Tips for Teaching Your Kid To Read

Is your child showing interests in learning to read or are you ready to introduce your child to reading? Reading is a big step for both parent and child and should be approached slowly and carefully. I say that reading should be approached carefully because one bad learning experience can curb a child's desire to read. Parents and teachers alike should avoid doing any of the following things mentioned below when it comes to teaching children to read.

Avoid starting children on books that are not appropriate for their age level. Challenging children is good as it encourages them to try and learn harder and new things. Challenges should only be given to children when they have reached a certain level of comfort in their lessons. Books that are not age appropriate should not be given to children when they just starting to learn how to read.

Avoid forcing children to keep reading when they express frustration. When a child shows signs of frustration the lessons should be discontinued and continued at a later time. Ignoring a child's frustration during reading will cause the child to feel overwhelmed and they will begin to exude negative feelings towards reading.

Avoid getting upset if the child has forgotten how to sound out a word. Reading consists of learning multiple sounds and recognizing multiple letters. This can be difficult for young children as they are just beginning to read. When teaching child a new word, one day you might find that he has forgotten that word the next day or even a week later. If you get upset at this, you will make the child feel very bad and worthless and this will make him scared to make mistakes because he does not want to upset you. The child will become hesitant to try to read. Reading may be easy for you because you have had years of experience with it, but you must remember that this experience is new for children and they need your encouragement and support. If you find yourself becoming frustrated, take a break. Reading should be fun.

Avoid comparing children to other children. You might have seen other children the same age as your own children with impressive reading skills. This may make you feel a bit jealous and in effect you might push your child harder. You should avoid doing this because this will decrease your child's confidence. Every child learns at a different pace and you should not a push a child to go faster or even slower than he can.

Avoid belittling children for their inability to sound out and recognize words with speed. Again, you must remember this is a learning experience and children will stumble here and there. What is easy to you may appear extremely difficult to them. Avoid calling children names like stupid or slow and using expressions such as "this is easy, you should know this."

Avoid laughing at a child's inability to sound out words. Children might stutter when sounding out words. You should never laugh at a child when they are attempting to read. This will make them horrible and it will damage their confidence.

Avoid setting high expectations. You should not expect children to learn all there is to know about reading in a short time period. Learning never ends. Learning is extensive. If you want your child to be successful in reading you must spread out the learning over the course of months and years. Never try to jam all of the learning into quick sessions.

There are plenty more things that parents should avoid doing when teaching their children to read. I will continue them in the next article entitled, "Mistakes Parents Make when Teaching Their Kids to Read, Part 2."