While not everyone believes that reading is one of life’s pleasures, many would agree that reading is an essential skill for a rich and full life.
Most children learn to read and read well. Most parents enjoy assisting children as they learn to read, but some parents find the experience a source of anxiety and frustration.
One of the reasons learning to read can be a tense time for parents and children is that parents' help is not always helpful.
Unless you have learned to teach children how to read, it is likely that you will not know how to do it. You may a vague memory of how you learned to read or some of the things that your teachers and parents said to you.
Despite parents’ best efforts, much of what they do as they support their children has the potential to turn the child off from reading.
Negative attitudes to reading are destructive. Too many children struggle and start to avoid reading. This is a problem because to become better at anything we must do more of it.
You may think this is an argument against home reading – this certainly isn’t the case! Parents and caregivers play a very important role in helping children develop their vocabulary and to learn to read.
However, parents may benefit from picking up some tips and tricks to support their children’s efforts to read.
Over the coming weeks, we will share tips to help parents identify the reading behaviours of children and how to take appropriate action for each case. 
