Factor Limiting Reading Activity for Children

There are 3 major factors present hinder the reading activity, salient among them are as follows:

1. Wrong Persuasion Made to the Children

Children are satisfied by those situations, which fulfill their basic needs and are frustrated by those which oppose these natural needs; when frustration occurs, emotion stress develops. Learning to read is just one of the hundreds experiencing that may result in satisfaction or frustration of basic drives (Smith, 1963:46).

Basically there are two basic drive negatives drive which can make a failure in creating the reading habit for the children. Firstly is the children’s urge to escape from the reading activity since it seems frightened from them, and secondly is the children’s urge to get ride of the reading activity from their daily activity since it seems a boring activity. The children who get wrong persuasion from their parents and their families finds that reading and all activities connected with its learning not to be satisfying. Children needs a right persuasion, they may wish parents to pursue rather than flee from the reading activities. Basically children’s basic necessity are an approval, belongings, friendship, love and similarity to others. Therefore an approval and affection may be the best solution in order to pursue the children to like reading as their life habit.

Another important areas of growth in reading are the areas of interest. These interests are necessity to build reading as a fun activity in life. The discovery of a child's interest is an important first step in the motivation process. Picking up the books, which not interesting for the children may make failure result in making children love to read.

2. The Lure of Electronic Media

Television, Internet and other modern audiovisual media are potential to give effect on children reading performance. Today, it becomes a great issue of growing concern among education and often cited as a cause for the decline in reading. This is another problem in creating reading habit to the children, if they spent amount of their viewing time only on television programs, which entertain rather than reading a book that educate. As we know television, Internet and other modern audiovisual media also contribute to the child’s growth. However, reading should compliment other mediums. Otherwise, it leads to lopsided development. If television is on every minute after school there will be no incentive to sit down and read since television time also takes its toll on children’s eyesight.

3. Limited Budget to Buy A Book

Although having books in the house shows to the children that the books are valued, but parents often do not give enough budgets for children to buy books or to supply books for their children. In Indonesian culture books is not popular for children’s gift, parents usually prefer to buy toys for their children as a gift rather than a book. They also prefer to give their children an expensive cloth or food rather than to buy a good book. This tendency is another problem in creating reading habit, because to shape reading habit means that an extra budget is needed to supply a book to the children.