Diane's Musings: Back to school for parents and children

Monday, September 4, 2017

Back to school for parents and children

The beginning of a new school year is full of opportunities and heralds a parent’s high expectations for their children’s academic success and well-being.

Eleanor Roosevelt said that if she could be a fairy godmother, she would endow the gift of curiosity to every child at birth. Curiosity is what drives learning and without it, life becomes very dull indeed.

It is a known fact of the importance for every child to have high literacy skills, to ensure their success in life, in and out of school. Today we know so much more about how reading affects and influences who we become.

Do you know—

Literary readers are more than twice as likely as nonreaders to vote, to volunteer, and to be active participants of the communities in which they live.

They are more likely to be healthy, to be hired, to create art, and to achieve both academic and economic success.

Reading encourages and develops empathy and emotional sophistication, logical thinking, clear expression of ideas, and the ability to comprehend complex and opposing thought systems.

Reading opens minds and changes lives.

Do you also know—

Studies show that literary reading is in trouble: more than half of Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four no longer read for pleasure, and less than one-third of thirteen-year-olds are daily readers of any book at all.

The best insurance for children to become lifelong readers is when they find pleasure in reading. The first and necessary step in building pleasure in reading is for children to be read to—children become readers on the laps of their parents. Children who see their parents reading are far more likely to be readers than children who are told they must read 15 minutes every day.