The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids

by Sarah Mackenzie

All the time and effort it would take to raise her would be worth it—not because it guaranteed good results, but because loving and connecting with her would always be worth my time and effort. Because she was mine. Because she was made by God. Because this was the great task I’d been called to.

It’s just too easy to let these precious childhood years scream by. They are screaming by, and I can hardly stop them.

I don’t want to look back twenty years from now and realize that those active parenting years went by so fast I didn’t relish them. I’m terrified I’ll wish I had been less distracted and more attentive. I’m afraid I’ll come to the realization, when it’s too late, that I should have been more present. I’m afraid I’ll wish I had enjoyed it more.

Reading aloud with our kids is indeed the best use of our time and energy as parents. It’s more important than just about anything else we can do.

I still find myself waiting for the walrus. I still gloss over the ordinary by default. I’m still plagued by the fear I struggled with so often back then—the fear that I don’t have enough time to give my children all that they need, that I’m missing my chance to do what matters most. I feel endlessly distracted by all the other parts of raising kids, and I wonder if, twenty years from now, I’ll look back and want to shake myself awake to say, “Pay attention! You’re missing this and it’s right in front of you!”

Success in parenting my kids means showing up and giving my best to what matters most right now. Which means, of course, that I have to know what matters most right now.

The stories we read together act as a bridge when we can’t seem to find another way to connect. They are our currency, our language, our family culture. The words and stories we share become a part of our family identity.

Reading aloud] literally saved my relationship with my children. It gave me hope that I could still connect with them even after hard days of constant discipline. All I had to do was read the words on the page.

When we read with our kids, we step outside the noise, the hustle, the friction, and for just a few minutes, we are completely and totally present with them.

These moments will live on in our children’s hearts even when our kids no longer live in our homes.

Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather it is the boldness to act rightly even in the face of fear.

“If you want a child to know the truth, tell him the truth. If you want a child to love the truth, tell him a story.”

We don’t want our kids to grow up and face adversity, asking themselves, “Do I have what it takes?” We want them to know. We want them to have witnessed so many heroes living with integrity and fighting against their own weaknesses that they trust in the sureness of doing the right thing, even when no one is watching. We want them to stand up like warriors. Forget asking, “Do I have what it takes?” We want them to ask, “What kind of hero will I become?”

What the best stories do—and tales of fantasy do it better than anything else—is strip away the familiar in order to reveal a more prevailing, universal truth. They help us notice the breathtaking world we otherwise take for granted. They give us dragons, monsters, and witches, and then they inspire within us a knight courageous enough to slay the dragon, a hero brave enough to stand up to the monster, a heroine coy enough to sneak past the witch.

Dr. Joseph Price, associate professor of economics at Brigham Young University, specializes in the economics of family and education. His research demonstrates that one extra day per week of parent-child read-aloud sessions during the first ten years of a child’s life increases standardized test scores by half a standard deviation. That’s as many as 15–30 percentile points—a tremendous gain.3

He goes on to say that reading aloud has proven to be so powerful in increasing a child’s academic success that it is more effective than expensive tutoring or even private education.

When we focus on nurturing our children’s love of stories, we get both kids who can read as well as kids who do. We need our kids to fall in love with stories before they are even taught their first letters, if possible, because everything else—phonics, comprehension, analysis, even writing—comes so much more easily when a child loves books.

Build your kids’ lives on a story-solid foundation and you’ll give them . . . a reservoir of compassion that spills over into a lifetime of love in action.

A book can reach us where a news report cannot. It’s not when we hear a summary on the news of what’s happening in the Middle East that our heart catches fire. It’s when we hear the story of one person—one man, one woman, one child.

Story makes us fall a little more in love with the world we live in and the people God made to live here with us.

Raising our children isn’t just about getting them ready for adulthood. It isn’t just about preparation for a career. It’s about transforming and shaping their hearts and minds. It’s about nourishing their souls, building relationships, and forging connections. It’s about nurturing within them care and compassion for whomever they encounter.

We read with our children because it gives both them and us an education of the heart and mind. Of intellect and empathy. We read together and learn because stories teach us how to love.

A book can’t change the world on its own. But a book can change readers. And readers? They can change the world.

We communicate what we believe about books by the reading atmosphere (or lack thereof) in our homes. Either we create a space where reading is something that is done for the joy of it, where the imagination is cultivated and allowed to wander and stretch and grow, or we deaden our children’s natural love for the written word.

Do we have the courage to admit that the main purpose of reading may in fact be for joy, for the sake of itself? Affection is of great importance when it comes to making connections with our kids through books. When we demonstrate interest in the things that our kids are interested in—and that includes the stories they like—we are communicating love to them.

When we create a book club culture at home, we send a crucial message to our children. We communicate that their reading life matters and that it ought to be a source of joy and delight to them. We allow them the freedom and ability to engage with ideas in the place we want them to love most of all: home.

A child will likely have great self-esteem if she believes her parents like her and want to spend time with her.

If you attach reading aloud to something you’re already doing every day, the chances you’ll get to that reading time suddenly skyrocket.