How to Support Children Who Read at Home

Coram Beanstalk is a reading volunteer charity who offer lots of fantastic resources to support reading as trained volunteers who deliver fun, interactive, reading experiences. They provide one to one support to children, who are behind, giving them the help and encouragement they need to catch up - to switch onto reading, learn to read and become readers for life. 

Over the last 50 years Coram Beanstalk has worked with a quarter of a million children in thousands of schools nationwide to create readers through one-to-one sessions with our trained volunteers. Recently working in partnership with Mumsnet, we conducted a survey with primary school parents asking about reading habits in the home.

Responses presented a mixed picture, among a range of spare time and leisure activities, reading was the least likely activity to be a child’s top choice, with just seven per cent of respondents saying their children put it first, and 26% saying it was in their top three choices. There are no prizes for guessing the most popular choices - screen-time led the way across all age groups and by the time children are entering KS2 nearly half (48%) are choosing a screen-based activity as their top choice, rising to 61% in Y6. 

When we consider the activities to occupy yourself with when sitting on the sofa, screens and reading are in direct competition and we really want reading to win - at least some of the time! While evidence about the potential benefits of screen-time remain mixed and even contradictory, there is no dispute about the benefits of reading by choice. In 2021 the OECD reinforced that finding ways to engage students in reading could be one of the most effective ways to leverage social change. 

Our survey indicated that most parents are aware of the benefits of reading and seek to manage their children’s activities accordingly. Although reading may not be in the top choices, we found that three out of four children do choose to read. 

When we asked what was the motivation for children to choose reading at home we found that the most frequent comments mentioned parent or family encouragement – if children are encouraged by their families they are more likely to read. There were also several comments from parents that said that they needed to manage screen-time to get children reading. 

So how can schools help here? At times, the parents that schools most need to reach are often the hardest to engage with. It may be that they did not have a positive school experience or have struggled with their own reading, so a directive to read with their child reading can feel uncomfortable. We heard from some parents that a push on reading through school could have an adverse effect for children, so perhaps we need to take the educational pressure off? 

Many parents are brilliant reading advocates in the early years. For a tired parent, sitting still and sharing a book with a pre-schooler beats some of the more rigorous activities they want to engage in. When sharing a book with a young child we naturally go at their pace, take time to look at the pictures and talk about how what we are seeing in the book relates to their own life experiences. 

However, often when children are learning to read and need to practise at home, many parents stop the more pleasurable side of reading. In a busy home, reading time with an adult shifts to time spent practising their decoding, reading becomes a frustrating battleground, and for an exhausted parent the battle can be lost. Reading for some children becomes an unrewarding activity, one that, before their breadth of reading skills and motivation to read is fully secure, they are put to bed alone to do. Children stop wanting to read. 

Let us look at this from a child’s viewpoint; very few willingly do what we tell them they must do. If we release the pressure of reading progress as our primary goal, reading can remain a fun thing to do. When they have the freedom to simply enjoy reading, children are more likely to choose to read, with or without adult support, and in choosing to read more, they will become better readers.  

So, if we want children to choose reading we need to get to a place where people involved in children’s lives feel confident to read with them for the sheer joy of it, and can get their hands on books to read. Many parents don’t feel confident to enter a library, so we could help with that by having a little lending library at school alongside a warm brew at pick up time. 

And finally… advocate for the joy of reading: Read to give children the one-to-one attention they crave. Read to switch off from the call of screens. Read to explore the world. Read because it triggers emotions. Read because the pictures are great. Read to learn. Read because it makes you feel good. Let’s bring back the joy of reading and get ALL children choosing to read.