\n<\/p>\n
I<\/span>t\u2019s been a tough year for our brains. Merriam-Webster dictionary editors chose \u201cslop\u201d as 2025\u2019s word of the year. New York Magazine recently dropped its \u201cStupid Issue\u201d, with a cover story exploring America\u2019s collective \u201ccognitive decline\u201d. There are big problems in the humanities: reading test scores are down for students nationwide, and undergraduates cannot read full books any more.<\/p>\n Even storytime \u2013 a comfy couch, a cardboard book, a kid\u2019s rapt attention as their parent reads them a story \u2013 is an endangered activity. According to an April report from HarperCollins UK, parents have lost the love of reading to their children, with fewer than half of gen Z parents calling the activity \u201cfun for me\u201d. According to the survey of 1,596 parents of children aged zero to 13, almost one in three found reading \u201cmore a subject to learn\u201d than an experience to enjoy. Only a third of kids aged five to 10 frequently read for fun, compared with over half in 2012.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is boring,\u201d one Reddit user wrote on r\/books. \u201cThe books that my kid likes suck. But, like, that\u2019s your job as a parent.\u201d<\/p>\n Educators, parents and those who cherish getting lost in a good book are, understandably, worried. And while it is hard to compete with Ms Rachel or Bluey, there are ways to liven up old fashioned storytime. Ahead, parents share the unorthodox <\/strong>tactics they say get their young kids interested in reading.<\/p>\n When Bri Ramos went to parent night at her kids\u2019 elementary school in Oklahoma City, a first-grade teacher said something that stuck with her: \u201cI can tell if you read to your child every night, or if you do not,\u201d the teacher told her. \u201cThere is such a drastic difference in a developing child\u2019s brain, and it\u2019s just based on that 10 to 20 minutes of reading every night.\u201d<\/p>\n [Dramatic reading] has a greater impact on their life and how they connect to stories … It\u2019s words on a page that were brought to lifeArjay Smith<\/p>\n After using ChatGPT to help find recipes to tempt her picky eaters, Ramos, who is 37 and works in marketing, turned her sights on its \u201ctalk\u201d feature to help her read to them. Some nights before bed, instead of opening a copy of Mother Goose, Ramos asks ChatGPT to tell a bedtime story about a little girl who is a princess \u2013 or maybe a dragon fighter \u2013 on an adventure. Ramos named the character Camilla, after her six-year-old daughter, and told the chatbot to speak in a British accent, because that\u2019s just fun. \u201cIt\u2019s usually two to three minutes, and then we have it ask reading comprehension questions about the story afterwards,\u201d Ramos said.<\/p>\n Since the stories are about Camilla, she tends to get \u201cgiggly and excited, and really listens\u201d, as opposed to when she\u2019s learning to reading during storytime and is so focused on getting the words right that she doesn\u2019t fully grasp the larger plot. \u201cWhen we\u2019re reading from a book, it\u2019s more technical,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cWhen we\u2019re reading from AI, it\u2019s more fun and engaging.\u201d<\/p>\n The family uses ChatGPT for storytime sparingly. \u201cIt\u2019s very effective when [the kids are] burnt out or frustrated, or when we\u2019ve read Sam-I-am 152 times and just cannot do it again,\u201d Ramos said. \u201cIt just adds a nice little change into the routine.\u201d<\/p>\n Outsourcing the demands of parenthood to large language models is understandably controversial; generative AI programs such as ChatGPT are not built for children. A recent study found that when adults used generative AI to come up with prompts for a short story, it increased their creativity but decreased the diversity in their collective writing output. In other words, material created by ChatGPT is narrow in its scope, while people read books, in part, to learn about and empathize with people or places that differ from them.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s totally understandable that parents would use AI to create stories that involve their kids,\u201d said Alexandria Abenshon, director of children\u2019s programs and services at the New York Public Library. \u201cI think it gives us a good jumping-off point to think about authorship, how we [as adults] can write stories that might involve our own kids. It\u2019s a fine line, but I think it\u2019s ultimately up to each parent to navigate that in a way that feels safe for them.\u201d<\/p>\n For her part, Ramos always supervises her kids\u2019 interactions with ChatGPT, ensuring they are \u201cage-appropriate\u201d. \u201cI think it\u2019s really important for parents to not feel guilty. Using technology as an asset and having your child read is better than not reading it all,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n So far, she has yet to adapt a ChatGPT-style British accent for when she reads aloud to Camilla herself. \u201cMaybe after a few glasses of wine.\u201d<\/p>\n Alliah L Agostini, a children\u2019s and cookbook author from Montclair, New Jersey, has a 10-year-old daughter who is an \u201centhusiastic reader\u201d and an eight-year-old son who is \u201ca bit less so\u201d. While working on her latest cookbook, Agostini noticed that her kids were always around to taste-test recipes, indicating they were just as interested in the process of cooking as she was. She decided to read a cookbook with them.<\/p>\n \u201cI was like, \u2018Wait a minute, this is just as much reading as anything else,\u2019\u201d said Agostini, 43. \u201cI think a lot of people downplay reading cookbooks because there\u2019s no story, but it\u2019s fun for them to look at the steps, follow instructions and create something with a fulfilling end result.\u201d<\/p>\n Now the family chooses interesting cookbooks to read while they work together in the kitchen. It is, as Agostini says, \u201csneaking in some reading\u201d \u2013 but why judge something that works for a kid who is not naturally drawn to the library?<\/p>\n \u201cKids consume media a little bit differently than we did,\u201d Agostini said. \u201cBe patient with them. It\u2019s not the smoothest ride to create a recipe, and it will probably take you twice as long as reading a book, but it\u2019s fun and creates great memories.\u201d<\/p>\n Arjay Smith has been an actor for 32 years, and lives in Los Angeles where he is working on the procedural police drama The Rookie. You can also catch him playing the role of \u201cdad who does dramatic readings for his kids\u201d almost every night, using impressions of Christopher Walken, Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau, James Brown and Morgan Freeman, plus a \u201cgeneric deep monster voice\u201d, to narrate the books.<\/p>\n Making sure that we have a time and a space to read are critical ingredients to building a relationship with readingAlexandria Abenshon<\/p>\n Smith enlists co-stars, too; his wife will read aloud while he acts out the plot, or one of his good friends, another actor, and will help him turn children\u2019s books into two-person plays to perform for their kids when they vacation together.<\/p>\n \u201cIt keeps the energy high, but it also sticks with the children that much longer,\u201d Smith, 42, said of the theatrics. \u201cIt has a greater impact on their life and how they connect to stories: now it\u2019s not just words on a page, it\u2019s words on a page that were brought to life, and each character has their own individual identity via your voice and vibration.\u201d<\/p>\n Abenshon, from the New York Public Library, is not a parent herself, but she has spent countless hours reading to kids during her days as a children\u2019s librarian. She encourages parents to \u201cembrace all types of reading\u201d \u2013 even if that means picking up a wordless picture book and working with a child to narrate it.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s really about letting kids make the stories that are meaningful for them at that moment,\u201d Abenshon said. Then, when the kids get older, let them chose what they read as they will naturally gravitate to what interests them.<\/p>\n Abenshon says she also makes a point of reading for her own pleasure in front of kids at the library. \u201cIt\u2019s really just as simple as modeling,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Cultivating an appreciation for reading doesn\u2019t happen overnight. \u201cBuild the habit,\u201d Abenshon said. \u201cMaking sure that we have a time and a space to read are critical ingredients to building a relationship with reading. With kids, it\u2019s so important to have a dedicated time that signals that reading is something worth doing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It\u2019s been a tough year for our brains. Merriam-Webster dictionary editors chose \u201cslop\u201d as 2025\u2019s word of the year. New York Magazine recently dropped its \u201cStupid Issue\u201d, with a cover story exploring America\u2019s collective \u201ccognitive decline\u201d. There are big problems in the humanities: reading test scores are down for students nationwide, and undergraduates cannot read<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[2214,2486,7677,146,1253,2318,630,1067,21404],"class_list":{"0":"post-39479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-chatgpt","9":"tag-christopher","10":"tag-cooking","11":"tag-kids","12":"tag-love","13":"tag-parenting","14":"tag-parents","15":"tag-reading","16":"tag-walken"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Enlist ChatGPT<\/h2>\n
Grab a cookbook<\/h2>\n
Pretend you\u2019re Christopher Walken<\/h2>\n
Learn from a professional<\/h2>\n