The Steps in Creating Reading Habit for Children

Reading begins at home. As the first and most important link on the road to the reading habit parents can do some steps in building their children’s reading habit. This are some steps that parents can do to build reading habit to children:

¨      Introduces reading as a good activity in babyhood. It is good to uncalculated good habit like reading from early time. The best way for parents to help their children become good readers is to read to them even when they are very young. Children can also be introduced to books long after before they reach the school. A picture book with colorful images could capture children intention.

¨      Promotes reading to the children. Parents can read to their children at preschool and early primary as well. However, parents should decrease their reading to the children as the children learn to read and can read well. Parents can read a story to the children once or several times and then encourage them to read it by themselves. They will already be familiar with the story and so will find it easier to recognize the words.

¨      Encourage the children to make reading a part of their daily routine by having them keep a reading calendar. After a while, reading will be a natural habit that keeping records will not be necessary.

¨      Make bedtime stories a norm. Both parents can participate by reading a bedtime story every night, in this way children will develop a reading habit. Since bedtime reading is considered as the best time quality time spent with the children, bedtime reading helps to build strong bonding with them.

¨      Lead by example. Read the newspaper at breakfast, pick up a magazine in the relax time, bring a book in every occasions. If children see their parents and also the families around them reading often, they will understand that literature can be fun and important part in our life.

¨      Talk it up. Parents can do talking with the children about what they have read also lets them know that reading is an important part of life. It is suggested that parents could tell to the children why they liked a book, what can be learned from it, or how it helped them as soon they might start doing the same.

¨      Provide a varied supply of reading material at home. Children love to learn about animals, science, and other cultures and worlds as well as their own familiar surroundings. In order with that, storybooks are not the only thing that children can read. Newspaper, magazines, and informational material can also spark the interest of young reader. It will be much better if the family can provide a family bookshelf for library books in the house. Maybe a small budget is needed to fulfill this necessity, but having books in the home can show to the children that they are valued

¨      Try to set aside a special time each and every day that you and your child can enjoy a number of books together without interruption. Sharing parents’ childhood favorite books with the children will interest children in value the books and reading activity. The parents can also ask the members of the family members in- group reading activities. Making reading together as family tradition will bound the love of reading.

Parents’ Role in Creating Reading Habit

As children's first and most important teachers, parents have a major role to play in motivating children to read and love the reading activity. Parents are clearly important socializing agents. Parents who spend time reading to their children giving them the best possible start on the road to literacy. Many research studies have pointed out that the children who do best in literacy skills at school are those who come from homes where there are books, where their parents spend time reading to their children and where children see their parents and older siblings engage in reading activities. Children need to see reading is important to everyone. They need to see parents’ enthusiasm. It means that parents have great deal concerning important aspect of children growth related to reading success as their habit.

As already mention above families and parents should understand their crucial role in developing positive readers. Their attitudes toward reading activity can make fundamental differences. Since parents are the goal setters, the role models for the children, parental modeling and involvement are crucial to the reading development of children. Parents should play their important role for becoming the cheerleaders and encouragers of all children achievements; in order with those matter parents who like reading can establish reading habits for children.

The Benefit of Reading Habit for Children

Reading is one aspect of child development, accompanied an influenced by other growths. Reading development takes place as the child grows mentally, physically, perceptually, experientially and emotionally. (Smith 1963,50)

Reading is a simple activity but truly reading can give great influence for children development of their personality involvement, cognition and intelligence. As we know personality is an integration of social, emotional, and behavioral characteristics. These characteristics emerge as natural endowments, which interact with experience. Related to this matter, books can give experience and encourage children reader to internalize particular ways of seeing the world and help them shape their development as individuals. Furthermore, reading can be a ways to sharp the children intelligence and cognition as an important part of their mental development. Child psychologists often emphasize that reading even for simple picture books can involve a complex cognition process. This cognition and intelligence process happens because the reader not only need to be able to decode the verbal text but also its grammar, syntax, semantic, structure and so on in reading the book material. As a result, it obvious then that reading provides an educational opportunity for children to grow or develop mentally either intelligently.

 Reading is also one of the best ways to expand a child's imagination. Children have many intellectual curiosities. Their quest for knowledge leads them to seek information about sun, star, moon, earth tress, flower, and so on. They want to know about airplanes, trains, ship and automobiles. They eager for enlightenment about human beings, events, relationship, occupants ways of living, heroes, battle, kingdom and so on. This thirst for information can be satisfied through reading a book. A good book or reading an informative piece makes the ideal companion; it is interesting and will expand the children’s imagination.

Children who grow up with the books will find its excess when they face the problem. It is because an avid reader tends to have a better grasp on realities and are known to be better judges of people. Reading as a habit has always allowed nurturing a wholesome sense of well being. In this way children may become wiser to solve the problem because they have broader knowledge and experience that they gain from the books.

Reading also embraces a greater range and variety material than is available through any other communication agency. The heritage of the ages is stored up in reading as it never can be stored in radio or movies either television. The reading process is more adjustable to the children individual purpose and interest than any other medium. Reading also more accessible, we can read the books at the time it is needed.

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.

Creating Reading Habit for Children

Creating the reading habit in children early life is not a popular activity yet. However, reading habit can play an important role in shaping a good character building to the children. The benefit of the reading habit is that it can help the children reaching their success in life. In this matter family’s role especially parents’ role will determine the love of reading as children habit.


Impressionable minds can be nurtured and molded in many ways. However books are the best tools used for reaching out to a child. Therefore, creating the love of books in children early is beneficial since reading is important for everybody. The importance of reading is in order to cope with new knowledge in the changing world of this technological age, reading also important to give understanding the differences between intelligence and wisdom. Hence, the greater exposure to the books and language toward reading in early life the better equipped for children to face this globalization era. However the reading habit is still on the decline stage, it is not a popular habit yet. Even though many people know how to read but they do not read enough. This matter happens today and one of the major factors may because of from the beginning, children has not been introduced to the books, so when they grow up they are not close to the books and later on they do not consider reading as their life’s habit.

Ideally children from early should be motivated to read and informed how to utilized reading materials to improve their own personality and their behavior toward social environment. In this context, roles of family especially parents are very important to promote reading habit to children. The family and parents should also aware of the lure of the electronic media such as television, internet, and other modern audio-visual media which can contribute a failure in creating reading as a habit for children.

 Since reading is fundamental, the family especially parents have a major role to play in motivating children to read from the early life, they should understand their crucial role in developing positive readers. With parents’ influence later on hopefully the children can have a lifelong reading habit. Based on this perspective, this paper will concern about family role, especially the parent’s role in creating reading as children’s habit.

The families and parents role in creating reading habit for children from early can hopefully shape the reading habit as lifelong habit that will continue to grow throughout the children’s life. Although a lot of time and attention are needed to create reading habit for children but parents’ afford in promoting reading as an enjoyable activity, provides an educational opportunity for children to grow and develop mentally. The other implication of creating reading habit is that it can give children an appreciation and respect for books, enhances language and vocabulary development, and allows for quality family time, among other things. By teaching children to love and respect books, it gives children a head start to succeeding in life. The cooperation of all family members especially parents the success in creating reading habits for children will not to be far. The process may be long and difficult but the benefit will be greater. Therefore, creating the reading habit is a challenge in developing children quality for their future.