AIBU to be shocked at new survey re children and books?

[mrscoleridge]

New survey out seems to suggest that 4 million children do not have a book at home. AIBU to think this is completely unbelievable especially when cost is mentioned. I thought libraries were free and that you can pick up books for next to nothing on ebay/charity shops/second hand on Amazon etc. Our literacy rate is near the bottom of the table in Europe and no wonder; bet lots of theses households have Xbox and all that twaddle etc.

we have 5 zillion childrens books and about 5 adult ones ( bar teenagers who do have lots)
i dont believe in storing books - or at least have had a bit of an issue with them being dust collectors and once they're read they're read ..... my style is changing a bit and i think it might go full circle ( shallow? moi?)

I flog all my books at the car boot

I struggle to make much time to read to my 2 year old despite being a SAHM. I don't feel I do it often enough, and have had periods without doing it at all. This despite previously being a primary school teacher, and a compulsive reader.

I can see why some parents find it difficult to fit into everyday life, especially in large, hectic families, and if they don't read for enjoyment themselves, how it can be one of the thing that slips off the daily agenda.

cairn, DS certainly enjoys having familiar books read to him, and will generally choose ones he knows rather than new ones, given the choice (he's 23 m.o.).

Ask your DS which he prefers cairn - at the age of 2 he can presumably pick out which one he fancies if you hold three out to him.

And the answer to the wandering around thing may be to get him more involved, ask questions, do call and response, get him to do the actions, ask him to point to things in the picture.

I am reminded that DD could do the actions in Over In The Meadow long before she could talk (and she was an early talker) I remember her tiny little face screwing up to do the blinking and scratching on the paper with her baby fingernails .

'BUCHHANDLUNG
A visit that I paid to the house of a newly-married friend the other day set me thinking. My friend is a man of great wealth and vulgarity. When he had set about buying bedsteads, tables, chairs and what-not, it occurred to him to buy also a library. Whether he can read or not, I do not know, but some savage faculty for observation told him that most respectable and estimable people usually had a lot of books in their houses. So he bought several book-cases and paid some rascally middleman to stuff them with all manner of new books, some of them very costly volumes on the subject of French landscape painting. I noticed on my visit that not one of them had ever been opened or touched, and remarked the fact.
'When I get settled down properly,' said the fool, 'I'll have to catch up on my reading.'
This is what set me thinking. Why should a wealthy person like this be put to the trouble of pretending to read at all? Why not a professional book-handler to go in and suitably maul his library for so-much per shelf? Such a person, if properly qualified, could make a fortune.'

(Myles na Gopaleen)

Cairn, have you tried singing and dancing with your 2 yo? Some are not interested in sitting down and passively listening.

Books with simple rhymes and rhythms, and repetition of phrases are also appealing to many young listeners.

My own DCs used to enjoy being read to and brought the same books every time, to the point where I learned several of Beatrix Potter's dratted Tales off by heart without realising it. One book that appealed to DD3, who was inclined to be a bit restless, was a little board book with a photo of an animal on each page. I used to make what I fondly imagined to be the noise each animal made and say for instance, 'the dog says [barking sound]'. She liked the different noises and one day tried a miow and a chicken peep. It was lovely. From then on she would make the animal sounds... She also loved a book with photos of babies doing different things and we used to go through that regularly too, for years.

I have relatives who don't have many books (I think most of their books would be recipe books actually, and the odd encyclopedia set) in their homes and it didn't stop the cousins from going to university. One ended up as a newspaper editor. I don't think books themselves are the make or break factor. Parents who are dedicated to making their children do their homework, study for exams, take part in extra curricular activities, and do their best can exist in homes without books or much reading apart from newspapers/paying close attention to current affairs. Good challenging conversation with intelligent adults can help children greatly.

Interesting report. I don't know if I am surprised or not. I do find the methodology a bit dubious though so whether the statistic is valid, I wouldn't like the comment.

For example, when my DSs were little they regularly got books off the HV. If the children surveyed were 9 to 11 then they would have outgrown those but they still may well have had books in their early years when it was more important.

At 9 to 11, a lot of more time is spent on computer so just because they don't have books it doesn't mean they don't read. Increasingly we won't get our information and leisure reading from actual books and that will be more true of the younger generations than us.

There is no comment on comics/magazines. My 11 yr old who has a reading age several years higher than his age reads mainly magazines. He is unlikely to get through a book a week, sometimes even a book a month. I remember very well the school saying it doesn't matter what they read so long as they read something so I think it is more subtle than do you own books.

Any survey where the participants are self selecting would need to be viewed cautiously - the people who respond are those who think there is a problem.

That said, I think everybody realises that reading has to start at home and that the best way for a child to do well at school is to be read to or read at home and that some children don't get this advantage. I don't think this is a new finding though and I would be interested to know if it tallies with standards of literacy. Does the drop book ownership reflect the change in literacy rates/standards?

I don't believe that survey. 4 million is too many. How many children aged 2-16 are there in the UK? I can believe that plenty don't every actually read for pleasure or get read to, but I don't believe there is not a single book in the house.

As a percentage of a population of 60+ million in the UK, 4 million is a very low number, so yes I believe the statistics. Considering the norm is about 20% of children are deemed as below the national expectations.

I used to listen to readers who never had books at home and we were not in a deprived area either. SOme parents just dont realise how important it is

Hardly any adults in the UK read books either. I went to a talk by a literary agent about how the only way to make any cash is genre fiction- dont know his source but I have no reason to disbelieve him. Here are the stats

Only 33% of British adults read books ever
Of those the majority (sorry- he didn't quantify) read fewer than 4 a year- mainly "airport" titles- eg thrillers, chick lit etc

Sorry- hit send too soon.

Assuming there are 10 million under 15's in the UK, it's feasible that 40% don't have any books, given that 67% of adults probably don't (I'm thinking if they don't read them, they probably don't have them in the house)

They're not saying that there isn't a single book in the house, but that the children surveyed don't have a single book at home.

This thread has clearly been set up as a way of saying, "aren't I we a-may-zing!! We have more books than you can shake a stick at!! Those poor, deprived proles with their x-boxes and no books!"

I mean, on the one hand the OP says she doesn't believe it, but then belies that by saying that she bets lots of these households (which apparently don't exist) have x-boxes and whatever...

We even have someone bringing their children's school SAT results into it all. I'm also delightfully taken by the person up-thread, well-read natch, whose head it seemingly didn't enter into that you can re-read books to your children. You couldn't make it up for pure stereotypical MN-ness.

Thanks everyone for your suggestions.

Will definitely try the picking one of three stories but might restrict the actions and noises to daytime stories rather than just before he goes to sleep. Might be slightly too much fun, rather than winding down time!

Although thinking hard, he does tend to sit down and listen better during the day! May be in danger of thinking this through too much!

My DS's primary school, has picked this up. They were horrified at the number of children coming in who had no experience of books.

In response, they started a parent story-time where volunteers come and read to groups of children (all of them, so as not to single out the intended targets).

oops - posted too soon (fat thumbs!)..

Also, I remember seeing a parenting program some years ago where the children weren't getting books because the parents had had such a poor educational experience that they struggled to read.

I volunteered to do the school reading as it's something positive I could do to change the situation.

yeah i heard this on the radio the other morning. I was shocked because i think reading skills are really important. My mum has just retired from teaching secondary school and she tells me that the amount of yr 7's who arrive at secondary school without a basic reading skill is shocking. Its slightly understandable though because we are all feeling the credit crunch these days but you can buy perfectly good books for less than a quid in charity shops.

Maybe they all have Kindles.

Does the reading material have to be a book?
Would comics do?

And I still can't understand how a child can get to the end of primary without basic reading skills? 6-7 years of school and no basic reading skills?

Those 4m children must not only have parents who hate books but also have no relatives who give them presents, not a single birthday party and their mum must not have any friend who does the book selling thing, yes?
4m kids in uk manage to completely avoid books! How??
It is the easiest and cheapest present, the present that saves you face when you have many bday invitations, it is sold everywhere and many mums -actually the ones in low income households- sell books for living and pester you to buy.

Oh and actually when i had preschoolers i noticed that our local library was full of low income mums (it makes sense, free entrance and heating) who were reading to their kids for 2 hours and were taking books at home. The ones with higher incomes were at Sturbucks . Funny how we all have seen a different reality. You see what you want to see and you believe what you want to believe. This thread is so sad.

Some reasons I'm not suprised at the survey.

Our local library is full of crap dog-eared books, usually series' with the first few missing. They charge children £1 per book from the first day overdue (then £1 per book for each further week), so if you've taken your full quota you'll owe £7 if you take them back a day late. If you want to reserve a book which is currently out, it costs £1. If you want a book from another library in the same borough, you pay £1 to order it. They have masses of books for sale and DVDs which you have to pay to take out and they mainly push those. They don't have a single dictionary or an encyclopedia in the children's section. The whole place is dreary, depressing and a bit smelly. The other local library (which I went to as a child) has closed down to be replaced with a library-come-jobsearch place inside a shopping centre which is all new and sparkly but has virtually empty bookshelves. There is a great secondhand bookshop nearby but it is expensive and I imagine a bit intimidating for a family generally 'not into books'.

(I'm a librarian and neither me nor my DS has a shortage of books by the way)

Laquitar - I love books and have friends and relatives who don't. I have one set of incredibly rich relatives who have only a handful of books in their entire house. I feel bad if I always get their kids books as presents as (1) they may think its a poor present and would prefer a toy (2) its hard to know the right (and enjoyable) reading age to choose for children who don't read a lot (3) I don't want their parents to think I'm judging them.

I've given up on the local library because I don't like DS being hassled for fine money constantly and instead I buy books - even when they are cheap this is an expensive option as most books are read once in a couple of hours or over a couple of days.

I've never come across anyone who does the book selling thing.

I'm not surprised by this at all. I know several middle-class families who send their children to private or selective schools and are happy to pay for extra tutors etc yet don't have a single book in their home. This problem has nothing to do with income.

Children learn by example. If they see their parents visiting libraries or sitting reading books and newspapers they accept it as normal behaviour.

How many teenagers will receive books for Christmas? Not many, I'm guessing.

toutlemonde - that is really sad about fines. Our library doesn't fine children which is just as well with my record on getting them back on time!

Clearly some councils are more focussed on library services than others. Ours recently had a refit and is now a 'Discovery Centre' but it is fantastic. However, even before the refit it had a good children's section - there always seemed to be plenty of books until the summer holidays when the shelves were emptied for the summer reading challenge! Actually that probably just goes to show how few children regularly use the library otherwise they would always be empty, wouldn't they?

Our library also fines and after a particularly hefty fine when all of us had 6 books out each, we stopped using the library, which is a shame. I just hate the feeling of having to get the books back on time, something always turns up. The only time we use the library now is in the summer holidays when there is usually a reading challenge and I know we have plenty of time to return the books.

Valium - can you renew on-line? We can although I still forget to do that.

It might help though, if you know they have to go back but can't find the time to actually go. We do have to ask the library for a passcode first though.

Yes you can renew on line but the website is the shittest ever and we always get irritated doing it. The library is a drive away so not easy to just pop down to iykwim, it always seems an effort.