How Do I Get My Child to Love Reading? Learn to Read First

I’m sure, if you’ve spent any time in the home education community wondering how to help your child learn to read, you will have heard this idea before: ‘if children learn to love reading, everything else will follow.’ Perhaps you’ve been told that reading for pleasure is the key to lifelong learning. Or perhaps you were drawn to teaching your child at home because of your love of books, and you want to share this with them. In a world of short form videos, a love of reading seems like a rare trait, but it’s still one that almost all parents aspire for their children to have.

So, surely then, if we want our child to read for pleasure, we’d better make sure they enjoy learning to read.

However, this idea of ‘reading for pleasure’ is actually somewhat misleading. It is certainly true that children who read widely, often, and with enjoyment will achieve more in other academic areas (many international studies show this pattern over and over again). And children who report enjoying reading tend to have stronger vocabularies, understand texts more deeply, and are just generally better readers. So, reading for pleasure leads to reading skills? Right?

Not necessarily.

The evidence suggests that the relationship actually goes the other way. Strong readers tend to enjoy reading. Reading enjoyment is the result of skill, not the source of it.

This is a problem of correlation vs causation, and it really matters. If we think a child enjoying reading will make them a skilled reader (rather than the other way around), then we may throw all our energy into trying to make them enjoy reading, instead of making them a skilled reader. It’s upside down.

Instead of trying to make your child enjoy reading, start by helping them become a skilled reader.

Fluency First: The Foundation of Learning to Read

Children must become fluent readers if they are ever going to enjoy it. A child who reads with ease, who can decode quickly, recognise words automatically, and follow meaning naturally finds reading more enjoyable. But a child who is still working hard to sound out each word will often experience reading as painful and tiring.

No amount of ‘making it fun’ can remove that underlying difficulty. Think of any skill worth having, and remember it takes time and careful effort before it becomes enjoyable. Jogging slowly while trying to control your breathing and puffing away is not fun, but feeling energised and fit on a run is (or so I’m told…). Playing blues scales carefully is boring, but playing improvised jazz with friends is. In life, fluency and skill almost always come before enjoyment, so why would reading be any different?

This is why, when helping a child learn to read, clear phonics instruction and regular practice matter so much. They need to be taught to decode the English alphabetic code, become fluent in it and then they can learn to enjoy it. Of course this doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy being read to, or discovering stories. But if you just give your kid a book (however amazing it is) that they can’t read properly, they will struggle and not be motivated to continue.

When Teaching a Child to Learn to Read, Focus on Fluency — Not the Fun Factor

Another assumption we often make is that reading for pleasure is a stable goal. Yet recent evidence suggests it is surprisingly fragile. The OECD reports that reading enjoyment has dropped significantly in recent years, particularly in environments where sustained reading competes with fast, digital content. Many children today are surrounded by constant novelty. In this context, trying to ‘make reading fun’ by competing with entertainment can backfire. The more we present books as entertainment, the more they are judged against it, and they simply cannot compete on those terms. Reading offers something different.

What Do We Mean by Pleasure?

There is another problem, rarely spoken of. When we say ‘reading for pleasure,’ what do we actually mean?

A child may read often out of routine, enjoy being read to, or feel positive about books without choosing them independently. All of these can be counted as ‘reading for pleasure,’ even though they describe different things.

There is also a slight bias in what counts as reading. Literary fiction is often privileged, while non-fiction, hobby texts, manuals, are overlooked. Some children may never enjoy reading fiction, but will love learning all about the Titanic in an information book! For example, one thing I enjoy reading in my spare time is cooking manuals – reading this definitely counts as ‘reading for pleasure’ even though I’m not reading a novel.

Why Free Choice Alone Won’t Help Your Child Learn to Read

Another popular idea is that children should have complete freedom to choose what they read. If they choose it, they will enjoy it. Or so the idea goes.

However, evidence suggests that choice can lead to a widening of the gap between poor readers and good readers. Strong readers tend to choose challenging books, while weaker readers tend to choose easier, familiar texts. When given the opportunity, children will not necessarily choose the book that is best going to help them become a better reader.

Once children have firmly established their reading skill, choice comes into play. However, often children don’t know what they may become interested in and still need guidance and encouragement to pick quality, living books. Furthermore, it is important for children to read literature that they may not be interested in at first to be exposed to different perspectives, language and stories that they may not be familiar with. Reading independence grows out of competence.

A Note on Decodable Books

One practical question parents often ask when helping their child learn to read is: which books should my child actually practise reading with? The answer is decodable books — books written to use only the phonics sounds a child has already been taught. They are not literary masterpieces, and they are not meant to be. They exist so that a child can experience genuine success with a book in their hands before their phonics knowledge is complete. Alongside these, read aloud to your child from rich, wonderful living books well above their reading level — this is how they build vocabulary and a love of story long before they can access those books alone.

How Do I Get My Child to Love Reading? Learn to Read with Decodable Books

Ultimately, this will come down to personality. Some children are never going to be overly fond of sitting down and reading, but you can do a lot to make sure they’re not scared of books and have the skills to access them. Here are some ideas that many home educators use:

• First, understand that good reading is a skill that needs to be taught
• Start with synthetic, systematic phonics to give them the best start when learning to read
• Read to them quality, ‘living’ books above their skill level
• Practise with them often, using decodable books that are at their skill level
• Limit screen time
• To maintain a long-term habit of reading into their teen years, again, limit screen time