Many parents struggle with when to help their child with reading. Here are some tips for making it a joyful experience for everyone and not a chore or fight.

If you enjoy reading and regularly read to your child, there’s a good chance your child will also love reading. For preschoolers this is the most important thing you can do.

  •  Enjoy reading with your child.
  • Make sure there are books that interest your child around them, and accessible to them.
  • Let them see that you enjoy reading your books. Young children admire and want to emulate their parents.

The link below is a previous post about a fun way to work on pre-reading skills…

https://ivyartz.com/blog/blogpost.php?permalink=using-picture-cards-for-language-development-

Now for a quick list of things to be careful about as your child starts to read. Some parents worry their child isn’t reading as early as they would like. To those parents I say, unless you know there is a specific learning disability, relax. Everyone learns to read a different time. There are gender, age, and cultural differences. Your child is learning so much every day, and right now your child’s brain might be focused on physical or social skills. Just keep it fun.

I have seen children pushed to read early. These children will often struggle, but work at it in order to please their parents. Yes, this is a flash card/workbook alert. A little is fun, but constant pushing can lead children to hate reading. Some early readers stop reading later in elementary school just as everyone else is starting to enjoy chapter books.

Keep it fun. There’s no need to put undue stress on you or your child. If your child has a learning disability—we are living at a great time. There are so many resources available and many books. For example, if your child has dyslexia there are books like the HANK series by Henry Winkler and Lin Oliver that use a font called Dyslexie which is designed to make reading easier.

If reading is on your list of worries, you may enjoy this informative article…

https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/young-children-reading/

Photo credit http://barlingphotography.com/