Children aren’t reading, and that’s their parent’s fault. I’m always leery when I hear “a new study says,” but for what it’s worth a new study says that one in four students agree with the statement “My parents don’t care if I spend any time reading.”According to Acculturated, one in six boys said they had never been given a book as a present and one in five said they had never been to a bookstore. That’s nuts!Takeaway: Your kids won’t care about reading if you don’t teach them to care about reading.Best-selling author James Patterson says, “What I think people really have to get into their head is that it is our job as parents and grandparents—it’s not the schools job—it’s our job to get our kids reading so there need to be books in the house,” Patterson said.

Let’s say your kids don’t want to read. Patterson says–and I agree with him–you make them read. It’s not an option.

At this point, neither one of my kids can read so we read to them, of course. Maybe not every day, but at least a few times a week. I’ve also noticed my one year old sitting down on the floor and mimicking reading a book. Who knows what he’s saying, but he at least gets the concept!

Both my wife and I are avid readers, so I don’t think this will be an issue for us. But I guess we won’t know until our kids get a little older.

I’ll just tell you that I’ll do everything in my power to make sure my kids are readers when they get older. And if that means making them sit down to read instead of plopping down in front of a play station, well so be it.

As Patterson says, “children without books translates to a world run by the shortsighted and the glib and the apathetic and the narrow-minded.”

This article first appeared in the blog  http://www.101books.net.