They’re Watching Us
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
When we adults share what is in our hearts and minds with young children, when we share what we feel is important, delightful or surprising, new windows about how the world works open for kids. Their casual or intense observations of what we think is important and our engagements with the various areas of focus in our lives will command their attention.
Every observed reaction plants a seed in young minds that may sprout in their ever-expanding worlds, so every interaction with kids can inspire these little learning machines. As children interact with everything in their worlds, lessons rich with new promise and the magic of discovery abound.
The Unite for Literacy website emphasizes books and reading as critically important for paving children’s pathways to success in school certainly, but especially in their lives. The focus is the power of our personal reading on their personal reading.
It is a rock-solid teaching and parenting choice to read age-appropriate books together with children, “discussing” characters and content with even the youngest ones. Yet children need to see us teachers and parents reading OUR books, too. When kids observe us reading, it sparks and enriches their growing relationship with book-based explorations upon which they can begin to build their lifelong learning. Therefore, we must not just read children’s books with them. We must be seen reading the kinds of things that we enjoy, alone, for ourselves, and our own learning and entertainment.
Our actions show little ones our values. If we want to show them that we value books, it’s necessary to make a regular show of our reading, and how we handle and thoughtfully care for our books and other reading material. Kids need to see us lost in our own reading and to sense our urges to get back into those pages.
Children don’t miss much in what we do, and early on they will not “get” reading, but they can definitely sense that reading is important to us—that it’s personally fulfilling for grownups to sit with and give our full attention over to our books. They need to regularly see that reading is valued and that books are something enjoyable and worth keeping in a special place where we can easily return to them.
This encouragement to purposefully arrange for children to watch us read (and write!) personally meaningful texts is not haphazard. It is critical. It paves the way to the development of their baby-step literacy, lighting the long fuse to launching their independent learning lives.
Then, when they get around to asking about our reading, we can take a moment to share with them how important and personally satisfying reading and books are to us and our ongoing lifelong learning.
This is a powerful and easy lesson worth “teaching” whenever the opportunity presents itself.