During my years of teaching second grade, I had many parents who were extremely stressed by their child’s reading progress (or lack of.) While our school had a no homework policy, many of the teachers ignored this policy and sent home reading practice. If you haven’t read my post, The Making of Mediocrity, I’d encourage you to read that before continuing as it gives background to the information I share in this post. If you have read it, you’ll have some idea of what this reading practice might look like at home:
For the precocious readers, there was certainly no need for assigned reading practice, since these children were already fluent readers. In fact, getting their noses out of books and outside moving their bodies was probably much more of a challenge for these families. Any assigned reading practice for these kids would just be a hoop to jump through. The rule-followers would do it to check the box, the pleasers would do it to keep their teacher’s affection, the kids whose identities relied on being one of the “smart ones” would do it for the evidence that they were superior to their classmates, and those that had other interests would recognize it as the busy work it was and insist on doing their own thing.
For the kids resisting reading and who spent the day struggling to control their bodies in the classroom, forcing reading practice at home, in my opinion, was just plain cruel. Unless you’re a super savvy and creative parent with the excess energy to somehow make decodables fun, this situation is likely to set you up for an ongoing battle with your child. We’ll talk more about this when we look at why homework has strong potential to damage familial relationships. And in the end, what exactly is your child learning by being forced to practice reading? They may make small gains in their reading fluency, but what they’re likely learning is that they hate reading and their desires don’t matter.
For the invested kids who have sophisticated thinking skills but their brains aren’t ready to learn reading, consider how painful this practice must be. Maybe they suffer through the practice then spend time ruminating on how inadequate they are. Or they start finding reasons to opt out of any activity that involves reading so they don’t have to feel stupid. They start to hide emotionally to avoid feeling vulnerable to judgment. I’m sure you can already start to imagine dangerous outcomes to this path.
In all of these situations, the requisite reading practice reinforces emerging and damaging identities. What seems like a fairly benign practice that is intended to strengthen reading skills takes on an insidious undercurrent of psychological shaping. Rarely do the educational “experts” consider the delicate egos that are taking such blows when they recommend that parents force their kids to read for a certain amount of time each evening after school.
The one situation where assigned reading practice may not be harmful is those invested emerging readers whose time has come to learn to read. Yet, even still, boring decodables are not going to foster a love of reading. These children should be choosing materials that inspire them to persevere through challenging passages and reading at home for pleasure, not for the gold star or to check the box. By offering recognition and rewards, we risk obliterating the child’s internal locus of control. So I take it back, I don’t believe there is any assigned reading practice that is not potentially harmful to the child.
For those parents who came to me stressed about their child’s reading progress, I encouraged them NOT to force it. Your stress causes your child to stress and be fearful, and there’s no need. Your child will learn to read when his brain is ready for it. If you need some reassurance that it’s okay to relax and let reading happen when it’s meant to for your unique child, please read this article.
Forget about his test scores and the school’s rating. Forget about the teacher’s evaluation. Foster your child’s love of literature and your relationship with your child by reading TO him stories that he finds riveting. Stories that are rich in content that you can use to teach about life and how to be human in a way that fosters stewardship of his health, his relationships, his communities, etc., but mostly help him discover things that light him up and encourage him to engage in life—even if it means not reading. He can suffer reading instruction in the classroom; keep your home a judgment-free place where he can leave all that behind and just be himself.
Restoring Justis 