How can you help your child grow in independence?

Hello readers, 

This is amazing to me that people would willingly subsribe to a newsletter channel to get newsletters that they can READ in a time and age of quick paced, short, overstimulating videos. How cool that most of you came here through a social media app that sells us short attention spans and bursts of dopamine. Let us rewire our brains by reading long form written texts with 0 pictures! 

On that note, here goes.

I posted a reel about my daughter reading 35 chapter books in 2 months and while my aim was to provide resources to other moms whose children love books, my dm got flooded with questions about "how did you teach her to read independently?" 

This was new to my attention as something that other parents might struggle with and here is my response in blog format. 

1) Independence is a skill and applies to all areas not just 'reading'.

Children learn independence by doing things on their own in accordance to their abilities. We start this early using chores when my children start sitting. A rule I followed was, if the child can throw toys around the room, the child can be taught to clean up the toys back into a box. So when my children were very young, they were EXPECTED to and TRAINED to clean up their toys. This looked different at different stages of them learning the skill and I cover the 5 steps for teaching children a new skill/chore in my workshops. So while my daughters learn overall independence that is age appropriate, they don't cling to me for school work either. They know they have independent school work that needs getting done and then there's school that mum will sit and do with them. Even with my 4 year old, when she is doing her writing tasks, or math, or her painting, she is very independent with it as a result of our home environement and early training. 

2) The benefit of having multiples

I think very often, children might have the ability to work on something independently but miss the companionship that comes with doing things with other people. So if you have a single child who is not independent, it may be because they are just missing companionship. That is now a tricky one because it is only natural to expect companionship but you don't want that to result in the child not learning independence. In that situation, I would suggest to start small with some tasks done independently not all. Talk to your child about how Mum is going to expect you to do some things on your own. This is verbalising the EXPECTATION and setting the standard. Now you need to SUPPORT that expectation by training them through the steps. The tasks you expect your single child to do independently should be short tasks which they haver easily done multiple times before and then you would want to translate that independence to longer OR more difficult tasks. I think you also need to give your child grace for when they just want to be close to you and that brings me to the next VERY important point before expecting independence. FILL their love cups first and then expect separate work. Spend time with them, play with them, read to them and then expect independence. For my girls and I, while they sometimes wake up before me and get on with making their own breakfast and getting nuts/fruits for themselves, I do try to make it a point to do breakfast with them every morning. That is the time we talk about the sleep we got, the day ahead of us and then we read our bible or listen to some hyms on youtube (depending on how well I slept and my energy level first thing in the morning). Once you fill their cups, they are happy to do things apart from you and now this can be translated to academic habits. 

3) How to actually help them read independently

Now assuming your child is familiar with independent living and playing and working, we can begin working on independent reading. Reading is a life skill. It is hard. It requires decoding text and understanding meanings of the text in context to make sense of the words being read. Children could get stuck at multiple steps in this step by step process. So you need to first help your children be proficient readers, not just decoders of words and being able to spell it out, but actually being able to comprehend what they are reading. Once they achieve that stage of reading proficiency, if when your role in their life in this area is redundant. My 6 year old is there today. So she does not need me at all while reading. There are days when we barely hear a peep out of her. We joke that as long as there are books and food around, she will survive. If you want to help your child learn how to read, I have designed a purchasable pdf and a1 hour  workshop to go with it that you can sign up for here. Order Phonics Guide · Tejal McMahon 

If your child has reached that level of proficient reading, but struggles with comprehension of texts, I would suggest you let them read aloud to you while you do other things. Let them read a chapter of their chapter book out loud to you every day. This way, they feel you are listening and their action has a greater purpose, it turns into a UNITING activity instead of a DIVIDING activity and you can actually listen in on their stories to talk to them about it later on and that will help their comprehension of the text read. Gradually they will start wanting to read to themselves without wanting to read aloud to you because now they comprehend what they are reading and they are more interested in reading the stories than reading it out loud to you. That was a sad day in our home but it is the cost of independence. And thankfully God has given me 2 more children to enjoy those stages with. From time to time, I still ask her to read more challenging books to me that she needs help with, but those are not read with the same joy as she did the books at her level earlier. 

4) How to help them LOVE reading 

Most of the parents in my comments who talk about their children not enjoying reading, don't actually read to their children themselves. Reading is not the culture of their home so why would the child enjoy a random activity being forced upon them alone. The hypocrisy is LOUD. Reading aloud to your children, even after they can read to themselves has tremendous benefits. I outline these in my read aloud and oral narration workshop Order Read-aloud and Oral Narration Workshop (Recording) · Tejal McMahon I also cover how to read aloud to children of differences, what kinds of books and choose and how to begin using Charlotte Masons tool for Oral narrations in your home. This helps children grow their attention to what is being read and helps you understand their comprehension level. We use oral narrations in our homeschool everyday (with my 6 year old). Reading aloud to your child, helps their comprehension more than when they are doing the reading themselves. So the focus for both those activities is very different and the outcome is different too. Every family should have a culture of reading together. THIS is what attaches joy to the act of reading. 

I am so glad you are here reader, this is step 1 in learning to support our children and their growth. I am a lifelong learner and so are you and we get to help our children learn and grow. What joy and what a privilege. I hope this blog is helpful to you and you enjoy your journey with your child. 

I am not sure if you can comment on these blogs but it would be wonderful to hear back from some of you either here or in my dms. I love building this community and discussing all things children and education. 

Happy reading !