Day: August 26, 2026

Reading with a child looks very different at four than it does at fourteen. In the early years, an adult usually chooses the book, reads the words, turns the pages, and answers questions along the way. As children get older, they begin choosing books for themselves, reading on their own, and forming opinions that may be very different from those of their parents.

For some families, that independence gradually brings shared reading to an end. Therese Thompson has taken a different approach. A lifelong reader who spent years reading with her children and now shares books with her grandchildren, she has found ways to keep books part of family life even as the way they read together has changed.

In her reflections on reading and family life, Thompson describes reading as a habit that can grow with a child. Reading aloud may eventually disappear, but the connection around books doesn’t have to. Recommendations, conversations, disagreements, and the occasional book everyone wants to talk about can take its place.

Start With a Book the Child Actually Wants to Hear

It’s easy to focus on numbers when children are learning to read. Parents hear a lot about minutes spent reading, pages completed, and books finished. Those things can be useful to track, but they don’t necessarily tell you whether a child is beginning to enjoy reading for its own sake.

When Thompson read with her own children in the evenings, she chose books with their individual interests and developmental stages in mind. Siblings didn’t always read the same books or move at the same pace. They shared a family routine, but they were also given room to develop tastes of their own.

Anyone who has read regularly with young children knows how specific those tastes can become. One child may want every book they can find about animals, while another wants adventure stories. Some become attached to a particular author or series. Others want to hear the same book night after night, long after the adult reading it has memorized every page.

There’s no particular reason to rush them out of those preferences. Enjoying a book enough to ask for it again is already a form of engagement with reading.

Over time, interests expand and change. What matters early on is giving children enough positive experiences with books that choosing another one feels appealing.

As Children Get Older, the Conversation Changes

Once children can read independently, there’s no longer an obvious reason for a parent to sit beside them for every page. Shared reading can easily fall away at that point, even in families where books were once a regular part of the evening.

But reading together doesn’t have to mean literally reading the same pages at the same time.

As Thompson’s children grew, conversations about books became a larger part of the family’s reading life. They talked about characters, exchanged reactions, reread books, and passed titles among family members. A book could remain part of family life long after everyone stopped reading it aloud.

Those conversations can be wonderfully informal. Why did you like that character? Why did that ending annoy you? Would you have made the same choice? Why did everyone recommend this book when neither of us liked it?

Children don’t need every conversation about a book to test whether they understood it correctly. Sometimes it’s more interesting to discover that two people read exactly the same pages and came away thinking completely different things.

As children get older, those disagreements can become part of the pleasure of reading together. They also give young readers practice explaining what they think and considering an interpretation they hadn’t reached on their own.

The adult doesn’t always need to steer the conversation toward a lesson. Asking a genuine question and being interested in the answer is often enough.

Choosing Books Gets More Personal With Age

Finding books for children doesn’t necessarily get easier once they become confident readers. In some ways, it becomes more complicated.

Age is useful when narrowing the field for a young child, but it tells you less as individual tastes become stronger. Two 14-year-olds may have almost nothing in common as readers. One might be absorbed in historical fiction, while another exclusively reads fantasy, and a third may have little interest in novels but happily spend hours with nonfiction.

Thompson has taken both age and individual interest into account while developing a reading guide for her grandchildren. Her recommendations include themes, questions that might be interesting to think about, and ideas for books that could come next.

Families don’t need to create an extensive guide of their own. Reading lists and recommendations for parents and grandparents can be useful when they’re treated as places to browse instead of lists a child is expected to complete.

Often, the best recommendations come from following an interest that is already there. A child loves one author, so you find another book by that author. A historical novel leads to curiosity about the period in which it takes place. A friend recommends a fantasy series, which leads to three more.

Eventually, parents and grandparents may find themselves doing less choosing and more listening. The child starts telling them what they’re reading.

That’s a good outcome.

Some Books Are Worth Reading More Than Once

There can be a lot of pressure around children’s reading to keep moving: finish one book, choose another, try something more challenging.

But rereading has its own value.

Thompson is a deliberate reader herself. She pays attention to tone, point of view, and emotional development, and she keeps short observations in physical journals and digital notes. Returning to books over the years has shown her how much a reader’s response can change with age and experience.

Families have an unusual opportunity to see that change happen.

A seven-year-old might love a story because of what happens. At twelve, the same child may become more interested in why the characters behave as they do. Years later, they may return to the book and sympathize with a character they barely noticed the first time.

Rereading can also make conversation easier because nobody has to concentrate quite so hard on following the plot. Everyone already knows what happens. They can pay attention to details they missed, think more about the characters, or revisit a question that didn’t have an obvious answer the first time.

And sometimes there simply isn’t an obvious answer. Adults can leave some of those questions alone.

A child doesn’t need to finish every book having settled exactly what it means. Part of becoming a thoughtful reader is realizing that two people can disagree about a story without either of them having misunderstood it.

Reading With Grandchildren Brings Something New

When Thompson began reading with her grandchildren, she returned to many of the habits she had developed with her own children, but the experience wasn’t exactly the same.

Grandparents often have a different relationship with family reading. They may not be trying to finish homework, get everyone bathed, find the missing shoe, and have three children asleep by a particular time. There can be more room to linger over a story or follow a conversation wherever it goes.

There’s also the perspective that comes from having watched children grow up once already. The picture-book stage doesn’t feel quite so permanent the second time around.

Thompson chooses books with each grandchild in mind and lets questions and conversations emerge naturally as they read. Sometimes that may mean a picture book and an uninterrupted stretch of time together. As children get older, it could be a book recommendation, a title passed back and forth, or a conversation about an ending neither person can quite stop thinking about.

Family reading can continue through all of those stages because it doesn’t depend on preserving one particular ritual.

The bedtime story will eventually go away. The child is supposed to become an independent reader. But independence doesn’t mean books have to become a solitary part of family life.

Parents and grandparents can still recommend books, borrow them from one another, disagree about them, return to old favorites, and tell someone, “You need to read this because I want to know what you think.”

In the long run, that may be one of the best signs that those early years of reading together worked.

About Therese Thompson

Therese Thompson of Austin is a lifelong reader who has spent years sharing books with her children and grandchildren and encouraging other families to make reading part of everyday life. Her involvement has included community reading sessions, book discussions, family resource programs, and intergenerational storytelling activities.

Thompson encourages families to choose books with individual readers in mind and to allow shared reading to change as children grow. Her reading lists, short essays, and resources for parents and grandparents are also available through Therese Thompson’s online work.

Author byline

Therese Marie Thompson is a lifelong reader and storyteller who has spent years sharing literature with her children and grandchildren. Through community reading activities and her own writing, she encourages families to make books a lasting part of their relationships by choosing books thoughtfully, talking about what they read, and allowing those traditions to change as children grow.