PARENTS’ ABC FOR SCHOOLING KIDS
It’s the greatest, most rewarding toil for parents - the effort and dedication that goes into bringing up children. Some ideas to make it easier.
BOOKS - THE BASICS
You don’t apply for the job, you don’t get paid anything to do it, it’s a 24-hour grind, you don’t get vacations from it and it lasts a lifetime. The job - being a parent - has a great pay-off. Although you don’t get paid in cash, the rewards in kind are unbeatable. The rewards come from watching your children grow into loving, responsible human beings. So, nurturing them carefully is very important.
We, as parents, take our job seriously by making sure that our children eat healthy food and take proper rest. We buy right size sneakers so that their feet will grow straight, and buy the right kind of clothes to make sure that they stay warm. But what about their minds? Are you feeding the imagination? Are you feeding that endless curiosity that causes children’s mind to grow in a healthy way? That’s where books are vital.
Books contain an endless source of knowledge and pleasure. If you teach your children to make reading a habit, you are handing down a special kind of magic to them - a gift that will enrich their lives as nothing else can. There are many ways to help your child discover the wonderful world of books and become a voracious, lifelong reader. You will discover some unexpected bonuses too. Your child will do better in school, improve as a reader and enjoy a richer and fuller life.

READ TO BUILD THE BASICS
The most important thing you can do to make your child a reader is to read stories and poems aloud - the more the merrier. Easy availability of books for very young children makes them feel comfortable with books. Books become their friends. There are all kind of books available in the market for young children. Toy books and pop-up books become playthings while board books and plastic books can be used to give the child the feel of books. Through these books children can learn how to hold and turn pages of a book.
Poems and verses are fun for children because the words can match the rhythm of children’s movements. Children are word collectors, so, reading the same poems and stories to them over and over again will expose them to new words, which they will easily remember.
One of my neighbours with children aged 8 and 6, said, “Good thing, Ali is finally reading by himself, so I don’t have to read to him any more.” My neighbour was wrong. No matter how much your child reads alone it is still important for you to read aloud to him or her.
There is more to reading than just saying words. Reading aloud is a social event. Your child learns more than just stories, he learns about life, his family and his place in the world.
When a child sits close to his parents as he or she reads, he is assured that he is still important to them even though a younger sibling may have invaded his space. He uses what he hears to make sense of his world and to understand what is happening around him.
The child sees the values of courage, honesty and loyalty played out in stories and he is inspired to live true to those values. When he shares stories, he builds memories about the warmth and joy in his early life that he will treasure forever. Reading aloud to your children builds the desire to read. Hence, it is one of the best things you can do to get your children to read.