How many of us will submit their abiding passion for finding out if the islands where ginger beer flows and where the rich treasures wait to be uncovered during the most adventurous of hikes, down the sea and up the hill, really exist? For many curious young minds, that is how the long summer afternoons were spent — deeply engrossed in Enid Blyton's Famous Five series, thinking every second about the luxuries of life where ham rolls were a regular staple diet!
Today the wonderful world of Tilism-i-Hoshruba might have been replaced by the tall walls of the Hogwarts School of Harry Potter, but magic and the wands, wizards and fairies, prince and the devil — the essentials that ignited the imagination of the child, remain the same.
And today although all those childhood superheroes have materialised onto our cinema screens, the passion that the written word generated has no competition. The pleasure of reading remains to be the highest of all pleasures that the human mind can ever indulge in. So who do we owe it to? Our schools, our teachers or our parents and how do we make sure that our children are not deprived of this pleasure of reading in a time where they are being overly exposed to the rapidly evolving technology of cinema?
Fatima Zehra, a former journalist, is the first time mother and has an eight-month-old daughter. Besides learning new things about the little one every single day Zehra practices something that not many parents do for their toddlers. She has set a reading time for her daughter and reads out stories, loud and clear from colourful storybooks. “I have been reading out the wonderful stories to my daughter since she was four-month-old. Many times I also share with her the interesting illustrations in the books.
“With time, she has started responding to the stories and it seems she actually waits eagerly for her night time readings now!
A child’s imagination has no bounds and books can help polish it. I believe by taking my child through the joyous journey of words, it is the best that I can ever do to her,” states Zehra beaming with pleasure.
Urwa Alvi, a child therapist and mother of two, elaborates why children should be exposed to such practices early in their lives. She proclaims, “One of the most important findings of neuroscience in the last decade has been the discovery of the ‘neuron mirror’. Children are found to be the best examples of the ‘neuron mirror’ where they rapidly and accurately pick up and reflect the doings of their parents. It is at this age that parents can inculcate the good habits in a child, which then form the basis of who they are and what they do.”
Besides parents, what role can schools play in developing reading habits in young children? “In keeping up with the pressures of the daily life, not many parents today are able to spend quality time with their children which often leave out gaps in their upbringing. Gone are the older days when we lived in the joint family system and where grandparents played an important role of story-tellers to their grandchildren. With no such luxuries today, schools are the only source that the parents expect to fulfil all the learning experiences of the child”, elaborates Samina Naz, a Montessori trained directress.
So is this reason enough for parents to ‘handover’ the responsibility of enriching their child’s life by exposing him/her to the diverse world of books and words, to teachers and kindergartens? Azhar Rao, an engineer by profession and a father of two toddler sons laments the situation but says he has very few options. “For many working parents like me and my wife, schools and teachers have become the only reliable source to help us cater to our children’s needs. With little time to spare from our busy schedules, these pre-schools that we send our two sons to have become the first and only formal institution where we hope they will be given quality learning and opportunities to grow.”
Raashid Ahmed, a creative manager at an NGO disagrees. He believes that although schools, through their curriculum and library classes, can develop a child’s interest in reading, it is the home environment only that helps the interest flourish.
Father of a second-grader, Ahmed shares how his son asked to bring him a dictionary so that he could look up the meanings of the words without having to wait for his parents to come to his help.
It is not very difficult to cultivate reading habits in your child. All you need to do is set a time for yourself and your child, say an hour daily during any part of the day. This practice will not only develop reading habits in your children, but will also enable you to spend some quality time with them.
Truly said, there is no journey more festive than the journey taken through the trail of words. Happy reading!