books Vs.TV

Reading requires active participation; it helps in enhancing visualization, imagination and also a certain level of patience in the reader.
Me and my husband being avid readers ourselves wanted our kids also to follow the same path, but on the back of my mind I had this feeling of helplessness also; as I used to think that in this era of 24x7 hrs of TV transmission, how can I instill reading habit in my kids? Their generation is bound to be exposed to passive entertainment ; they usually are sitting either in front of TV or a computer screen, fast moving quick images just hypnotize the young ones, their group conversations revolve mostly around their favorite cartoon characters, in this scenario will my lil’ one not feel like left out, while interacting in the group? What should be parents’ strategy to teach their children what is correct? Rather than just following the herd mentality.
All these thoughts used to wander in my mind when I was expecting my first child. When I landed on the parenting path I realized that I was very much in control of the situation, it was like God had given me a completely blank CD and I could have written whatever I wanted to, on it. My kid would be exposed to the practices of his family first, so I had at least four years to mould him in my way, before he’d be exposed to the outer world. And if I gave him enough time, attention and guidance there is no reason why he should not adopt the rightful ways. With this strong positive thought, I did strategic planning for my kid as to at what age he’d be exposed to which useful practice.
I started reading to my child at the age of 4-6 months, more than reading the session used to provide a feeling of closeness to him sitting in my lap he was not interested in the book or the content at that time.
By tenth month or so he got attracted to the books himself I brought thick, plastic coated books for that age as teething had started and he was putting everything possible in his mouth, during book reading sessions my emphasis would be to let him understand that main source of all this joy is the book; It used to be more of a mimicry show kind of session; I used to read the lines from the book first and than enact them, my son used to giggle to my efforts. Bright colorful books also became an inspiration for new words

Around 1-1/2 years he started showing more interest in who, what, when, where of the content and he emphasized on keeping the book in his own hands even if that means reading a book upside down, for me the satisfaction was that he was taking interest on his own.

Reading a bedtime story, reading to him as much as possible, taking membership of a kid’s library, sending him to phonetics class and taking subscription of a kid’s magazine were some of the steps which I took when he was 4-6 yrs of age.

Now at six, he is an avid reader himself, he tries to read about a new subject as much as possible and I feel satisfied that I didn’t need to force anything on him.
This is his choice to prefer books over TV, he watches TV also but not for longer duration, he himself starts missing his books. His teachers appreciate that his vocabulary is beyond his age group and most of all he has taught his younger brother also the same good habit of making books his best friend!!