Developing Reading Habits

Parents who love to read will want their children to also love reading. So, since I and my husband really love reading, we are very serious in our attempt to develop the girls’ reading habits. It is a serious matter, since most children nowadays prefer watching TV and playing games than reading. And in most of our life, most things will need to be learned through reading. If they don't like reading, where can we go from there? Here are what we do.

First of all, we are collecting books. The girls get to choose the books they are interested in. Our new collection consists of books that just being collected in the last 1 year. The previous collection … all destroyed by last year’s big flood. We also try to maintain the proportion of the book collection into 50% English books and 50% Indonesian books, with some being bi-lingual. Our consideration is that books in our mother tongue are still more important, especially for Shayna, my younger girl; as important the second language is, what’s the point in speaking and reading that language fluently if she cannot do it better with her own language? Two third of the overall is books with Islamic background. We think that early years of life is the perfect period for giving the girls some basics that will guide them throughout their whole life time.

The next thing is developing their love and skills in reading. Kayla, the older girl, has to read at least 3 books (2 books in English and 1 book in Indonesian) every night before sleeping, at her own choosing. Shayna … well, actually we don’t require her to read as many books. But, she is keener in reading (and any other learning, actually) than her big sister, and she often ends up read more books than Kayla does. Some of the times we ask them to read books that are beyond their ages and understanding, although still children books of course. Some people say that it will broaden their horizon and understanding.

It seems working quite well.