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

by Sarah Mackenzie

No one will ever say, no matter how good a parent he or she was, “I think I spent too much time with my children when they were young.” Alice Ozma, The Reading Promise

But even my desire to end the bedtime struggles paled in comparison to the desire I felt to form a meaningful relationship with Audrey. Jim Trelease’s idea that reading with my child could be one of the most important building blocks to a lasting and healthy relationship between the two of us intrigued me.

The Read-Aloud Handbook

Trelease’s book is chock-full of statistics and data that prove reading aloud connects and bonds families and helps kids grow to be successful in just about every area of life, especially in school. In the book, he asserts that read-alouds are the foundation for the close bonds between parents and kids, between teachers and students.

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.

I’m acutely aware of how easy it is to slip into the habit of just surviving the day, focusing on getting through.

Parents in love with their children are all amnesiacs, trying to remember, trying to cherish moments, ghosts trying to hold the world.”

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.

As parents, there is so much we need to teach our children. There are lessons to impart—wisdom and insight to offer before our kids launch into the world on their own. But a didactic lesson or reprimand from Mom or Dad will only go so far. There is simply no substitute for story.

We’d see that, in no uncertain terms, there can be no courage when there is no adversity, no virtue in staying without the temptation to run away. There can be no honor when there is no opportunity for sin.

After reading the part where the Tinman and Scarecrow debate whether it’s more important to have a heart or a brain, I decided to pose a question to my young listeners—then ages nine, seven, and five.

An important part of this. The chance o spark debate or pose qhestions

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.

Finally some data

THREE BENEFITS OF READING ALOUD

Why buried to CH4?

The importance of hearing stories above our own individual reading level continues throughout the school years. This is why I often recommend that parents who want their kids to read the classics read them aloud before they are ever assigned as schoolwork.

Any teacher will tell you that reading comprehension is critical. Children need to understand what they read and apply it to what they already know. That is the art of thinking well. When we read aloud with our kids, we give them a massive leg up at learning to think well.

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.

Reading begets reading. A child who loves to read does so voraciously. This is an academic gain that can hardly be replicated in any way except by cracking open the spine of a good book and getting lost in it.

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.

a book can’t change the world on its own, but a book can change readers.8 And readers? They can change the world.

parents who think the primary importance of reading is to be successful in school are less likely to have kids who enjoy reading than parents who see reading primarily as a venue for entertainment.

Somewhere along the line, we’ve convinced ourselves that audiobooks don’t count as real reading. The magic of a read-aloud is achieved when we share stories together. It’s the shared experience itself that makes the biggest impact, whether the voice doing the actual reading is your own, your spouse’s, or a professional

My own son, a late reader, listened to dozens of audiobooks in his seventh and eighth years during our afternoon Quiet Reading Hour.

To be at home with books, children need book-loving homes. Elizabeth Wilson, Books Children Love

Jamie Martin, author of the fabulous book Give Your Child the World, pegged read-alouds to dinnertime. While she finished dinner prep, her husband read to the kids at the dinner table to help them wind down from the day’s activities and get in a calmer mood. Then Jamie set out the dinner plates, and everyone ate and chatted about their days. Jamie or her husband (whoever finished eating first) then picked up the book again and read for another ten to fifteen minutes. Dinnertime was already a habit in the Martin home, so adding a read-aloud to it just made sense. It also made read-aloud time happen more often.

One winter, when my oldest three children were nine, seven, and five, I discovered it was much easier to woo them out of their warm beds if they knew we would start our day with a read-aloud. We’d get up and stagger out to the kitchen in our pajamas to fill mugs with coffee, tea, or cocoa before gathering on the living room sofas to tuck ourselves under blankets and ease our way into the day with a story. That winter we read The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Caddie Woodlawn, and Justin Morgan Had a Horse. These are some of my favorite memories from that year—cozied up bedheads starting our day with story and warmth.

Books in every room Research indicates that kids who live in homes where books are plentiful benefit from the mere presence of books. The fact that books are there has a lasting positive effect on our kids—on the way they think about home, how they see themselves, and the role they see books playing in their lives.

A book allowance can help your children grow their own collection.

These books, purchased with their own money and lining their own bookshelves, become a part of their treasured collections. When they move out as adults, they will take formidable libraries with them—libraries that will help them remember who they are and where they came from, long after they leave home.

Keep screens in their place, then, by limiting them to certain hours rather than letting them run rampant all over your child’s day.

Keep your read-aloud book handy, peg read-aloud time to a regular part of your day, and get to it as early in the day as possible. Mark your progress, if you’re inclined to, and make it easy to dive right into read-aloud time by creating a read-aloud shelf where activities are easy to grab. Take advantage of a captive audience in the car whenever you can, and tread carefully when it comes to screens. Remember not to expect your child to choose watermelon over a candy bar.

Summary of tips

S. Lewis, “On Three Ways of Writing for Children”

Listeners to the What Should I Read Next? podcast will recognize the idea of literary matchmaking right away. Anne Bogel,

Lol

Good books fill the reader with hope Second, a good book leaves you more grateful to be alive. You close the final pages of the book a little breathless, a little more in awe of the great and glorious world. The book may be tragic (Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson), moving (A Single Shard by Linda Sue Park), or goofy and nonsensical (The Thirteen Clocks by James Thurber), yet it leaves you with a feeling you find difficult to express: amazement at the world, an awe for life, a gratitude for humanity and its quirkiness, its messiness, its vitality.

A good booklist is my love language, and if you’re ready for a more nuanced list than the one included here, you can find a collection of all my booklists at ReadAloudRevival.com.

we’re looking for vivid imagery, rich language, and something that piques your curiosity.

3 Rule Test

Bookish people, I’m sorry to say, have an unfortunate tendency toward elitism.

Bookish

I don’t feel loved or cared for when someone disparages or insults my favorite things, and I’m quite sure my children don’t either. If we want to cultivate good taste in our children, then, we can concentrate on increasing their exposure to good and wonderful books. We allow our children to cultivate their own unique literary taste when we place before them a veritable feast of the best books we can find and then let them develop their own relationship with what they read.

As in life

“When we see a good movie, a good ball game, or great concert—the first thing we want to do afterward is talk about it,” Jim Trelease writes.

Eh. Dislike these type of quotes. Quiet

We don’t want our kids to feel like we are primarily trying to improve or shape them by talking with them about books. Our kids are not our projects.

Question #1: What does the character want, and why can’t he or she have it?

Question #2: Should he or she have done that?

Question #3: How is X like Y? Or how is X different from Y?

Question #4: Who is the most ____ in this story?

Question #5: What does this story or character remind you of?

Question #6: What is the character most afraid of?

Question #7: What would you change about the setting or main character if you were writing this book?

“If I didn’t like a book,” N. D. said, “I had to tell my dad what I would do to fix it. That engaged me in a completely different way. I would put myself in the author’s chair and think, ‘No, don’t do that. Take it here. Add pirates. Kill everyone.’ I was in fifth grade,” he laughed.

Question #8: What surprised you most?

Question #9: Which character most reminds you of yourself?

If this question doesn’t lead into the conversation you were hoping for, ask your child for examples of things the character did that reminded them of themselves. Remember that any time we send the child back to the text for examples, we’re on the right track for digging deeper and opening up a good discussion.