Raising a child in Tennessee, there’s a phrase that can make even the most relaxed parent sit up a little straighter: third-grade reading.
You know about Tennessee’s third-grade promotion requirements. Maybe you’ve already wondered whether your preschooler knows enough letters, whether your kindergartner is reading “on level,” or whether the child down the street is somehow already reading chapter books while yours is still eating crayons.
Take a breath.
Tennessee is serious about literacy, and it should be. The state has invested substantial resources in helping children become proficient readers, with screening, intervention and multiple pathways for third-graders who don’t meet the state’s ELA benchmark.
But here’s what can get lost in all the talk about TCAP scores and promotion: A child does not become a reader in third grade. They become a reader much earlier.
They become a reader when someone holds them on a lap and reads the same book for the 19th time. When your toddler insists on that dinosaur book again. The moment a preschooler discovers that “cat” and “hat” sound alike and thinks it’s the funniest thing that has ever happened. When a kindergartner finally sounds out a word that seemed impossible yesterday and looks up with that little flash of surprise: I did it.
That is the real beginning of reading.
As a parent, your job is not to become a second-grade teacher at home. Your job is to become a reading coach — the person who makes books feel interesting, language feel alive and mistakes feel survivable.
Infancy
You don’t need a baby who sits quietly through an entire board book. In fact, if you have one of those babies, please enjoy this brief and miraculous period before they discover they can crawl away. For most babies, reading is a rather physical affair. They grab the book, chew the corner, look at the dog for three seconds and then become intensely interested in the ceiling fan.
That’s fine. At this age, you’re doing the reading; your baby is doing the learning.
The American Academy of Pediatrics encourages shared reading beginning in infancy because those little exchanges help build the foundations for language and literacy. The important thing isn’t how many pages you finish. It’s the sound of your voice, the words your baby hears, the pictures you point to and the warm, predictable experience of being together with a book.
So read the same book every night, even if you begin to suspect you may never again escape the very particular prose of a board book. Babies love repetition because repetition is how they learn. A story that seems unbearably familiar to you is becoming increasingly understandable to them.
And something else is happening: Your baby is beginning to associate books with you.
Babies and Toddlers
As babies become toddlers, the trick isn’t to make reading more serious. It’s to make it more woven into ordinary life. Keep books where your child can see them. Put a basket beside the sofa. Leave a few in the bedroom. Let books become as ordinary and available as stuffed animals and blocks.
Read before a nap, after breakfast, in the bathtub — during those five minutes before the water is just the right temperature — or at bedtime. And don’t worry if your child doesn’t sit still.
A toddler wandering around the room while you read is not necessarily a toddler who hates books. Toddlers are busy people. Their attention is developing at approximately the same speed as their ability to empty every kitchen cabinet.
Keep reading. Ask questions. Point to things. Let your child finish a familiar phrase. Stop and wait.
“What comes next?”
Make the book a conversation rather than a performance.
This is also the age when you can begin noticing that literacy lives everywhere. Read the stop sign. Point out the letters at the grocery store. Let your child “write” the shopping list. Look at the menu together at a restaurant. Sing songs and make up rhymes in the car.
A child doesn’t have to be holding a book to be learning about language.
Follow the Obsession
Toddlers are terrific at knowing exactly what they like. If yours wants the same book about construction trucks every night for four months, congratulations: You now know the key differences between a backhoe and an excavator.
The best book for a toddler is often not the one adults consider the most educational. It’s the one the child wants to open. A child fascinated by sharks can learn an extraordinary amount of vocabulary from a nonfiction picture book. A child who wants nothing but animal books is building knowledge about animals — knowledge that will become useful later, when reading gets more complicated.
Interest is not a distraction from literacy. Interest is fuel for literacy.
And then, inevitably, there’s the iPad.
Most parents are not raising children in the pre-screen childhood they may remember themselves. The tablet is in the house. Sometimes it’s educational. Sometimes it’s a digital storybook. Sometimes, if we’re being honest, it’s the thing that allows you to drink an entire cup of coffee while it’s still hot. The current research is more nuanced than the old “screens are bad” conversation.
In January 2026, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a new policy on children and digital media that deliberately moved beyond simply counting minutes. The AAP now emphasizes the child, the content, the context and what media may be crowding out. That distinction matters regarding reading. But an iPad shouldn’t become the default replacement for a parent, a conversation or a physical book. Think of it as additive, not substitutive.
If you and your child are watching a digital story together and you stop to ask, “Why do you think she did that?” you’re having a literacy experience. If your child is sitting alone tapping through an endless stream of fast-moving entertainment, that’s something else.
Pre-K
By preschool, the pieces are beginning to come together. Your child may recognize some letters, notice sounds, understand that print carries meaning and start asking the world’s most important preschool question: “Why?” This is a wonderful time to play with language.
Sing. Rhyme. Make up ridiculous words. Clap out the syllables in your child’s name. Notice sounds.
“Sammy starts with S. What else starts with S?”
Read books with words your child doesn’t yet know. Talk about those words. And read books that are slightly beyond what your child could understand independently. That’s not cheating. It’s one of the reasons reading aloud is so powerful.
Tennessee’s literacy guidance emphasizes read-alouds as a way for children to encounter language, knowledge and concepts that may be beyond their independent reading ability. A preschooler who cannot yet decode the words in a story can still understand a complicated idea. They can learn that a character is disappointed. They can learn what a volcano is. They can learn the difference between enormous and gigantic. They can predict what will happen next.
Of course, keep it fun. Fun, fun, fun.
Kindergarten
This is when things can suddenly feel more official. There are phonics lessons and sight words and decodable books and reading groups and assessments. Perhaps for the first time, there’s a sense that somebody is keeping track.
And this is where parents can accidentally turn into the least helpful person on the reading team. If your child shows signs of stress about reading, stop.
Tennessee literacy specialist and former second-grade teacher Cassandra Altuzar Jamison talks about the “power of yet” — shifting a child’s thinking from “I can’t read” to “I can’t read that yet.”
Her philosophy is simple: Children need time, support and adults who believe they can learn. That little word — yet — may be one of the most useful words a parent can bring into the reading conversation. Because children are not little machines. They do not all arrive at the same milestone on the same Tuesday morning. Some will read early. Some will need more time. Some will sail through decoding and then struggle with comprehension.
That’s why your job is not to diagnose everything at the kitchen table.
Long before a child becomes a third-grade reader, they are becoming something even more important: a person who believes that books belong to them. That begins in infancy, with a baby in your arms and your voice reading a story they cannot possibly understand yet. It continues through the toddler years, when you read the same ridiculous book for the hundredth time. It grows in preschool through songs, rhymes, questions and stories. And in kindergarten, when the letters finally begin to turn into words, it becomes something you can see.
See, the goal was never simply to get a child through third grade. The goal is to give them a lifetime of places to go.
