What If Summer Reading Isn’t the Goal?

Supporting your child’s reading mindset even if they’re not reaching for a book.

Summer reading.

Some parents love it, and some dread it. If your child is a natural reader, watching them breeze through books all summer can feel like a badge of honor—proof that something went right at home and a reader was born.

But for those of us with reluctant readers, summer reading can feel like a spotlight on something we didn’t succeed at nurturing: a raw failure.

In my home, it is a mixed bag. Thankfully, my teens are not assigned a ton of summer reading. And they have strong enough skills to get through the little they have with grace.

But as an avid reader who sees books as both escape and sanctuary, I can’t help but feel a little pang of disappointment that my kids don’t share that love.

What did I do wrong? I did what my dad did for me—made books exciting, readily accessible, and social. We went to the library. I read aloud well past the point most parents stop. We talked about stories over dinner. But somehow, the love of reading never stuck.

There are so many reasons why. High school turns reading into a chore. Anxiety makes it hard to settle into the quiet focus reading requires. Phones and apps offer easier dopamine hits than any novel can compete with. And for some kids, especially those with ADHD or learning differences, reading is exhausting.

So now, I’m learning to reframe. My kids may not reach for a book on a rainy afternoon, but they’re thinkers, storytellers, and curious in their own ways. Not everyone is a reader or takes in knowledge in these ways. Some readers are late bloomers.

As parents, we don’t always know how to help our kids be better readers when there seems be nothing in the way of their ability to read. But there likely is more in the way than we think. To comprehend, we actually require strong executive functioning.

In her article for the Learning Disabilities Association of America, Linda Hecker, lead education specialist at Landmark College Institute for Research and Training, explains that reading isn’t just about recognizing words. According to Hecker, there are six EF “superpowers” at play with reading.

1. Activation – Mustering the motivation and planning “when,” “where,” and “how” to read.

2. Focus – Staying on task and attending to the page or screen.

3. Effort – Breaking things into manageable chunks, knowing when to speed up when you can and slow down when more effort is needed.

4. Working Memory – holding onto key ideas, connecting them across paragraphs, and making sense of how they fit together. Paying attention to whether we’re actually absorbing what we’re reading or just moving our eyes across the page.

5. Emotion – Navigating feelings like anger, shame, or sadness that can interfere with understanding an author’s perspective. Managing boredom or apathy, which are often the most common emotional blocks to fully engaged reading.

6. Action – Noticing when focus slips or comprehension breaks down, and adjusting strategies in real time. Taking short breaks, changing reading locations, or shifting body position to re-engage.

As a tutor, I often use summer reading to help my students build the muscles around reading by helping them offload working memory tasks when reading.

I am thinking of one student I work with who is asked to take notes while reading because he struggles with retention. He jots down the randomest details: what the teacher was wearing or the color of someone’s backpack. Often they seem personally connected to his interests and worries. But I know that by missing the central conflict driving the plot forward, he is reading without structure; he is utterly unaware that conflict is the whole point of notetaking. Conflict unlocks the whole story.

When students are stuck in the details without a framework, they are holding too much in working memory: a recipe for cognitive overload which makes reading exhausting and not very pleasurable. Therefore, by helping students internalize the basic elements of narrative—characters, setting, rising conflict, turning points, and resolution—we show them that they no longer have to treat every detail as equally important. We lighten the executive function burden and let them see the forest and the tres.

How do parents work on story structure?

You don’t need a novel to build narrative thinking or make better “thinkers” while reading. We’re surrounded by stories every day, especially during family movie night.

After watching a film together, try asking your child:

• What was the biggest conflict in the story?

• What side conflicts helped drive the action?

• Who changed the most—and why?

Share your thoughts too. Debate which conflicts mattered most. There’s usually no single right answer. This is intellectual calisthenics, so don’t worry about getting it perfect; just keep the practice going.

You can do the same with real-life storytelling. Your child comes home from summer camp and tells you about the latest drama? That’s your cue. Try asking:

• If Jenny were a character in a book, what advice would a wise elder give her?

• Would she take it? Why or why not?

• What do you think Jenny really wanted underneath her actions?

These questions help build the habit of analyzing character, motivation, and cause and effect, all of which are essential skills for deeper reading and writing.

Why Story Skills Matter More Than Ever

Critical thinking about story is a skill I see dwindling. When I first taught story structure years ago, streaming didn’t exist. YouTube, TikTok and Insta were not the default. When I used episodes of The Simpsons in my seventh-grade classroom, every student knew the characters and the formula. We could easily deconstruct the episode and map its plot arc together. One class and we were all speaking the same language.

But today’s kids are often watching content with far looser structure and as a result, narrative thinking is becoming less intuitive. That’s hindering student effort, because analytical writing in English class—usually from 8th grade onward—depends on being able to reason through story elements with clarity and purpose. We want to make things easier for our kids, not harder; so let’s do it.

The stories of our daily lives and the ones on our screens can become the training ground. So go ahead: turn a movie night, a car ride, or a camp story into a chance to practice narrative structure and inference skills. Building thinking muscles will serve your child for years to come.

If summer reading feels like a battle or a letdown you’re not alone. So don’t sweat it. The goal is to raise a curious thinker. And that starts with the stories we live and share together.

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Photo by National Library of Medicine on Unsplash