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Having brought up two daughters who have very different reading styles, I would say that it is practically impossible to teach a child to read until the child is ready to learn.

My oldest daughter enjoyed having stories read to her, so much so that I would spend several hours a day reading to her. At the age of three, she started to read herself and by the age of four she could read quite fluently. She could read fluently from a newspaper at the age of six and was reading well before she started to attend school. This was an advantage as she was educated through the medium of the Welsh language, whereas we speak English at home. This meant that she learned to read in English before she learned to read in Welsh.

Her younger sister, born eight years later, did not show a similar interest in books. Although she enjoyed having a story, she also enjoyed art and craft activities and would usually choose to draw or make something. In order to develop an interest in reading, I used books with her in an entirely different way. Rather than reading stories, I tried to choose baby books with lots of photos and we would look at the books together and discuss the photos. In this way, as well as promoting speech and conversation, I managed to teach her colours, counting, weather, sizes, etc., but she had not learned to read by the time she started school (at three and a half years of age) and I was reluctant to push her as I think that pushing a child to do something they have not interest in makes the subject a chore and can be counterproductive. Before she learned to read, she astounded me one day by using a book for research. She had drawn a picture of a table with several items on it. One of the items was a coke bottle and she did not know how to write the word "coke". She went rushing to the book shelf and chose the book she needed, found a picture of a soft drinks bottle and wrote the word "Fanta" onto the Coke bottle in her picture. I was absolutely amazed at her resourcefulness at the age of three!

When it came time for her to learn to read, she did so at school and in the Welsh language. I had some concerns about this as I worried that her English spelling would suffer (Welsh is a phoenetic language), but found that as she learned to read in Welsh, she also started reading in English. As she was growing up, she read books in both languages, but was never what I would term an avid reader like her sister (who would read two books a day throughout her teens and still reads at least four books a week). The youngest preferred to read magazines - I thought that reading anything is better than not reading at all.

I need not have worried as she is now in her second year at University, studying English Literature!

I would say that the best way to encourage young children to read is to read stories to them, but also to make sure that you use books and look at them, discussing them and making sure that the child is having fun. Children become ready to learn to read at different ages and I'm sure that pushing them to start at a particular age can actually discourage them from enjoying books.

Learn more about this author, Debbie Todd.
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