struggling to feel inspired by anything in my To Read pile, I pick up Time Traveller’s Wife.
7. reframe time to read
Children are much more likely to resist anything that they are told to do. I know this because I never grew out of it. Having a soldier for a husband has left me utterly baffled by the way employees are treated in the military, how adults are treated by other adults, and I couldn’t be more sure that that life is not for me. I love being self-employed, where clients are always polite enough to work with a ‘please’ and a ‘thank you’!
Children notice when they have to do something, so it’s much better framed as something they get to do. If they have a book thrust at them and are told to read, it’s going to sound like a chore. If they have actual chores to do, but are told they could squeeze in an hour of reading first, they are far more likely to opt for a few chapters!
8. santa brings books
Now, I’m not saying that Father Christmas only brings books, but you can bet that they’ll be in that stocking somewhere, as will a book voucher. They’re always met with a squeal of delight, because Santa is the bee’s knees and can do no wrong and great at getting kids to love reading.
*It’s worth making these books special/illustrated editions in keeping with the magic, as opposed to the ones they’ve likely seen on the shelf in Tesco.
9. let them read what they gravitate towards
Non fiction? Comics? Who cares? Certainly not me. My eldest son went through a bit of a reading slump a year ago, just for a month – but then he found the Wimpy Kid books. They were a bit rude and delightfully anti-parent, and he found them hilarious. After that he fell back into the habit of picking up a book and was soon back to novels.
*My three year old is currently obsessed with non-fiction books about Dinosaurs, and a few weeks of exclusively reading about the defensive strategies of herbivores 65 million years ago has led him straight to story books about them. I’m not sure how grateful I am, given how many times I’ve had to read The Dinosaur Who Pooped The Past this week, but you see my point.
10.the yoto player
If you aren’t new around here or you follow me on instagram, then you will have heard me rave about the Yoto player. It’s a screen free audioplayer and my children each have both the main player in their bedrooms and the travel mini players for trips/ days out/just chilling in the garden.
I love them. They sell little cards with their favourite stories on them, and they have a read along feature with lots of them – you don’t even have to buy special editions of the books. It plays other things too, like educational podcasts, but both of my younger children enjoy books that I would consider above their age bracket because of this magical little device. Which leads me nicely into…
10 & a half. Audiobooks
If it’s a teenager you’re trying to encourage to read – the Yoto is going to be too young for them. My 11 year old has a few stories he enjoys on it as he goes to bed, but he will definitely outgrow it in the next couple of years. He now has an MP3 player with a few audiobooks on it, and we get audio CDs out from the Young Adult fiction section of our local library. That’s a really good way to get them to try something they wouldn’t usually have reached for (they usually end up being his favourites!) but you can also request to order specific titles in. They’re perfect for getting kids into reading!
11. targets/Certificates
I am aware that this may sound a little silly to some people, but hear me out. We all like our achievements to be recognised – it’s a fact of human behaviour. We like recognition for our efforts.
When I was younger, around eight years old, my mum knew I would enjoy some of the softer classics, but I found them really intimidating. She set me the target of reading Jane Austen’s Emma one month, and when I was done, I was not only hooked, but she designed me a certificate and printed it off her laptop. I felt so proud and couldn’t wait to get my nose into Pride and Prejudice. The funny thing is, by the end of that book, I just wanted to read the next book and had completely forgotten about the certificate.
*I have seen this work really well in schools. My older son’s primary school introduced a Bookworm scheme, where they could read ten books for a bronze bookworm badge, twenty for a silver and thirty in a term for a gold. In the first lockdown, Jacob would sit next to me, reading and sharing a bowl of popcorn and reading quietly. It was the most wonderful thing. Within a couple of months he had read all of the Harry Potters and by the end of the year he had his gold Bookworm badge.
12. praise
Gentle praise when you notice that a child is choosing to pick up a book of their own accord, that that is how they are choosing to spend their time, will definitely pay off.
Sometimes, all we have to do is notice.
13. let them get bored
I’m a firm believer in letting children get bored. I think we’re raising children in a very overstimulating world, and it shows. I meet a lot of children who really struggle to entertain themselves. Boredom breeds creativity and thought – and they just might choose to channel their efforts into reading.
*On this note, I am a firm believer that I am not here to be my children’s own personal jester. They have siblings to play with or books to pick up if they fancy having an adventure with somebody who isn’t right in front of them. I was an only child with divorced parents, and I imagine my parents would have gone insane if they had been expected to entertain me all of the time. They certainly did play with me, but one wall of my bedroom was essentially a library – and I’m grateful for that.
14. Start a bookclub together
This is such a nice way to spend some quality time with older children, and has proved to be a hit in getting kids to love reading. A few months ago, my 11 year old and I started our own bookclub. We alternate choosing the books we both have a month to read, and I’ve actually enjoyed the YA fiction he’s chosen!
Annnd, the end.
If you made it to the end of this post then you’ve certainly met your reading quota for the month – let me know in the comments if you made it to here! I hope you’ve found some useful ideas on getting kids to love reading. I would love to know if you have any tips I’ve missed!
Love, Helen
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Fab post Helen, as always. Particularly love the bingo game in charity shops! One I will store to play with the girls together when they’re a little older. We love books x