Sarita at the Sonlight blog reported a surprising finding from a survey that shows kids like their parents to read aloud to them long after they are able to read pretty well for themselves. The report says:

Kids wish their parents had continued to read to them after they reached school age. Across all age groups, 83 percent of kids say they loved or “liked a lot” those times when parents read to them aloud at home. Only 24 percent of 6-to-8-year-olds and 17 percent of kids ages 9 to 11 say that someone reads aloud to them at home, and many seem to miss it. Four in ten children in that 6-to-11 age range say they wished their parents had continued reading aloud to them. Kristen Harmeling, a researcher at YouGov, a consulting firm that helped Scholastic to conduct the study said one clear message for parents from this survey is to “start early and stay at it.”

We really never gave a ton of thought to the fact that we continued to read aloud to the kids all the way up to when they went to college at age 14. We all (not just the kids–me, too) derived a ton of benefit from our read alouds. We enjoyed it, but it also gave us time to talk about what we read. That was especially important when it came to things like apologetics, politics, history, ethics, philosophy, origins and just anything that had to do with the logical, scholarly, moral and practical reasons for holding to a Christian world view. I also helped with things like manners and how to act in social situations (How to Win Friends and Influence People, etc.) Enjoyment was reason enough to keep reading aloud to the kids, but there were other, more important reasons for doing it. We wish we could say we did it for all those other reasons, but we mostly just did it because we liked it.

Betty Blonde #281 – 08/14/2009
Betty Blonde #281
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