How I Made my Child Read Books

You are probably reading this article because you might also be wondering how to develop book reading habits in my child. It’s like pulling teeth to get kids to read these days, right?

I mean, ask them to read a book, and they act like you’ve suggested the worst chore on Earth. We as parents want our kids to read — We know all about the benefits, like better vocabulary and that magical “imagination” thing. But in a world with endless YouTube videos, TikTok dances, and video games that somehow involve more strategy than a chess tournament, books just aren’t grabbing their attention. Kids would rather watch a hamster solve a maze online than crack open a book. It’s no wonder parents feel a little worried, wondering if their kids will ever read anything that’s not on a screen or surrounded by emojis.

But hey, the article you are reading at this moment is based on true events, so if you take my word for it, you might find a good book for your kids that’s as thrilling as their favorite app — here’s hoping!

About six months ago, I was facing the problem when my 12 year old daughter had interest in all those YouTube shorts, TikTok dance videos and so on. I would casually suggest a book and she would give me a gesture as if I had suggested her to do the most boring thing in world.

So, I made a plan. First, I started looking for a book on Amazon that was highly recommended, had good ratings and reviews and a book that my daughter could relate to it as well. After doing a thorough research, I came across “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. The author of the series is ‘Jeff Kinney’ who is internationally recognized as the Best Seller.

Just to tell you a little about the characters of the series. The main character of the series is ‘Greg Heffley’ who is a middle school boy with a family of four. He has an older brother ‘Roderick’ and younger brother ‘Manny’. The story in the book is about Greg’s life. The humor and the language of these books are easy to understand, all a child could ask for and they could easy relate to it.

Anyway, after selecting one of the stories from “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series, I bought it and I made a deal with my daughter that she’d read a chapter of the book, and then we’d watch a movie together. I called it the “book-to-movie challenge,” and surprisingly, she actually got into it! When she was reading a chapter, all I was praying that she liked it. That day according to our deal, we watched a movie after she finished reading one chapter. But I wasn’t sure if she would open the book again.

And guess what…! the next day, she came to me and asked to watch another movie because she had read another chapter of the book.

However, for next two days, she didn’t ask to watch a movie. I thought that was it, she had lost interest in the book. But the fourth evening, she told me the whole story of the book while we were at the dinner table. She told me that she couldn’t stop reading after a chapter was done and found the book so interesting that she read the whole book in next two days.

Could you imagine how happy I would be listening to her ‘Wimpy Kid’ story. But definitely she asked to watch a movie again. Well…! she deserved it.

Since then she has been asking for new stories of “The Diary of a Wimpy Kid” series. Thankfully, the series has quite of few stories. One is coming out this month too. As the books are still coming out, it will boost my daughter’s excitement to get her hands on the next releases.

The books are not long so kids don’t get bored and at the same time it doesn’t affect their study life. I have read a couple of stories the series too, and I can’t blame the book for being Best Seller.

She is not only reading the books but also recommending them to her friends and believe me, one of her friend’s parents told me that her child also never had interest in reading books but now she has read quite a few the Wimpy Kid series.

I am sharing this story with you so I can help parents with non-book children and transform them into book reading machines. These short but entertaining stories helped my kid read other books too like “The Harry Potter” series and “The Series of Unfortunate Events”. She even started borrowing books from library.

So that’s all for today…! I hope you might find this article helpful and if so please comment and share your thoughts. For your reference, I am giving you links of my daughter’s picks of ‘Wimpy Kid Series’ below so you could grab a copy for your child.

“The Last Straw”

“The Ugly Truth”

“Roderick Rules”

“The Long Haul”