Hallelujah! My Child Can Read Independently!

There comes a moment in every parent’s life when they realise that their child can read independently! It is often a milestone greeted with something approaching giddy, unbridled joy. No more laborious sounding out of every other word, no more cajoling, negotiating or completing the dreaded reading record. But for many, it also signals the beginning of the end of the shared bedtime story. At last, you think, I can hand over the book and reclaim a little of the evening. (Or, at the very least, focus on the competing needs of the younger siblings.)

And who could blame you for wanting to do so?

Modern parenting is a remarkable juggling act. Between work, school runs, homework, meals, laundry and the general business of keeping a family afloat, finding time to sit down and read together can feel like one more obligation on an already overflowing list. By bedtime, patience can be in short supply — on both sides of the page. Even the most devoted members of the bedtime story club can find the experience less a treasured moment of connection and more a weary trudge through uninspiring school reading books, repetitive plots and the latest instalment of The Dinosaur That Pooped... (a series that may have its devoted fans, but which is unlikely to trouble the literary prize committees). If that is your experience, the prospect of handing over the book to your fledgling bibliophile can feel less like a loss and more like a liberation.

But sorry, folks — I’ve got news. Or rather, the House of Commons Education Committee has. In its 2026 report on reading for pleasure, the Committee cites research suggesting that adults who were read to by a parent or caregiver as children are 130% more likely to enjoy reading as adults. (Which, since you’re here, I’m assuming you already consider a good thing, but if you need convincing — read my take on the subject here.)

The same report warns of a “generational shift in reading” and calls for children to have regular opportunities to enjoy books and shared reading throughout childhood. The message is clear: being able to “read” is only the start of the journey.

So what, exactly, do children lose when we stop reading to them? And what might they gain if we carry on?

One answer lies in the difference between being able to read a book and being able to understand it. The two are closely related, of course, but they are not quite the same thing. A child who can confidently work their way through a short chapter book may still struggle with a more sophisticated novel, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t ready to enjoy one.

When children read for themselves, they must juggle several tasks: decoding unfamiliar vocabulary, making sense of sentence structures and following the meaning as the story unfolds. For developing readers, this takes mental effort, leaving less capacity for absorbing the language, ideas and subtleties of a text.

With an adult doing the reading, children can concentrate on meaning, follow more intricate plots and encounter vocabulary and ideas that might be beyond their current reading ability.

Then there is conversation. The writer and educationalist Aidan Chambers makes a compelling case for giving children the opportunity to talk openly about their responses to books. His approach isn’t about interrogating children for the correct interpretation; it is about helping them discover and articulate their own responses.

There is a wonderful idea at the heart of this: we don’t always know what we think until we have said it out loud. Conversation helps us shape our thoughts. Someone else’s observation might make us reconsider our own; a question might reveal something we hadn’t noticed; an apparently casual comment might lead to a much bigger idea.

And perhaps this matters more than ever. Public debate increasingly seems to reward certainty over curiosity, confrontation over conversation. From the polarisation of political debate to the relentless noise of social media, there is a growing sense that people arrive with their positions already fixed, more interested in defending them than in listening to an alternative view. The loudest voices can dominate, while changing your mind is too often presented as a sign of weakness rather than thoughtfulness.

But genuine conversation requires something quite different: the willingness to listen, to consider another perspective and, occasionally, to accept that you might have got something wrong. It is a habit that has to be learned and practised. What better place to practise than in a conversation about a story, where the stakes are low but the possibilities are endless?

As children become more confident readers, our role changes. We can move beyond helping them sound out words and begin exploring what stories can do: introduce unfamiliar perspectives, raise difficult questions, develop empathy and offer a window into lives very different from their own.

We can read together books that children might not yet choose or manage independently. We can help them enjoy the humour, complexity and beauty of language, and talk about the connections between stories and the world around us. These are not extras to the business of reading. They are its real value.

So perhaps, in the middle of all the parental juggling, there is something worth protecting here. Hallelujah, they can read independently. Now let’s show them just how much there is to read — and how much pleasure there is in sharing it.