Why We Still Read Aloud to Kids Who Can Read

3 min read

My oldest has been reading on her own for years. Fluently, voraciously, under the covers with a flashlight — the whole thing. And every single day, I still read aloud to her.

Someone asked me recently why. Wasn’t the point of teaching her to read that I could stop?

No. Teaching her to read was so she could have books. Reading aloud is so we can have them together.

Reading aloud is so we can have them together.

What reading aloud does that silent reading can’t

It puts big books within reach. A child reads at one level and listens at a much higher one — years higher. The books I read aloud to my four-year-old are years past anything he could read himself. The ones I read to my thirteen-year-old are the ones she’d never pick up on her own: longer sentences, older language, ideas that need a pause and a “wait, what?” She’ll read them herself in a few years. She’ll read them better because she’s already met them.

Mandy lying on a bed reading with her two daughters

It builds the shared language of a family. We have inside jokes from books we read three years ago. My kids quote characters at each other. When my son is being stubborn, one of his sisters will call him by the name of a very stubborn badger from a book we read when he was two, and he knows exactly what she means. That’s culture. It’s being built one chapter at a time.

It teaches listening. Real listening — following a thread across twenty minutes without a picture to hold it. Nothing else in a modern childhood asks for that.

It’s where the conversations start. The hardest things we’ve talked about as a family — loss, fear, cruelty, courage — came up because a character went through them first. A book gives a child a safe distance to ask a question she couldn’t ask about herself.

How we do it

Not at the same time every day — we vary it, on purpose. Some days it’s in the morning basket, some days after lunch, some days it’s the thing that rescues an afternoon that fell apart. A four-year-old, a thirteen-year-old, and a fifteen-year-old will still end up on the same couch for the same chapter. I read; they draw, build, or lie upside down. Nobody has to sit still — I stopped requiring that years ago and the listening got better.

I pick books slightly above the oldest listener’s comfort level and slightly below the youngest’s boredom threshold, which is an art and not a science. When I get it wrong, we abandon the book. Life is too short and the library is too big.

And I keep going through the teen years. My oldest would tell you she’s too old for it. She’d also tell you what happened in yesterday’s chapter, in detail, if you asked.

If you’ve stopped

Start again. Tonight. One chapter, any book, everyone on the couch. It will feel strange for about four days and then someone will ask for it before you offer.

Remember, it’s not about how quickly they read on their own or which books they choose. It’s about a lifelong love of stories, and a family that shares them.

Here’s to one more chapter, every single day.

My favorite read-aloud lists by age — the ones we’ve actually finished — are going into the Homebuilt Community’s library when it opens in October. Free to join. And if reading is the part of homeschooling you want to get right first, start with The Homeschool Bible™ — it’s the chapter I’d hand you at my own kitchen table. heymandydavis.com/community.

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