While perusing NPR this week, I found an article about kids and the overall decline in reading as a leisure activity. Apparently with so much access to technology like tablets and smartphones {where they spend time on social networking sites, Netflix, etc.} kids are opting for different leisure activities than when we were kids. Students that were interviewed {primarily teenagers} responded to questions about reading for pleasure with sentiments that either they would like to, but have too much homework, or that they don’t read unless it’s for an assignment.
The article didn’t really give any hard statistical data, only that through interviews, reading for pleasure appears to be down. The article did mention, though, that some teachers feel the internet allows kids to do more extensive research…and, well, read about more than they would have in the past. Maybe “reading” is just changing?
What do you think, do you kids read as much as you did when you were a kid? If you do have kids that like to read, do they prefer books or reading on kindles/tablets?
~Mavis
This post may contain affiliate links. These affiliate links help support this site. For more information, please see my disclosure policy. Thank you for supporting One Hundred Dollars a Month.
Rochelle says
All five of my kids are avid readers. When they were young and I would ask any kid who wasn’t reading to give me a hand with whatever chores I was working on. I didn’t do it on purpose; I just don’t like being interrupted when I’m reading myself. I of course did have lots of reading materal lying around of all sorts of genre and difficulty.
My daughter, who is dyslexic, now works at the tutoring center for our local community college. The professors there were not only amazed with her reading ability (790 SAT in critical reading), but how she was able to be much more effective in helping the other dyslexic students. She told them about my habits of not bugging readers and how she would quickly grab anything to ‘read’ if I came by to avoid doing any extra chores. (She was a kid after all.) This gave her the time and motivation she needed to figure out not only how to read, but to enjoy it.
She really is dyslexic, and didn’t learn to read until well into her third grade year. I never pressured her or made her do any reading assignments whatsoever. They made her cry, feel bad about herself and want to give up. (We did other things that made sure the kids didn’t grow up lazy, but they were always things they could succeed at.). By the time she was 15 she graduated early from high school and placed directly into English 300 and passed the graduation requirements for reading. She took the SAT’s at 18 so she could apply to universities. She really did score a 790; it’s the 99th percentile.
If any of you have a dyslexic kid, protect their self esteem above all else. The rest will shake out in the end.
Linda says
Great story!!! Thank you for sharing. I also have a daughter who stuggled with reading and it was super hard on her at school. Not only did the teacher give her a hard time, but the kids were brutal. She LOVES to read now and constantly has a book in her hand. She graduated this year with a 3.6 GPA and is considering teaching just because she wants to help kids with reading difficulties. Hang in there parents, if your child is struggling and don’t give up on them. Rochelle is right – protect their self esteem and given time, it will work out in the end.
HollyG says
We have started seeing an upswing in our high school readers in the last 6 years. I think a couple of things have really helped:
1. So many of the YA novels are turned into pretty good movies. Starting with Harry Potter, these kids have grown up and into Divergent, Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars and the upcoming Maze Runner – all really fun reads.
2. The English teachers at my school have started relying more heavily on choice novels. Instead of everyone in room reading the same thing, students are allowed to choose books from a teacher-produced list which groups books with similar themes. The class can still analyze the literature, but now they also learn from their peers about the titles they are not currently reading.
As a librarian, I love when I see kids carrying around a great novel…….but perhaps as important, are their parents carrying one too? Kids that read come from families that read, so start a Sunday lazy-reading afternoon tradition, visit a book store on a family vacation, every holiday should include at least one beautiful book, make home-library plates during craft time………it’ll be fantastic.
PS – Don’t forget about non-fiction. It’s one of the best ways to build reading skills and vocabulary.
Patty P says
I have been an English Language Arts teacher for the past ten years. In those ten years, there are definitely ups and downs as far as kids being involved in reading. Of course, there are always the novels that we read as a class, and sometimes they spark kids to delve into that particular genre, or subject, or author. I LOVE reading Juvenile Fiction (I teach sixth and seventh grade), so when I get done reading a book, I do a little book talk advertisement about it and it usually gets signed out that day! I try to buy books for my classroom that kids will be interested in (even if it’s something I’m not interested in). I bring in magazines from home for the kids to read (my husband gets hunting magazines and we also subscribe to gardening magazines). When I go to county and state fairs I pick up literature that would interest kids (pamphlets about wild animals, bugs, environmental issues, dairy products, farm issues, etc.).
I still don’t know all the answers for getting kids to read or even enjoy reading. I do know that I encourage it endlessly! I build in time for kids to read their own choice of material, and I read during that time too! I stop kids in the hall to talk about a book they are reading. I encourage, encourage, encourage!
Cecily says
I have three kids and only the middle one really likes to read (he’s reading Brisingr of the Inheritance Cycle right now). My eldest son mainly only reads for assignments although he did enjoy the Galahad series by Dom Testa. My youngest (he has ADHD and is mildly autistic) reads comic books (mostly he likes the pictures) and he likes to look at reference works (go figure). My sister and I both love to read and my mom loves reading so much that she became a librarian! I don’t necessarily think reading is on the decline as much as teenagers are busy and more interested in other things. I know I didn’t read many books during high school. Now back to my book! 😉
Kristina Z says
So many great stories! My kids are readers. Of course, one of the phrases they learned first was “Just a minute — let me just finish this paragraph” (Not sure if that makes me a better or worse mother). As a former English teacher, I have to say that there is a different skill set in reading shorter snippets of information in a research situation and reading something with bigger ideas and longer timelines (both monograph-length fiction and non-fiction). There’s just a different type of concentration needed to stick with an idea as it’s developed over hundreds of pages. I’m not worried about kids learning the type of skill needed for internet research, but I think there are neural pathways going unused for lack of sustained reading. Also, Young Adult fiction is so good right now! I’m reading a lot of it myself simply for the pleasure of it. So much better than when I was a girl in the ’70s.
Jill says
I have 2 teenagers and only my daughter loves to read. She is finishing her senior year and most of her free time is spent snuggling up with a good book. (I keep telling her to read as much as she can right not because once she starts college, her time for pleasure reading will become practically nonexistent!). She refuses to read on a tablet, only holding a real book in her hands will do.
My son is finishing his freshman year and has never really enjoyed reading (except when he was young and we read to him). When he does read for pleasure, it is always non-fiction. We just got him a subscription to Astronomy magazine and he really enjoys reading those articles.
I myself have always been a reader but my husband isn’t. He likes to read short things (magazine articles, blog posts, etc).
Marcy says
My son learned to read early, but he didn’t like to read for pleasure until I started reading the same books as he, and then we would talk about them. My daughter loved to read from the first time she picked up a book, but she got tired of the simplistic stories that were on her reading level. My answer to that, besides reading aloud to her, was to get the kits our library offered that included the audio and hard copy versions of the same books, so she could follow along as the story was read. Not only did she increase her reading skills, she really sharpened her listening skills.
As a homeschool teacher/parent, with 2 children of different sexes and very different ages, finding a book we all could listen to together was a struggle. We discovered Full Cast Audio and Bruce Coville and we never travelled any distance without a book going again. Tamora Pierce is an excellent fantasy author and is my daughter’s personal hero. My daughter wrote her first, and only, fan letter to Ms Pierce to beg her to write more books about Alanna, the central character in one of Ms Pierce’s series. Ms Pierce graciously wrote back and explained what books she had planned and invited my daughter to discover the joys of writing fan fiction. From then on, most of my daughter’s writing assignments centered around prompts that included the world of Ms Pierce’s creation.
I do think the fact that my husband and I were both avid readers played a part in our kids’ love of good books. Both of my kids will tell you stories of Dad calling home, telling them that he was on his way and they needed to finish their schoolwork before he got home so we could listen to whatever book we were listening to as a family. On those days, getting them to finish school was a breeze. They’ll also tell you about the long trips we took to other states, not to see the scenery or attend an event, but to listen to the latest Harry Potter book while we travelled. After the first book, we made a solemn family pledge to only listen to the books together, as a family, and to not read ahead of the story.
My daughter came home from college for a very short summer break Friday and the first thing she did was ask if she could borrow my Kindle. We both have iPads and we seldom read printed books anymore, but she had read everything she had bought and she wanted to investigate the Kindle’s Lending Library. While she’s home, she’ll also check out as many ebooks from our library as she can. And, too, she’s already suggested we take a day trip anywhere so we can listen to a book a friend recommended.
Marcy
Suzy says
I heard this story on NPR yesterday. My first thought was that my son, who is in 8th grade, always has 2 books going for his English class. He has one that is for a book report that he has to do every 3 weeks and another book that he has to read at the same time for class discussion/work. Since 5th grade, he has had a summer reading list. He had to chose a book from the list but this past summer he had one mandatory book and then a choice of another book from the list given. It is hard to say that the school system that my son is in gives him much time to read “for pleasure”. Yes, for the book reports he is allowed to choose a book of his choice but within a assigned genre.
I think the report I heard on NPR about 9 months ago is more concerning than the amount of books kids read. It has been shown that the reading levels in high school are below grade level. High school juniors and seniors are reading books that are for 7th grade. Instead of making something challenging and having the students rise up and meet or exceed expectations, school systems are “dumbing it down” to make it easier for the students. Students are not ready for college reading and they are learning poor life skills when teachers and school systems make it easy for a student to get by.
Let’s think QUALITY, NOT QUANTITY.
Rochelle says
Suzy, you are 100% right!!!
Stacey says
I work in a 7th and 8th grade combined classroom. Out of seventeen students this year, about half will read a book, but only two appreciate good literature. Reading is on the decline where we are, being nudged out by television and Facebook, judging from the lunch time talk I hear.
Jennifer says
I love to read! Always have. Growing up, we had reading dinners. Which were awesome. You could read anything and everything you wanted during dinner time. I married a non-reader, who recently has become a convert. He listens to books on CD going to work. I seriously got teary eyed when he said he really liked the books on CD. We just went out of town for the weekend and he made us stop by the library to pick up CDs before we left!!
rachel says
I read all the time as a kid and teenager until I got to college and it was too hard to juggle text books and books for pleasure. It’s picked back up in the eight years since I’ve graduated. However, I’ve noticed with my younger siblings and the kids in my Sunday School class, they don’t read for pleasure. I asked all of them why and they told me the same answer – the AR tests at school (accelerated reader). They said they make the tests so hard you don’t want to read quality books or harder reading because you’ll score low and then you’ll be behind everybody else in class (because everything at school is a stupid competition anymore). AR was just coming out when I was in middle school but I didn’t see it effect my high school curriculum. I’m not sure if it does now but I know it goes through middle school and it turns kids off of reading anything worthwhile in turn for reading something easy to score a high test score. It’s too bad.
Vy says
My kids (13, 13, 16) read like crazy, so my basis for comparison is skewed. I just made it my mission to find something for each of them to ignite the love. With my daughters it was easy but my son was a challenge. Then I hit the motherlode – Garfield and Calvin and Hobbes. And that’s what did it! He likes scifi now, score one for mom 🙂
I read constantly, I am a huge fan of the Seattle library system, I can choose things online and it’s sent to my library of choice. I have a self goal of 100 books per year (and I use Goodreads to track – love that site!), so they definitely are surrounded by books and reading. Sometimes they wander in my room and look through my bookshelves until they find something interesting, or a good library book makes the rounds before it goes back, and that’s not something that’s as easily done with ebooks. Just another reason to keep real books around 😉
Kristen says
I’ve got four avid readers at my house, so I consider myself super blessed! It’s a part-time job just to keep them supplied with books.
suzy says
Hey, it is Suzy with an update. My son who is going into 9th grade just got his summer reading list. He needs to read 3 books this summer.