Guest Post by Nadia Jones
4 Easy Ways to Get Your Son to Read More
4 Easy Ways to Get Your Son to Read More
Despite what you may think, it's not really a teacher's responsibility to get your child interested in reading. Sure, reading particular books will most likely be part of your child's curriculum, but getting your child to find an actual passion for leisure reading is yours, the parent. But unfortunately for some reason it's a lot easier to get girls to light a flame for reading than boys. In fact, a 2010 study found that boys are really lagging behind on the reading train, an issue that has greatly worsened over the last decade. Only 39% of surveyed boys found reading outside of classroom important, compared to 62% of girls. But leisure reading is important. Between building a stronger vocabulary, learning sentence structure, and learning new concepts, it will make your child a whole lot smarter—not to mention open them up to an entire new world. That said, to get your son interested in reading, try someone of these tips listed below.
Let a Male Figure Read to Them Aloud
Some experts argue that reading is just too easily stigmatized as a "feminine" activity. While men do read, young children really don't see it all too often. After all, mothers are the ones who typically read to their children as well as female librarians and female literature teachers. Shake things up a bit and let a male role model show your son that reading can be a masculine activity too—no matter if it's your child's father, uncle, older cousin or even a trusted friend, letting a male take the reading reigns can make a huge difference.
Teach Your Child Women Protagonists Are OK
Many years ago, young adult novelists focused on writing literature for a male audience—the protagonist was male and thus more easily relatable to boys. More recently the selection of modern young adult literature (fiction particularly) has shifted to a more female-centric audience: women are featured on the book jacket and story lines typically involve some kind of mushy love triangle. But let your son know that just because there is a woman on the cover (or written by a woman) doesn’t mean that it should be off limits—not all of them are so mushy and are worth a glance. It's ok if your son wants to read books with male protagonists like Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief, Star Wars, and
Harry Potter
, but let them know that a male protagonist doesn’t have to be in the equation—reading only male focused story lines might encourage close mindedness. A good book is a good book no matter what gender the central character is.
Allow Your Son to Indulge in Non "Traditional" Books Too
Reading is reading. So what if your son is mostly keen to graphic novels, almanacs and encyclopedias with interesting facts, joke books or a manual on how to build a robot? Anything that requires your son's brain to process information can be beneficial to your child's intellect. In fact, it's a shame that most school districts consider these more boy-appealing books as inadequate reading. Let your son choose to read something that actually interests him.
Praise your Son For Reading
Lastly, similar to receiving A's on a report card, its ok to reward your son in the beginning for reading an entire book series for example to encourage your son to read more. This doesn’t necessarily mean it should be a monetary reward, but cooking your son's favorite meal or taking him to see a movie is more as a treat is more ideal.
Can you think of any other ideas to help boy's read more?
This is a guest post by Nadia Jones who blogs at accredited online colleges about education, college, student, teacher, money saving, movie related topics. You can reach her at nadia.jones5@gmail.com.
*Guest post provided by Nadia Jones. This is not a review by Susan @ Loves 2 Read.
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