Olga Cherrington
On Sunday I hopped on a train to go shopping in the nearest city. The train was half an hour late, but to my relief I managed to download the book I'd started reading on my Kindle app and got stuck back into "Demon Copperhead". Once off the train, I thought I'd enjoy a bit more of the book, now with a coffee. Aaah, the rare pleasure of a quiet Sunday morning thanks to my husband, who took the kids out.
Then ping! A notification from my Kindle app: "Nailed it! Olga, keep on your reading streak to get your first badge!" I chuckled but was annoyed too. For once that week, I wasn't aiming to achieve. I was reading for pleasure. And why did the creators of the app think reading a book of my choice couldn’t be its own reward? I made a mental note that I preferred my old Kindle to the app. It's so basic that it doesn't "track my progress" or try to reward me.
The end of the school year is the time that multiple reading challenges for kids kick off at local libraries across the country. They seem like a good idea on the surface, but when we look at the science, it tells a cautionary tale.
In a famous experiment by M. Lepper and J. Henderlong, pre-school children who enjoyed drawing (i.e. were intrinsically motivated to draw), stopped wanting to draw after receiving a certificate that praised them for drawing. The control group of children who did not receive any certificates continued to enjoy drawing and wanted to draw more. It turned out, the reward took away the children’s love for drawing! Why does this happen? The message that the reward sends is, “This activity (drawing, reading etc.) isn’t interesting enough for you to be pursuing it for its own sake.” And, perhaps even more dangerously, “Your interest and motivation are not enough to move you to pursue this activity. You can only put in the work if you get an external reward.” The experiment has been replicated multiple times and is widely described in psychological literature. Sadly, our education system refuses to take the findings on board, and rewards, certificates and competitions abound, especially around reading, just as the number of children who enjoy reading for pleasure continues to plummet.
Let me say here that I don’t doubt for a second that schools and libraries set up reading challenges with best intentions, and parents that encourage their kids to sign up mean so well. The problem is, we can make a child read more (temporarily), but we can’t make them want to read, and wanting to read is the only thing that’ll move the needle in the long run.
If reading challenges and rewards backfire, is there anything parents can do to support their young readers? Absolutely. Here are a few suggestions.
1. Take the pressure off, for yourself and your child.
If your child is at school, they will be under considerable pressure to read. Very often, schools recruit parents to continue with the pressure at home. Not only is this practice not conducive to fostering a love of reading in the child, but it will also affect your relationship with your child. You can find a lot of freedom in refusing to team up with school on this.
2. Protect your child’s free time. How much time has your child got when there is nothing at all that they should be doing? No school, no sports, nothing you expect of them, no digital distractions. Ideally, this would be time filled with play, and an interest in reading is only one of the multiple positive developmental outcomes of having more of it.
3. Decouple reading from being able to enjoy a good story.
There’s an awkward stage that can last for several years (or a lifetime if there is underlying dyslexia). It’s when a child can already read but it’s still effortful. They can tire after just one page, before they really get into the swing of the story they’re trying to read.
This is exactly the time to be generous with helping them enjoy great stories without having to read. Audiobooks are great (ask if your library offers them for free, for example via BorrowBox), and so is reading to your child.
Just like you were still giving your child rides in the pram and carrying them in your arms years after they learned to walk, you can read them books long after they’ve learned to read. This is a wonderful way to connect, explain the meaning of new words and enjoy stories together.
4. Pick great books and let your child pick some too!
It’s much easier to read a great book than a not-so-great book (and why would anyone want to read those anyway?), so go for the bangers! The books you loved when you were a kid, the prize winners, the books behind the big movies. Ask at your local library which books children of a similar age to your child keep coming back to. And of course, follow your child’s lead and support their choices, which takes me to the next point.
5. Let go of the “book hierarchy”.
Chapter books are not inherently better than picture books and comic books, and the “Young Scientist” series is not in any way superior to Minecraft books. What the child is into is what they need right now.
6. Enjoy reading alongside your child. Your child is more likely to read for pleasure if this is what their parents do. Unpack your own relationship with reading.
Whilst it is true that children are more curious about books when their parents read around them, if reading is not something you enjoy doing, then performative reading for your child’s sake isn’t going to be of much use.
Reading is widely seen as a virtuous pastime, something “smart people do”. And yet there are plenty of smart and happy people who don’t read books on a regular basis. Whether your child is a big reader or not, this might be worth sharing with them.
Here are some questions to help you unpack what reading means for you. Do you enjoy books, or do you feel they are something you ought to enjoy? How do you like finding out information that is important to you? Where do you get good stories from? How do you get in touch with beauty, wonder and awe? What would it mean for you if your child read a lot? What would it mean if they never grew to love books?
Ultimately, don’t let reading get between your child and you, and don’t let rewards get between your child and what they love.
Tell us where to send them.