How to Get Your Child to Read in Three [Easy?] Steps

“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "[...]But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”

At my last “Distinguished” high school, my Advanced Placement/Honors/IB students couldn't read.

Oh, they could look at a page and say the words that are there, mostly, but when you asked them what the words mean, what had happened on the page or in the paragraph, they’d often be stumped.

These are 17-18 year olds in one of the highest performing public schools in the state in one of the wealthiest communities in the country. The best readers were kids who, unsurprisingly, enjoy reading. Rich or poor didn't matter. If they liked reading and had access to books, they could read well.

School staff not only are hamstrung in their efforts to teach children to read, but the K12 system trains the desire to read out of your kids.

If you want functional, thinking adults, you’re going to have to retrain them. This is how you make that happen:

1. Get your child to like reading.

2. Ensure their access to books.

3. Decrease the opportunity cost of reading.

Let's break them down.

Step 1: Get Your Child to Like Reading.

Your kid liked books from birth. How do I know that?

Because all children do.

Tiny humans are programmed to love learning. Their brains ache for input and information to support their singular purpose in life: survival. At first, learning is all experiential. Babies look at the world around them, crawl to it, lick it, grab it, poop on it, whatever they can do to understand it better so it doesn't inadvertently kill them (although you're on deck to prevent that, mom and dad).

And this is where reading begins. Some people believe the best way to introduce books is organically. Leave books around your house and let your baby discover them in play. Others believe the best way is to dedicate reading time as part of your baby's daily routine, like at bedtime.

If you want them to love it, do both.

More than anything else, your baby wants you. When she crawls in your lap or asks to be picked up when she's tired, take a moment to grab a board book and let her grubby, sticky fingers open it. Point out the pictures. Read her the rhymes. Give as many hugs and kisses as possible. Sing to her. Giggle with her. Change the name of the main character in the story to her name.

She loves you. She wants your love. If you can give her lots of love when you read or simply play with books with her, her brain will associate your love with books. There is no more powerful force than love, and the more you can connect love to books the more she will naturally gravitate to reading.

For as long as your baby (then child, then teen) will let you, read to him. Show him your favorite books. Give his board and picture and rubbery, crinkly, noise-making books a place of honor on the lowest spot on the bookshelf. Don't just keep your cool when he yanks out every book on the shelf — encourage it actively. When he dumps your cherished collection on the floor, pick one book up and read a sentence or two out loud to him. Then help him build a castle out of them before you show him how to help you put the rest back.

If you’re dealing with an older child, the same rules apply. The love just looks different and it may come with an enormous uphill battle against screens. I have come to the conclusion that screens are poison to the developing mind (and mine as well, I must admit.) I promise to explain the technical aspects of this in a later post, but I’ll say for now that spending 8+ hours a day of the last 22 years of my life with adolescents and teenagers, including my own, the evidence is undeniable, especially when you can compare a student with very limited access to one whose access is unlimited. The damage screens do is obvious.

As impoverished a source as it may be, your child is still seeking new knowledge from the screen — so you’ve got that going for you, which is nice. If you want to encourage a reader you’ll have to do two hard things: limit his screen time and damn near obliterate yours at home. Yes, I love X too, but the opportunity cost to your child’s intellect and mental health require you to put down your phone.

Step 2: Ensure their access to books.

I’ve made three lists of books to build kind, resilient, thinking young people. These titles will moor them in our culture, one that can produce millions of kind, hard-working, loving, successful human beings. (Yes, there are a handful of sociopaths who will learn to be really good at sociopath-ing because they read well and widely, but the benefits to the population en masse outweigh the costs.) Reading offers the best opportunities to make of herself whatever a child may wish.

The books I chose are ones I, my family, and millions of English speakers know and love. I separated the main list into three age ranges: 3-7, 8-12, and 13-17 (all contain affiliate links). They are stories of fear and courage, of frailty and strength, of good and evil. They are books that make you better. They will challenge and change you. They are beautiful, and move us to recognize truth and value goodness as much in ourselves as others. Most importantly, they inspire us to seek out and defend all three.

But note that not every book will be perfectly tied to the person you hope your child will become. All of these books should be jumping off points for thinking and, hopefully, conversations between you and your child. At the older levels, there are situations and language that some families might prefer their child not encounter. Shakespeare’s racy puns alone may give pause — he gets downright nasty. However, as a recovering English teacher, I’d say that when we’re talking about the GOATs, you must work with your child to help her understand why some characters talk like hell-spawn while the language of others has the soft transcendent glow of righteousness. It’s all purposeful and, if they grok it, the baddies often teach children to be good through non-example.

Beware: if your kid gets too good at this, she may want to take on debt to go to college to major in the Humanities. Outside of a few schools at the moment, I cannot recommend this. I barely made it out with my ethics intact in 2001. Today? There are precious few English professors who aren’t full-on, card-carrying social justice activists who twist and pervert everything in the canon, if they mention it at all. Remember how in the 1990 Batman Jack Nicholson’s Joker threw acid on the face of his girlfriend, the gorgeous Jerry Hall, and called it art? These are the same kind of people.

Keep that bookshelf full, mom and dad, grandma and grandpa, auntie and uncle. Look at my lists, beginning with the list for little kids, even if the child you’re trying to educate is older. Trust me, if your kiddo has been in public school since Kindergarten there is only a tiny chance she is familiar with those titles. Laugh about it, make it fun, but get her to read Greek and Roman mythology at the very least. No, Disney’s Hercules is not enough, though I do think reading the 12 Labors of Hercules and then watching the Disney movie to contrast it and launch a broader discussion of what art can be is valuable. If you can get her to read a book of Bible stories — especially Jesus’s parables and the stories of the Old Testament/Torah — she will have a strong foundational understanding of the principles that built the West, which she needs to navigate our culture skillfully even if your family’s belief system doesn’t line up the same way.

Then, think back to your childhood, the stories you remember best. Buy those books. If the kids in your life know you loved them, and you speak of them appreciatively, maybe even affectionately, the children you care about are much more likely to read them.

And even if you’re not fully committed to the idea of classical education, a love of story and character you share with your child, plus the opportunity to watch her as she decides who she will become, is one of life’s great joys.

Step 3: Reduce the Opportunity Cost of Reading

Ay, there’s the rub. In order to make the books accessible, there can’t be an easier option for your child to entertain herself.

There’s two parts to this. First of all, you have to figure out if your kid is a good reader. Read a passage from a grade-level book together and ask her basic questions about it. Ask her what she thinks challenging words mean. Ask her what the main action was on the page or in the chapter. If you notice she can’t keep a thought in her head or struggles to tell you the main point of the text when it seems pretty obvious to you, you’ve got some choices to make.

Screens are absolute poison to the developing child. They are deeply destructive of a person’s ability to learn and transfer short-term memory into long-term knowledge banks in the human brain. They make reading for the purpose of learning incredibly difficult.

There’s a real delusion that there’s a way to control screen use in teens. Yes, you can limit it, but that’s not the same thing as controlling it. Your child has to learn to control it. You can help.

Teach your child that dopamine is less rewarding than serotonin. A kid has to learn that success in the long-run is more important than immediate, temporary pleasure. The difficulty with this lies in the fact that children are absolute garbage at thinking long-term — so you have to be the bad guy temporarily because screens are habit-forming and dopamine addiction is real. Your execution of this lesson will make you a hero in the long-run.

Case in point: my son has had a wonderful young friend for years. This boy used to come and run and ride bikes and jump on the trampoline with my son but now refuses our invitations because we don’t allow unlimited screen time. He came to my son’s birthday party at a local park and sat in a chair, alone nearly the whole time, despite the group of eight boys playing soccer, basketball, and climbing trees who repeatedly came to him to invite him to join in. He was lost without his iPad. That friendship is over, and it’s absolutely my fault. 

I know what you’re thinking: All the kids are like this, DT. If I cut off my kid’s access to screens, she will miss out on social interaction. She won’t have any friends.  

And this is where we may very well part ways, but hear me out first.

In 2011, the iPhone stormed onto the scene. I was teaching in a very poor, very low-performing suburban high school at the time. The change in students was noticeable and near immediate. Kids who had them could not put their iPhones away. This was at the beginning of continuous scrolling, before the rise of Insta and Snap. YouTube was gaining steam; kids loved it. Still, not every kid had a smartphone. Friendships were still strong and loyal. Kids had crews. They had each other’s backs. They talked to each other in class. It was easy to get them to read, think, then talk. It was often hard to stop the talking. Bullying was rare. Yes, kids would beef, but they’d get over it.

By 2015, I had moved on to a school in the District nearer to where my family lived. It was a “Distinguished” high school in a neighborhood where the typical 3-bedroom house costs more than $1.5 million. By the time I left in 2021, it was rare to see a face-to-face conversation between students at lunch. I’d walk by and while the kids would be sitting together in their friend groups, they were staring into their phones. In class, they didn’t chat when they had free time, they looked at their phones. During group work, one kid would be doing the work while the rest — you guessed it! — scrolled.

Look, I’m the first person to say that schools create such a toxic environment for a growing human that I understand the need for chemical intervention in the form of easily-accessed dopamine. However different I may be from the typical teacher, I know that friendships have deteriorated where unlimited screens are allowed.

The effects on student learning has been absolutely devastating. Kids no longer study. Even in my poorly-performing high school, I used to have at least 20% of kids who would always have a dog-eared paperback with them. By the time I left conventional public schools, I’d be lucky to see one kid a class period who carried a book to read for pleasure.

Apps are designed to move attention quickly, to harness the human desire to find the next great thing, the greener pasture. The constant state of FOMO your kids are left in doesn’t leave them quiet space to really settle into anything, let alone a book.

I’m writing a unit on World War II for my history classes right now and I’ve marshalled hundreds of primary sources written from every angle in the war: soldiers, bombed out civilians, prisoners, and the one thing they all have in common is the thing my most anxious students experience too: hyper-attention to any new thing. They never rest. It’s hard for them to breathe. The stress these men and women communicate in their diary entries and books and interviews is enormous and palpable.

And that’s what social media and gaming are. War — a million tiny bombs going off, demanding attention, driving fear that you’ll be cast out, that there’s information necessary to your survival one click or scroll or TikTok away.

I had a girl in my freshman English class two years ago. She had professional parents who spoke multiple European languages. They were well-dressed, well-spoken, obviously intelligent, successful people. Their daughter was bright, had a wry sense of humor, and was stunningly beautiful.

She dropped out of school midway through the second semester. She couldn’t get off her phone. She’d come to my class in the morning, eyes drooping. The second her phone buzzed she picked it up. We talked openly about her struggle with the phone. She knew she had a problem. I begged her to put her phone in her backpack just for the bulk of class. She couldn’t. We reached detente at the phone facedown on her desk, but still within quick reach.

She was relentlessly bullied on social media. She bullied back, also relentlessly. She lost weight. She missed school frequently, mostly the first two classes of the day. When she did make it to my 2nd period class, she often fell asleep sitting up.

On the few occasions she was able to get work done, it showed promise; she turned in less than a third of the work. She only seemed to be able to complete assignments based on brief readings like poems and short stories. The novels we read together she never could quite grasp. She couldn’t track character growth over time. Couldn’t complete a plot diagram. Couldn’t make it through an essay test. All of those things require sustained, quiet focus and this girl was at war, and her socials kept her right on the front lines all the time.

Hers isn’t even the worst case, though watching it unfold was heartbreaking. If I told you the number of students I’ve seen put on 3-day psychiatric holds in hospitals when their parents tried to take away their devices, late to recognize how big a problem the screen had become, it would shock you. Or not.

Maybe you can see it already and you’re avoiding the conflict in favor of peace. But I will gently submit here that that isn’t peace — it’s surrender.

The best way to change a habit is one tiny piece at a time, preferably replacing one harmful behavior for a better one. Any additional motivator helps, especially if the habit isn’t recognized as harmful. (All adolescents know its harmful, trust me.) This is where love comes in.

Put down your phone. (+1: mom’s paying undivided attention to me). Grab a book you love (+1 for you). Invite your kid to sit with you on the couch after she puts her phone on Do Not Disturb and leave is in the kitchen. (+1 for cuddles, -1 for FOMO). Ask her how her day was. Listen. (+1, mom cares about me.) Tell her you have something special you want to share with her and it won’t take too long. (+1) Read a story together and tell her why you love it so much. Ask her if she likes it. (+1 if you listen without arguing.) Tell her you want to do this every night. (+1 mom cares; -1 this will impinge on screen time).

By adding benefits, the costs seem lower, relatively. You’re cutting screen time, but replacing it with something good. If your kid is younger, you can do this authoritatively. If she’s older, it’s going to be a process. Have an honest conversation about how the screen hurts you. Tell her you’re going to be reading more and sit with her at the kitchen table while she does her homework (if she has any — another red flag you may discover as the two of you talk more) and share the greatness in the stories you read. Read to her if she doesn’t have homework. But carve this time out. She needs it more than you may realize right now.

Losing her dopamine drip will be hard on her. She’ll be easily distracted. When she gets frustrated, she’ll want to run back to the screen to get to her dopamine-baseline. Hug her instead, read something beautiful together, and go for a mostly quiet walk to think about it all. P.S. Hold her hand if she’ll still let you.

The War for the American Mind

Human history is mostly a history of grinding struggle, short, painful lives, and inescapable death. You and I are unbelievably fortunate to have been born into a vanishingly brief moment wherein the vast majority of our countrymen have their basic needs met and access to penicillin. Our children don’t have to work to support the family. They have the time to play, run, read, and think; far more time than most adults do. And it’s a crucial time when their brains are being built at a breakneck pace.

The reason I resigned my position teaching at a conventional high school wasn’t because of the social justice insanity, the racism being offered to kids as “equity”, the madness around hiding children’s decisions from their guardians — I left because I could no longer be a part of the theft of those years from children where we force them to come and they get nearly nothing good back. The dumbing down started to feel inevitable around 2016, when every kid had an iPhone. It was like the school leadership just threw their hands up and said, “Well, we get paid whether they learn or not as long as they show up. As long as they get good enough grades to graduate, do what you want in the classroom, tenured teachers.”

The schools aren’t going to help you — they may actually stand in your way. But as a parent, I beg you not to send your children into the world unprepared, unacquainted with what it means to be good, without the knowledge to recognize truth, and lacking the rationale (and the courage) to defend what is beautiful. Without these defenses, young men and women don’t have what it takes to win against the algorithms’ weaponization of human nature. School leaves kids mostly defenseless, instead they’re prepped for unquestioning obedience by a 13-year compliance training program.

An adolescent’s undisciplined desires, increased to the gluttony level by “free” apps, enable this power grab. Multinational corporate profits come first off children’s screen-locked eyeballs, then their FOMO-driven unthinking consumerism, then off the interest on the debt they take on to enable the keeping-up-with-the-Joneses that signals but doesn’t certify success. The government benefits because the citizenry doesn’t have the tools to pay attention long enough to see what the monsters in the Legislative and Executive branches and in the unaccountable Federal bureaucracy are actually playing at.

And all along, the algos prevent the kind of quiet solitude that children find in play and creativity and reading that allows their brains to wire themselves into the greatest tool the earth has ever produced: the mind of the Western man.

Help them take it back. You’re the only one who can.

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If you’ve made it this far without the desire to curse me and my posterity, please hit the “Like” button. This makes my posts more visible to other parents who don’t understand how much worse things have become since they left school. The system actively robs American children of their full potential in order to serve mediocre adults and maintain power where it currently rests. Only parents can reverse this trend; American authoritarianism is born in its “free” public schools.