The Simplest Way to Protect Your Child's Reading Skills This Summer

Reading regularly over the summer keeps your child's skills from slipping and gives them a stronger start when school picks back up. Limiting screen time is one way to make that happen, and it can help, but... There's something that works even better. And it doesn't require taking anything away. What if the most effective thing you can do for your child's reading this summer is simply put more books in their path? Not fewer devices or stricter rules, just more books. The Research Points to Books, Not Screens Summer reading loss is a real problem that needs addressed, but screen time is not a direct cause. The research tells a clear story. Children who have access to books and are read to regularly make progress. Children who do not fall behind. In a 2020 study, researchers compared reading ability gains when children were out of formal instruction. Children who were read to daily experienced 42% less learning loss than children who were not read to. (Bao et al., 2020) The variable that matters is not screen time. It is book time. Summer reading loss does not hit every child equally. Children in lower-income households tend to lose more ground, and researchers point to book access as the key driver. When books are in the home and reading is part of the daily routine, kids keep making progress. When they are not, the gap widens. That gap is not explained by who has more screen time. It is explained by who has books, who gets read to, and who has reasons to keep reading when school is out. Why This Matters When you focus on restricting screens, you're fighting a defensive battle. You set a limit. Your child pushes back. That fight rarely gets you more reading time. When you focus on providing books, you're playing offense. You're adding something to your child's day instead of taking something away. Encouraging more reading feels like parenting, but taking the tablet away feels like punishment. What Providing Books Looks Like You do not need long reading sessions. There are few easy things we can do to encourage higher quality reading sessions, and building good reading habits at home. Keep books where your child already spends time. A book shelved in the bedroom gets ignored. A book sitting on the coffee table gets picked up. Put a few books next to the toys. Keep one in the car. Make books the easiest thing to reach, not the thing they have to go find. A few minutes is enough. Reading together for even 15 minutes a day works. Even one minute counts. Consistency matters more than duration. One minute every day beats thirty minutes once a week. Read together, not at them. Try echo reading: you read a sentence, your child reads it back. Try rereading: the same story twice builds fluency and confidence. Ask one question per session. "What do you think happens next?" or "Which character would you want to be friends with?" Let them see you read. Kids model what they see. If they see you with a book, a magazine, or even a few pages of something that is not a phone, it sends a signal that reading is a normal thing people do. What the Program Data Shows Kids Read Now runs on a simple idea: get books kids choose into their hands at home, and good things happen. The program's own data backs this up. 97% of returning students maintained or improved their reading skills. Kids in the program gain up to three months of reading progress every summer, the stretch when most kids lose ground. Parents notice the difference, too. 89% of parents and 94% of educators who've used the program recommend it. Focus on Books, Not Screens You do not have to win a screen-time battle this summer. That fight is exhausting, and the research does not even say it is the one that matters. The enemy is an empty book stack, not a glowing screen. Fix that, and good things will happen. Kids Read Now works with schools across the country to put books kids choose into their hands at home. If your school is not yet part of the program, ask about it. If it is, watch for the next book in the mail. Let's Talk