First: I wanna clarify this. I know that loads of people read like 100 books a year, or read all the time. I know these people exist. I’m asking about people that are like… average. An average american who just… reads. Doesn’t track everything or sets goals of like 100, or never stops reading… Anyway, I’ve been searching this up, and i find answers like 15-50, even 100. I find this highly unlikely, especially for average US citizens. Half the people i know don’t even pick up 5 books a year, let alone 15! I just don’t believe these stats. I read somewhere that people read 8 a month on average? That can’t be right for an average person. That’s like 2 books a week… I know people do read this much, but still… For an average person? So be real… how many books do people actually read a year?
But you should still read to them. My 12 year old 7th grader has been reading since he was 4 or 5 and I had heard (from r/books) that what you do in that situation is choose a book that is a step beyond their current level. I’ve expanded that to books that are at his current level but outside of his range of interests, for example, poetry, as well as slower paced novels than what he might prefer.
My 12 year old seventh grader and I are currently reading All the Light We Cannot See. He wouldn’t touch it alone but is loving having it read to him.
Yeah, I wasn’t saying you SHOULDN’T read to kids once they can read by themselves, just that I am not surprised that many parents don’t. I also don’t think not being read to at that point will mean that kids won’t enjoy reading. I think that modeling reading (as in, if the parents read books themselves where the kids can see them) and having age appropriate books available in the home for them would help in making kids interested in reading too. My parents had many bookshelves around our house and I would just pick books off of them whenever I was bored, I read Lord of the Rings when I was in middle school because it was on my dad’s bookshelf for example. Just doing stuff like that will help advance their vocabulary a lot.