The Read-Aloud Family: Making Meaningful and Lasting Connections with Your Kids

If you want a child to know the truth, tell him the truth. If you want a child to love the truth, tell him a story.

A book can’t change the world on its own. But a book can change readers. And readers? They can change the world.

When we read aloud, we give our kids practice living as heroes. Practice dealing with life-and-death situations, practice living with virtue, practice failing at virtue. As the characters in our favorite books struggle through hardship, we struggle with them. We consider whether we would be as brave, as bold, as fully human as our favorite heroes. And then we grasp—on a deeper, more meaningful level—the story we are living ourselves as well as the kind of character we will become as that story unfolds.

We need our kids to fall in love with stories before they are even taught their first letters, if possible, because everything else—phonics, comprehension, analysis, even writing—comes so much more easily when a child loves books.

No one will ever say, no matter how good a parent he or she was, “I think I spent too much time with my children when they were young.

When my head hits the pillow each night, I want to know that I have done the one most important thing: I have fostered warm, happy memories and created lifelong bonds with my kids—even when the rest of life feels hard.

Home is the only place in which our children have a fighting chance of falling in love with books.

Raising our children isn’t just about getting them ready for adulthood. It isn’t just about preparation for a career. It’s about transforming and shaping their hearts and minds. It’s about nourishing their souls, building relationships, and forging connections. It’s about nurturing within them care and compassion for whomever they encounter.

that the more children are read to, the higher their test scores are—sometimes by as much as a half a year’s schooling. This was true regardless of a family’s income. He goes on to say that reading aloud has proven to be so powerful in increasing a child’s academic success that it is more effective than expensive tutoring or even private education.

We read with our children because it gives both them and us an education of the heart and mind. Of intellect and empathy. We read together and learn because stories teach us how to love.

When we’re telling our children the story of Jesus healing Jairus’s daughter, of curing the lepers, of raising Lazarus from the dead, we don’t need to wrap up the story with a trite explanation about how God is powerful, good, or merciful. We don’t have to add anything at all, because there it is—truth bubbling up out of the story. It is the story.

When read-aloud time doesn’t look like we originally hoped, we begin to doubt that it’s giving us any of those wonderful benefits we discussed in part 1. But here’s the thing: it still works. Even when it’s noisy, messy, and more chaotic than you’d like it to be, it works. Even when kids are grumbling, complaining, and don’t seem to be listening, it works.

What better education can we offer our children than the shaping of their hearts to love others as we have been loved by God ourselves?

To have an exact accounting of events in the particular order they unfolded in history, or to possess the ability to see God in every person, in every situation, in every place?

because loving and connecting with her would always be worth my time and effort.

His research demonstrates that one extra day per week of parent-child read-aloud sessions during the first ten years of a child’s life increases standardized test scores by half a standard deviation. That’s as many as 15–30 percentile points—a tremendous gain.

Here are some character traits to get you started: ambitious, bold, brave, bright, calm, capable, careful, cautious, charming, considerate, cowardly, creative, dangerous, dauntless, deceptive, disloyal, demanding, determined, faithful, foolish, friendly, generous, grateful, greedy, happy, hard-working, honest, humorous, intelligent, loving, merciful, mysterious, naughty, nervous, noble, obnoxious, persistent, pleasant, proud, reliable, resourceful, restless, sad, selfish, selfless, sharp-witted, sincere, thoughtful, unkind, unselfish, virtuous, wise, witty . .

Dinnertime conversation has even been linked to lower rates of substance abuse, teen depression, and higher grade point averages.

C. S. Lewis says it best: “Since it is so likely that they will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.

I want my children to know this: Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather it is the boldness to act rightly even in the face of fear.

If you want to make sure your parental time and energy will make the biggest difference and strongest impact in your child’s academic life

All the time and effort it would take to raise her would be worth it—not because it guaranteed good results

You don’t need a chart or a plan. You just need ten minutes and the willingness to let whatever else was on your task list next wait its turn while you spend a few minutes investing in someone who means the world to you.

A childhood filled with stories that inspire and nurture the heartbeat of a hero within us is one of the simplest ways we can love and prepare our children.

Realizing we can’t protect our children from the worst parts of the world—it’s almost too much to bear for those of us who love our children desperately, isn’t it? Our hearts ache, knowing we can’t protect our kids from everything. In fact, we can’t protect them from anything once they have left our homes. However, we can give them something that will help them. We can offer them something even better than protection. We can give them practice—lots and lots of practice. Our

We have to push forward and make decisions about what is worth our time and what is not—about what gets our best attention, what gets our peripheral attention, and what gets no attention at all.

We aren’t going all-in for our kids because we are promised excellent results. We’re doing it because they mean more to us than anything in the world. When it comes right down to it, we want our children to live out the fullness of God’s vision for their lives, and we’re willing to do just about anything it takes to stack the odds in favor of that happening.

But the world is a bit short on good fairies these days. So who is to take their place? Who is to make sure that our children’s sense of wonder grows indestructible with the years? We are. You and I. Katherine Paterson, A Sense of Wonder

It is tempting to idolize certain aspects of education. We value good grades, high test scores, elite college degrees, and lucrative careers. But out obsession keeps us from remembering what education is for. Education is for love