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Comment by kqr | Hacker News Reader

Given what children claim motivates them to read it sounds like well-written text adventures would do wonders for literacy.

But I suspect that would not be that easy. I think both books and text adventures would be competing against activities with much lower requirements on effort, and much higher immediate rewards.

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With my own kids what has worked is setting aside time, before bed where they _have to read_. It can be anything they want, they pick books from library most of the time.

The risk of this approach might be that it could suck the fun out of it making it a chore, but that has not been the case - they both like to read books now.

Creating that space for reading has been essential. It's impossible to compete against all of the other things otherwise.

This is the way. My son (10) went from actively trying to do anything else while he was supposed to be reading, to actually settling down and reading continuously for at least 30 minutes every night. We've had the rule since he was 6, but it seems like in the last year he has flipped from not being that interested to now highly valuing it and being upset if something impinges on his reading time... which of course we will extend bed time a bit to ensure he gets his reading time.

Indeed. When I was young I had a mandatory bedtime that was slightly before I got tired, and not having many alternatives I ended up using it for reading. I suppose these days electronics would have to stay outside the room for it to work.

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