You may have tangible wealth untold,

Caskets of jewels and coffers of gold.

Richer than I you can never be --

I had a mother who read to me.

--Strickland Gillilan, from the poem "The Reading Mother"

This lovely quotation is something my grandmother used to recite to me and, in fact, inscribed on the flyleaf of a big picture book of children's poetry she gave me when I was a preschooler. Only later did I realize that, although my grandmother believed in the idea behind it, her mother probably never actually read to her! Being from Poland, speaking very little English, and as a widowed mother of seven during the Great Depression, her mother did not have the time nor the ability to read to her children. My grandmother, however, became a great example of someone whose life was transformed by the ability to read. Although she never went to school past the eighth grade, my grandmother was a voracious reader throughout her childhood and after. She likes to tell the story of how her brothers would throw rocks at the door of the outhouse (the only place she could get any privacy and some quiet!) to get her out of there when she was taking too long, reading a book. "Get your nose out of that book!" was a phrase that, unfortunately, she heard all too often. Eventually, she had educated herself so thoroughly by reading that people would often assume she was a retired teacher, although she actually worked as a waitress and then on the Hoover factory assembly line until she was 70 years old.

So although it is sometimes easy to feel discouraged, overwhelmed, or unqualified to teach your own little ones reading or the skills that help lead to reading later, remember that YOU ARE your child's first teacher. You are the person he or she looks up to, and you are a role model. So if you read to your child, check out books from the library, and allow your child to see you reading, he or she will come to learn that reading is a valuable skill that is useful and important in all areas of life.