Habit #5

Read to my kids every day

The Why

“What we teach children to love and desire will always outweigh what we make them learn”

-Jim Trelease

Those of us who have children can probably agree that we want our children to be successes in life, and a lot of that success can be tied to how well they can learn and perform in school. As a parent of 2 small boys (with a third on the way), I want my children to reach their full academic potential, so that they can pursue whatever lives they are called to lead and do it with unrelenting excellence. But in order to achieve this, there can be a maze of different paths offered to reach this intellectual pinnacle. It was shortly before the birth of our first child that Rachel came across a book that helped pave the route we would commit to taking. This book (as mentioned above) is The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease. There is so much evidence and research to back up the critical importance of reading aloud to your children, I would be doing the book a disservice to try and highlight that in this post. I encourage you to pick up a copy and read for yourself or visit Jim’s site here.  I know for a fact that Rachel already does an excellent job with upholding her own end of the reading (as our bulging box of library books will attest to), so I believe it is just as critical for me to be reading to them in time I have with them. Not only does this reinforce the importance of reading from both parents, but having dad read to them helps our boys to avoid the stereotype that reading is more of a “girl’s” activity.

The How

I believe this habit is also pretty self-explanatory. I will attempt to read at least one book to my kids every day. Since the books are relatively short, this habit should only take a few minutes each day, but I am willing to extend the time as I see fit. The reading time will most likely happen in the evenings, but I can be more flexible with the times during the weekends.