"Parenting" Parents and children reading together is a good practice.

The long summer vacation is a great time to recharge and develop interests. Many parents have written to us asking how to use the summer vacation to build a foundation for their children to prepare for the 12 years of national education. In fact, parents do not have to worry too much, as the knowledge that their children will need to go out into the world has not yet been invented, and what they can prepare for now is the "basic skills", i.e., "the ability to learn new knowledge". The United Nations Organization for Economic Development (OECD) lists ten competencies that are essential for competing in the 21st century, the first of which is the "ability to use the mother tongue" because the 21st century is all about speed and accuracy, and children need to be able to express their intentions correctly. The best way to strengthen language skills is to read novels. The climactic storyline can increase the motivation of children to read. If your child does not have a reading habit, then parents should take advantage of the summer vacation when the pressure of homework is less to take your child into the door of reading. In the beginning, parents should pick their children's favorite books to read with them. When the parents also read the child's book, the child will be very happy and proud to say: "My parents also read this book! This sense of "being like mom and dad" will increase their motivation to read. Many classics such as The Adventures of Tarzan, 20,000 Miles Under the Sea, and Sherlock Holmes are good books to introduce children to reading. When I was a child, my father did not let me read Shui Zhu Zhuan because there is a Chinese saying: "Reading Poetry will make you talk, reading I Ching will make you divine, and reading Shui Zhu Zhuan will make you fight. But the more things are banned, the more interesting they become. I finished reading Shui Hu Tang Zhuan in sixth grade, and although I didn't understand it, it didn't dampen my interest in reading it. I didn't fight because I agreed with Lu Jie. Instead, I sympathized with Lin Chong in the Peking Opera (Lin Chong's Night Run), who had a hard time returning to his home and a hard time joining his country, and I learned for the first time what it meant to be forced by the government to rebel against the people. Therefore, parents don't have to worry too much about the content of the book being too profound and there are too many vocabulary words; if the child can't understand the book, he or she will skim over the book on his or her own, and the vocabulary words he or she will recognize if he or she reads them more often. Research has found that children can only learn how to use a word if the same word is repeated in different contexts. One of my happiest childhood memories was listening to my father talk to us about his opinions on various books when we were out in the yard after dinner. For example, in The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, my father said to me, "Times make heroes. In times of peace, life is good, and heroes do not come out, but when society is in turmoil, there is a difference between the best and the worst of people, and people have to go through tests before they can become heroes. He said, "Among the 'time, place, and people', 'people and harmony' is the most important. 'If a thousand people are of one mind, then a thousand will be able to do their work; if ten thousand are of different minds, then no one will be able to do their work'. King Wu of Zhou was able to win the popularity of the people, so he was able to make a vow to his army, and he was able to win the battle with the few against the many. The success or failure of everything in the world depends on people." My father always told us that being a man was more important than studying. In fact, we didn't want our father to talk about the Three Kingdoms because whenever he thought of the Three Kingdoms, he would recite the phrase "The river flows and the stones don't turn, and the hatred of losing the swallowing of the Wu"; it was not until I was now in my sixties that I realized the helplessness behind this phrase, so it is no wonder that people say that "old people don't read about the Three Kingdoms. Another example is Jia Baoyu in Dream of the Red Mansion, who hated to say, "Why is it that a girl who is a pearl before marriage becomes a fish's eye after marriage?" My father said, "The most beautiful thing about human nature is innocence, and the ugliest thing about it is the worldly knowledge, but people will always grow up and become independent of their parents. The world is not a beautiful place, but in order to survive, people will gradually lose their innocence and become worldly-minded. My father also said that he would try to keep us as "pearls" for as long as possible, but he hoped that when we grew old, we would still remember the innocence of our childhood and never forget our original intention. Having the wonderful experience of sharing the beauty of reading with parents and children, I strongly encourage them to read together. Material pleasures are forgotten in the blink of an eye, but the memories of our parents reading with us will stay with us for a long time; even if our parents are no longer with us, their words will still echo in our ears, as if they were a beacon of light on the road of life. Often when I read a certain book, I can't help but think of "What my dad said ......". If a person has such warm memories, his or her life will be full and rich. Excerpted from Mandarin Daily Wen Honglan, Director of the Institute of Cognitive and Neurological Sciences, National Central University, China