Parents’ Attitudes about Spending Free Time and Reading Habits of their Children

Abstract

Nowadays, a child's free time is more often structured after he has completed his duties in kindergarten and school. This structuring is most often organized by the parents themselves, taking into account their own children's preferences and possible shortcomings in compulsory education. Thus, children most often go to sports activities, attend music schools and foreign language schools. On the other hand, parents less often include their children in programs for the development of language abilities in their mother tongue and in the development of reading competences, even though the understanding of the content of many subjects depends on them. This is precisely why the aim of this work is to examine the attitudes of parents regarding the implementation of their children's free time and the reading habits of their family and children. One hundred and twenty parents of primary school-aged children participated in the research, filling out an online questionnaire, and the data were then processed in the SPSS program for statistics. It has been shown that more educated parents structure their children's free time more often and enroll them in foreign language schools and sports programs more often. It was also shown that the choice of leisure activities will depend more on the offer of the environment in which the child grows up than on the preferences of the child himself. It has also been shown that parents do not encourage their children to read books, except for mandatory readings, and that parents who read more will take more care of their children's reading skills.