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Adventures of a Reluctant Reader
Learning at an Individual Pace
By Tara Swords
When Alison Pohn McCarthy was a child, she loved to read. "I don't even remember not being able to read," she says. "I was one of those kids who read under the covers with a flashlight because I just couldn't put my book down."
She grew up in a house full of books, spent time weaving her own stories and later became a published writer herself. So when she started a family, she naturally hoped to instill in her child the same passion for the written word that she had always felt.
"From the day [my daughter Lexie] came home from the hospital, reading to her was part of the bedtime ritual," Alison says. "She'd have her favorites, and she started chapter books as she got a little older. I'd always read to her because I felt that was important to her and important time together."
Research shows that Alison was right in these assumptions. Richard Anderson, director of the Center for the Study of Reading at the University of Illinois, says reading to a young child can help develop a love of reading that will persist throughout a lifetime.
"Part of it is the association with something exciting and pleasurable – a time with Mommy or Daddy or a grandparent," Anderson says. "But it's more the skills and concepts that the child acquires. The child will learn something about the structure of stories, about book language, about letters and words. And that lays a foundation."
Alison carefully laid that foundation for her daughter. But when it came time for Lexie to learn to read herself, she wasn't doing it. She became frustrated and dreaded going to kindergarten on the days her class studied language arts.