(2) "Reading Muscle" Before "Digital Power" - A Grand Strategy for Raising a "Book-Loving Child" Starting Around Age 5 ~The Heart That Expects from Books~

Continuing on.
Before I touch on the specific details of the "Grand Strategy for Book Lovers," there are a few things I would like to share...
There are five main points, so you might feel impatient and think, "Just get to the main topic already..." but this preamble is absolutely necessary to explain the "why" behind what we are doing, so I would be happy if you could read it.

<1. As a major premise for raising a "child who reads well," the order is important>

I won't say it's absolute... but I think if the order is different, the hurdles to becoming a book lover will keep getting higher.

Ever since my eldest daughter was born, I have always thought this:
"Before she gets hooked on games and smartphones (videos), I want to convey the charm of books..."

Since my eldest daughter was a baby, this was over 10 years ago, but of course, smartphones and games were already permeating life back then.
Even when watching parenting programs, I would sometimes see consultations from dads and moms saying, "My preschooler is only playing games..." or "Trouble keeps happening after I gave my elementary schooler a smartphone..."

At those times, I thought:
"That's right, if you give a child something that fun, they will definitely get obsessed with it... I understand, I understand the feelings of both parent and child, but it's a bit sad if it becomes like 'the most fun thing for a child is a game'."

―I do not deny digital technology. It is a lifeline in the modern age.
Games are fun, and most children will eventually master smartphones and start expressing themselves on social media.
But,there are "things children should encounter, and times they should encounter them" according to their age. For a child born into this world with a blank slate, I think picture books, sound-making toys, stickers, and origami are also amazing inventions.

Rather than acquiring "digital power" in such a rush, I think it would be better to first acquire the charm of books, sensitivity to language, and cultivate a "heart that feels it is interesting to read text"...
If you train digital power after that (for example, from around age 10), is it really too late? That is what I end up thinking.

Some people might think, "Isn't it okay to learn them simultaneously?"
However, because children have the characteristic of "biting into what they find interesting right now first," I think doing it simultaneously... is difficult.

"Reading muscle" before "digital power."
I decided to do that in my own parenting.

So, in our home, we decided to first prepare an environment where "the most fun thing is books" according to their growth...

That said, at this time, I only thought, "If the parents love books, there are many books in the house, and we don't give them games or videos, they will naturally grow up to love books"...

However, modern parenting is not that easy.

<2. The reality where even the parenting of "book-loving people" becomes "digitally soaked">

Making a child love books—there is an event that made me realize that this does not happen naturally just because "there are many books in the house."

When my eldest daughter was in her final year of kindergarten and my second daughter was 1 year old, my parenting reached the peak of chaos. Andat one point, when I realized it, I had sat my eldest daughter in front of the computer desk and was showing her YouTube.
"Look, look, just watch this..." I did it almost unconsciously.

Sisters with different tastes (each with a strong will). For the second daughter, E-Tele on TV, and for the eldest daughter, Anpanman or toy introduction videos on the computer... this is fine.

However, after continuing for several days, the eldest daughter was no longer satisfied with just the videos I chose, and she started begging, "This too! This too!" for the videos displayed on the edge of the display.
I had no choice but to show her, saying "Just a little more...", and eventually, she reached videos that I definitely didn't want her to see, which I thought were not for children at all, and when I said "That's it!", she would cry.

―When I came to my senses, I was the most shocked.

Certainly, housework gets done while they are watching. It's easy.
But as a whole,"I am moving further and further away from the parenting image I wanted," I am more irritated than before, and the child is having a tantrum saying "I want to watch!"...
Until now, I had been soothing the children with things other than smartphones even when we were out, and my eldest daughter loved picture books, but in just a few days, she became a child who immediately said, "I want to watch the computer."

―Every day's housework and childcare were hard, and I had even forgotten that I wanted to "convey the charm of books to my children."

In the era without digital technology, everyone must have raised their children with various ingenuity.
However,in an era where the option of digital is easily in front of you, avoiding it by saying "I won't do it yet" is a daunting task.

So, I made up my mind.
It's impossible (at least in our home) that it will just happen naturally.

―If I'm going to do it, I have to do it seriously and properly.

<3. Why is the "Grand Strategy for Book Lovers" from age 5?>

I may be persistent, but this is just my personal opinion.

The target of 5 years old is written in the sense of the final year of nursery school/kindergarten, that is, the one year before becoming an elementary school student. I think this one year is an extremely precious time and timing
.
1.(Although it depends on the person) Most children become able to read hiragana and become able to read picture books with a lot of text (can gradually transition to children's books). At this time, many children are still familiar with picture books, andthey do not feel uncomfortable with the call from parents to "read books."

2. They do not dislike going out (to libraries or bookstores) with their dad or mom
. It is a time when they are still happy to act together. (The child themselves) has plenty of time.
3.
(If given) They have the intelligence and ability to operate simple games and computers to some extent, and since many children around them enjoy games, it is a time when they start to be influenced by that if left alone.
4.When they enter school, new friends and influences from various directions increase, and opportunities to touch games and smartphones increase rapidly (one computer is given to each person at school, and interest in digital rapidly expands).The living environment changes, both parents and children become busy, and it becomes difficult to make time to go to the library, etc.


This is not what I thought when my eldest daughter was 5 years old, but it is a realization that it was so when I look back.
Especially3, but in the last few years, the digitalization of classes has progressed rapidly, and my eldest daughter was given one computer per person from the 3rd grade, butmy second daughter, who entered school last year (in 2022), was given one computer per person from the 1st grade level
, and she has already mastered the usage level taught at school.

When I see her solving computer drills fluently at home on the day she brought the computer home, it is a parent's realization that it is difficult to call out, "Books are also fun..."

In the case of my second daughter, she already had the habit of reading children's novels due to her sister's influence before this happened, so it seemed that the way of enjoying "books are books, computers are computers" was "saved under a different name" in her head.
...But if that wasn't the case, it might have been difficult.

By the way, of course, it is not bad to start from "age 4," and I think there are many families who have been going to libraries and bookstores with their children from the beginning and are focusing on reading.
However, if it is too early, it is difficult to "gradually transition to children's books," so I felt that "age 5" is a good guideline.
It is often called the "first-grade wall," but when they enter school, both parents and children are busy until they get used to that life, and before you know it, it could be summer vacation.
.
I myself still think that the last year of my child's early childhood (age 5) was a very precious time when I look back.

If both dad and mom are working full-time, you might always feel "there is no such time" regardless of how old the child is.
I think that is certainly true.
However, when you change your perspective and think about "how is the child's own time,"I think early childhood is when they have plenty of time to read books
.

It takes a certain amount of time for a heart that can feel "interesting" by reading books, no, to put it more precisely, by reading "only text, only sentences" to grow. It is completely different from the sensibility of feeling pictures and videos are "interesting."

(Manga is also interesting, but since I am emphasizing "understanding by reading text and sentences" here, I consider manga to be something else).
So, although I am being repetitive, it is important that "the child themselves has time" to train reading muscle.

<4. Reading muscle is training the "heart that expects from books">

Now, what is this "reading stamina" mentioned in the title? Of course, it is not the physical strength to hold heavy books like encyclopedias.

To me, "reading stamina" first and foremost means the ability to "finish reading a book at one's own pace."


I believe most children have had the experience of "reading a book and finding it interesting." The problem is whether they can keep it up, whether it continues into elementary school—or, to put it another way, whether they will become lifelong readers as adults... that is the issue.
To continue reading, you need reading stamina.

-Let me break it down a little further.
Anyone can imagine that enjoying books requires a "heart that finds things interesting" or "rich sensitivity," but in reality, to reach that point, I believe you need
a certain strength ingrained in the body-familiarity and quick reflexes-.

The grand theme of this article, the "Grand Strategy for Book Lovers," is that we should provide training for a certain period during childhood to cultivate these "familiarity and quick reflexes."
Wait, what do you mean by training? Does it require a lot of hard work?
...You might think that, but it is nothing of the sort; it is simply
"reading many books (texts) that you find enjoyable"...repeating this during early childhood.
Children are honest creatures. If it is interesting, they will engage with it on their own.
Then why are children who actively engage in reading in the minority compared to the gaming crowd? -It is because

they do not feel that books are interesting. Sorry for being so simple...
But while games and anime can be felt as "interesting!" even with short periods of experience, feeling the joy of reading requires "time for selecting books and letting them soak into your body," so in the Reiwa era, it is not "convenient."

But books are interesting.
I want them to feel that.

If you repeatedly experience the feeling that "books are interesting" in your own heart, you will begin to look forward to your own heart being able to "get excited about books."

To put it another way, when adults pick up "recommended books for children"—so-called "good books"—that are featured in the media and say to a child, "They say this is interesting!" but the child responds with a lackluster "Meh" or "Hmm," it is because they have never encountered their own heart "getting excited by reading a book" in the first place.
I think that "stage" has been skipped entirely.

Simply "physically connecting children with books" is not enough.
The experience of "finding a book (text) that suits me, reading it, and realizing for myself that my heart is excited" is what is necessary.

(Of course, there are children who fall into the reading swamp from their first encounter with a book, and many books called good books are wonderful... just for the record.)

〈5. Reading stamina is about training the sensation of riding a bicycle〉

(This content is like a continuation of (4).)
This is the last of the preliminary stages, so please bear with me a little longer.

The act of reading a book, reading a longer text... is similar to pedaling a bicycle.

When you practice taking the training wheels off a bicycle, you practice for a few days, and once it becomes familiar to your body, there is a moment when you can suddenly ride it. The feeling of "Oh, I did it!" is a pleasant one, and that physical sensation does not easily fade even when you become an adult.

Reading stamina is similar to that. It is different from the instantaneous feeling of "Oh, I did it!" in that it happens before you know it, but it is similar in that "once you master it, you never forget it".

Just as you have to pedal many times before you master it, "reading many books (especially reading texts of a certain length) before you master it" becomes reading stamina, but in order for a child to "read many books while having fun," it is necessary to find "font size and word count that are easy to read," "the balance between pictures and text," and "genres and trends of stories they find fun"... tailored to that child.

When you buy a child their first bicycle, you usually choose it together with them, saying things like, "How is this size? Try sitting on it," or "What kind of design do you like?"
That is how children get a bicycle that is easy to ride and feels right before they start practicing, and I think we should do the same for reading.

As they pedal a bicycle that fits their body many times, they get better at it, and when they no longer feel that "riding" itself is difficult, children can finally go where they want to go, enjoy the changing scenery, feel the wind, and play with their friends.

Books are the same; if you read an "interesting story" at a stage where "reading text" has not yet become familiar to your body, you will just get tired from reading and will never reach the stage of finding it "interesting."

By the way, when I once recommended "Anne of Green Gables" to my second daughter, she read a few pages and replied, "I tried reading this... but I don't really understand the people."
I was shocked and pressed her, saying, "This is a masterpiece. It has so many pictures! And it's edited to be short for lower elementary students!" (...sorry), but when I thought about it, the historical background of Anne's world and the foreign names were unfamiliar to my second daughter. In particular, she said she couldn't quite imagine the elderly brother and sister, Matthew and Marilla, living together.

That makes sense... so I recommended a children's paperback where a Japanese elementary school girl is active at school, and she read it happily.

What my second daughter needs right now is a bicycle that is easy to ride, a book written in text that is easy for her to read.
World-famous masterpieces can be read after she has gained reading stamina. I plan to recommend various things again without giving up when that time comes.

...So, I would like to enter the main topic of the "Grand Strategy for Book Lovers" to find books that suit each individual child.

It is a bit of a preamble, but simply put, this strategy is a simple one: "Visit the library with your child several times and find their favorites."

You might think, "Is that all?" but there are some tips on how to borrow books and how to spend time at home.
To be continued.