Children who read for pleasure do better in life.

Children who choose to read do better in life. They do better at school, are happier and healthier and are more creative. It is therefore troubling that the number of children reading for pleasure is in long-term decline. Lots of children think of reading as little more than schoolwork, not something they could enjoy – but there is a really easy way to change this and encourage them to read for fun – it’s reading aloud to children. Children enjoy being read to, it motivates them to read themselves too.

Something as simple as reading aloud to children has truly far-reaching and life-long benefits – but children are not read to enough:

• Fewer than half of 5-7-year-olds are read to ‘every day or nearly every day’
• A quarter of 8-10-year-olds are read to ‘every day or nearly every day’

Farshore’s latest research finds that when they were children themselves, dads were read to less often than mums, and were less likely to have been brought up with the idea that reading is a pleasure. This may be why, typically, dads read to their children less often than mums do. We can break this cycle.

Farshore’s recent research with DadsNet found dads of children from babies to 12 years old experienced great joy when they read to their children. It gave them the opportunity to cuddle up and have some precious bonding time. Of course, the children loved it too. This deep enjoyment is the reason reading to children is so effective: they associate reading with pleasure and, when read to often, they want to read themselves.

BookTrust’s latest research also finds that dads are twice as likely as mums to lack confidence when choosing books their children would like to read, and that dads want reassurance that there is no right or wrong way to share books.

We can change this and are calling on dads, father figures, mums and anyone with a child in their life to read more to them.