As a parent or caregiver, you are an important influence on your child’s education.

Parents play a critical role in making literacy a daily habit for the family. And when parents are involved in their children’s learning, children are more successful! Studies show that parents with high involvement ratings, compared with those with low or median ratings, tend to have children with higher grades and scores.

Many of the things you do with your children as you work, play, read and talk together have an impact on the skills needed to become a confident and competent student. Parents support their children’s cognitive abilities as they talk at the dinner table, play games, share household chores or ride in the car.

Below are some simple and inexpensive ways to make literacy a central component in your home.

• Be a role model. Demonstrate that reading is important in your life. Read the newspaper, books and magazines, e-mail and information on the Internet. Let your child see you reading.
• Read to your child. Share articles from the newspaper or from magazines. Look particularly for items of interest to your child — those that have to do with his school, his favorite sports team, movie star or band, or a special hobby. Talk about what you read with your child.
• Make your home reflect the importance of reading. Keep books around — you don’t have to own them all; library books work just as well — and read them. Ask your son to read you the measurements and ingredients from your recipe card as you prepare dinner. Ask your daughter to look up a phone number in the phone book for you or ask her to look at the cereal box and tell you how much sodium is in the cereal your family eats for breakfast.
• Allow your child to choose what she wants to read (within reason, of course). Everyone’s interest is different and if you want your child to read, let her read what she wants to read — reading teen idol, fashion and hair style magazines can lead to reading biographies or the style section of the newspaper.
• Make literacy and reading activities portable. As you are driving across town or on vacation, look for signs with words that begin with the same letter as your child’s name.