This post is by Jennifer Wagner of Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology.
Reading can be a very enjoyable and entertaining activity, not to mention educational. If your kids have not realized this yet, what can you do to help them?
The huge growth in Young Adult literature gives teens so many more reading choices than they’ve ever had. I wrote about this trend in Have Young Adult Books Become More Popular and Respectable?
With so many more books geared toward the teen and tween age group, there has got to be something that even the pickiest reader can enjoy.
Let your kids see you reading. Even better, read a young adult book that they might like. Many recent YA book series, such as Harry Potter, Twilight, and The Hunger Games, have been just as popular with adults as they have been with teens and tweens. Young adult books are beginning to be read by a wide range of adults, not only parents, teachers and librarians. So there should be many books that you can enjoy as much as your teens. If your teens pick them up, you can have great discussions about the books.
What do teens and tweens love to do more than almost anything else? Socialize. They spend a great deal of time online on social websites. There are many social websites for teens that revolve around books and reading. If they read about books that their peers love, teens will be much more apt to give them a try themselves. Sites I like include:
To only read books that have been assigned from school makes reading seem like a chore. To read a book because you heard good things about it or the description sounds great is so important to enjoying it. My whole family still discusses the Harry Potter books together to this day. We are now reading The Hunger Games series. I love having a family that enjoys reading.
Does your family love to read?
Jennifer Wagner is the creator and author of the blog, Connect with your Teens through Pop Culture and Technology. She also has a second blog, My Recommended Websites, contributes articles to Technorati, Blogcritics, and the Yahoo Motherboard, and is a Lifetime Mom.
About Guest Contributor
Hey Jennifer,
I love reading and so does my son. We often take trips to the local bookstore and drink coffee and hot chocolate.
Television is so fast paced and draining where as books can be read and absorbed at your own pace.
I think that’s one of the things we’ve done well as parents–our kids love to read, and we often read together. (Of course, I don’t know how they’ll feel when they’re tweens.)
My daughter loves to have me read whatever I’m reading to her, especially non-fiction.
Her current favorite is ProBlogger. 🙂 Seriously.
I was actually thinking in my smug parent way yesterday that, if all else fails, my daughter will be alright because she has found a love of reading.
of course like your web site however you need to take a look at the spelling on several of your posts.
A number of them are rife with spelling problems
and I in finding it very troublesome to tell the reality on the other hand I will definitely come back again.