NEWS

Want your children to succeed in school?  UNC experts say reading to them is a start

By JOE MONACO
UNC News Services

CHAPEL HILL -- Seven-year-old Joseph Rossi of Charlotte knows exactly what time it is.

"Harry Potter! Harry Potter!" he chants excitedly as his mother, Marianne, enters the living room with a stack of books in her arms.

Joseph quickly hops onto the couch and settles in with his mother for what has become his favorite part of the evening – reading time.

The fact that this nightly ritual has developed into a source of overwhelming enjoyment for Joseph is in itself a wonderful thing, say education experts at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At the same time, however, it’s a routine that will foster a long-lasting love of books and contribute immensely to his intellectual growth, they say.

Dr. P.J. McWilliam, an investigator and director of the Family and Child Care Program at UNC’s Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute, says reading to young children helps them develop basic thinking skills, including problem-solving and prediction.

She stresses the importance of pausing to ask children questions throughout the book: "What do you think is going to happen next? What would you do if this were you? These are the types of questions you want to be asking," she says. Doing so encourages children to actively participate in the reading process and imagine themselves in hypothetical situations.

Reading also teaches young children that the written word differs – sometimes drastically – from the spoken word. "How often do you go up to somebody and say, 'Once upon a time'?" McWilliam asks. "That just doesn’t happen." It’s important that children "go ahead and start learning to read so they learn that language of books," she says.

Reading to children can also augment their own story-telling skills. Dr. J. Steven Reznick, professor of psychology, remembers a particular instance when he was driving in the car with his young daughter. "I said the first line of the story we’d read earlier that week," he recalls. "And from the backseat, the story just went on and on and on. My daughter had virtually memorized this whole, simplistic story about ‘Toad on the Road.’

"Being able to hold things in long-term memory, being able to say them out loud – that’s what we later call literacy."

Reading to children encourages them to see books as a source of pleasure and entertainment. "Books are not a task that you have to do for school," says McWilliam. "Books are something that you love and get information out of. They’re associated with warmth and understanding a world that you might not encounter otherwise.

"Books are a treasure trove that we hope children see as a treasure trove and not as a task."

And it’s not only the story itself that children get pleasure from, it’s the entire reading experience, says McWilliam. "It’s an individual time," she explains. "Part of it is sitting on parents’ laps and the comfort and the warmth and doing the joint activity together. That teaches them that books are really great."

But it is critical, experts say, that reading does not become an ordeal or a task for the child.

"Some children will cuddle all day and read book after book," says McWilliam, "while some of them, you are lucky if you can catch them on the fly for a few minutes."

Parents, she says, must adjust accordingly. "If all (the child) will sit for is four minutes, then read a four-minute book."

McWilliam also stresses that no child should ever be criticized for reading incorrectly. "Criticism is dangerous because it kills self-esteem," she says. "I’ve found many a little boy who comes to hate reading, and that’s why we shouldn’t ever be overly critical or give them anything that’s above their head. We should always tailor those tasks to something they can achieve ... and provide them the support to do it."

Reznick says a child's distaste for reading can be the result of the parent's style of reading. "There’s a forced-march sort of reading that is very different than engaging the child in the process," he explains. "Some of the children’s books that are popular and are used for intervention don’t have words. They’re just pictures designed to provide a basis for the child and the parent to talk about what might be going on."

Reznick also stresses the importance of the parent's book selection. Sometimes, he says, a child's lack of interest in reading is "just a question of content. Some [books] are vibrant, some are dull, some are sentimental, some are filled with facts. There are all these dimensions to children’s books. What if the parent doesn’t have access to that range of books, and what if the parent’s taste in books differs from the child’s taste in books?"

Parents, he says, need to ask themselves, "Is this for me, or is this for my child?"

Also important in developing and maintaining the child's interest in reading is the attitude of the parent, says McWilliam. Put simply, a parent's enthusiasm about reading is contagious. "I think if parents see this as a task – I need to, I should or I have to read to my child – I think that’s going to get communicated across to the child as a task," she says. "And that's where you'll run into trouble."

Is there too early an age to begin reading to a child? Reznick doesn’t think so. Children acquire reading skills through interactions with others, he says. Children don’t normally learn to read on their own.

"The bottom line is that reading is a skill that we acquire in a social context, he says. "We teach people to read. And so becoming familiar with the idea that sounds map onto words, that words and sounds are the basis for narrative and communication -- all those sorts of things -- getting that through experience at home with parents must be important.

"To get children started on that path early," he adds, "is undeniably a good thing."

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Note: This story won the 2002 Reading to Kids Award at the UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Monaco, of Dix Hill, Long Island, N.Y., graduated in May with degrees in journalism and political science. He now works at the Beaumont Enterprise in Beaumont, Texas. Email: jmonaco@email.unc.edu

News Services Contact: David Williamson, (919) 962-8596