I have a lot of experience reading with children. One of the most valuable experiences I ever had was helping parents read with their children through a home visiting program. The number one thing that could turn a fun and happy reading session into a hostile session was a demanding parent.

The session would go something like this. The parent would ask the child to tell them what color something was. The child, who had just named the colors on every other page, would refuse or intentionally say the wrong color. The parent would ask again. The child would refuse again. The parent would get angry, and before you knew it, the kid was sitting in timeout. So what happened?

Your first instinct might be to blame the disobedient child. They were disobeying, that is true. The thing is, the parent was just as much to blame. The parent was trying to run the situation and make reading what they wanted. When they got pushback, they immediately became an enforcer. You may think there is no harm done, but the truth is, this situation may have done harm to the child’s impression of reading. The same goes for healthy food. If you force your child to eat broccoli, they may dislike it even more, moving you farther away from your goal of having a child who eats healthy food. If reading with you is not fun, your child may think they dislike reading.

I am very aware that reading with children can be a painful process. It’s not that I think reading with them is a bad experience, it’s that many children just want to read the same book over and over and over and over. Adults often feel that doing the same thing is a waste of time. To make it feel more valuable, they try to force learning into the experience, often creating the type of battle mentioned at the beginning. Sometimes kids just want to have fun, and what they find fun is doing the exact same thing over and over. There are only so many times an adult mind can act surprised when they find that Spot the dog is not hiding in the piano. We find it hard to believe that the little one reading with us is still holding out hope that they will find the missing puppy in a different location this time.

Adult minds lose something beautiful that the mind of a child still has. The good news is that we can make the same book feel different by interacting with it in different ways. We don’t always have to force children to count and name things. We can still make reading fun and varied, even with the same book. We can hide learning in the process. Here are a few variations that have worked for me!

Change Places

Most of the time a child wants an adult to read to them. One fun variation you can try is to let your child read to you. The neat thing is that your child doesn’t actually have to know how to read yet. You can see how much your child remembers of the story. Many times, a child will have the story completely memorized, which can be adorable to watch. Sometimes they will even throw in their own versions of what is happening.

Why It’s Valuable

The best part about this approach is that it allows your child to develop some valuable skills. You can see how well they are able to retain the details of the story. You can also develop some visual comprehension skills. A child who can’t read will look to the pictures for guidance. If your child can read, you can obviously practice those skills!

Change the Story

Some children may be resistant to this idea. They may not want the story to change. If they are, as the title of this suggests, just go with the flow. It is not about giving into the demands of your child, it is about making sure that you don’t make valuable time together into a fight that may make your child not want to read with you.

There are several ways you can change up the story. You can add your names in for the characters. You can change the setting, so the story can take place where you live, or any other place you decide. You can ask the child how they would handle a situation that the character is in, differently. You can also change the things that the characters do in the story.

Why It’s Valuable

The neat thing about the approach of changing the story is that it allows you to test their ability to make connections. You can work on skills such as cause and effect. For example, let’s say you are reading a story where some kids go out to play baseball. Let’s say you change the story by saying that it starts to storm. You and your child can work through how the story will change. Where will the kids go? What will they do instead of playing baseball? You could even discuss your own plans for dealing with severe weather. This can be a fun way to be creative and learn along the way!

I Spy

As with most variations on story time, you have to make sure your child is up to a change. If they are, you can play a version of I Spy with the pictures. Instead of straight up asking your child to point to colors on the page you can tell them you spy something red on the page and have them try to guess what you are looking at. You can also test other concepts, such as telling them you see something round on the page or that you see something cold.

Why It’s Valuable

The best part about a game like this is that it has the same effect as making your child point things out on the page, but it puts it in the form of a game. You can take turns asking them to locate what you are looking at, and locating what they are looking at. This can help establish concepts in your child’s mind. Even more advanced children can have fun with this and you can make it trickier for them by asking them to locate something that starts with a letter or ends with a letter to test spelling abilities.

Act It Out

One other way you can make reading fun is to add some acting to it. You and your child can act out the story. If you don’t want to actually act it out, you can simply use different voices. As adults, we can often feel silly talking in different voices while reading. If you aren’t really into doing voices yourself, you can have your child make all of the voices for the character. I have used this technique before, and it has been a lot of fun! You can also add different voices based on the time of year. For example, if it is near Halloween, you can read in a spooky voice. If your child has a favorite character, you can read like that character. It sounds silly, but I have made books that I have read dozens of times feel less painful just by adding some voices.

Why It’s Valuable

As mentioned, this can help make a book you have read many times, feel like a new experience. This can also help your child develop an understanding of important concepts such as emotions. If a character is sad, you can ask your child to show what a sad face looks like or what a sad voice would sound like. If they are happy, you can have them show you how they act when they are happy. Along with the valuable learning, it can also be a lot of fun. You just may have to get over the hurdles of feeling like you look or sound silly.

In Conclusion

Time moves fast. We unfortunately only notice this fact when we look back on the time that has already passed. Even those times that you thought you would never miss, such as reading the same story over and over, may leave you feeling reminiscent. Don’t take those times for granted. Don’t make the beautiful time that is spent reading with your child into a chore. Don’t make it all about getting through the story and being done with it. Remember that the way you present reading may influence the way that a child feels about reading.

Make it fun! Go with the flow!