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If your child reaches for an English adventure novel but leaves the Marathi or Tamil storybook their grandmother bought, you are not alone. Children tend to read in the language that feels easiest, and for many Indian children that is the language of school, friends and the bookshop shelf. A second reading language can come back slowly, through pleasure rather than rules.
Why does my child read only English books?
Usually it comes down to three things:
Practice. If every textbook and exam is in English, English reading gets hours of practice each week and mother-tongue reading gets almost none. The easier language wins.
Supply. If your shelf holds twenty English books and two in your language, both pitched below your child's age, the choice is made for them.
Identity. Older children sometimes see the home language as something for family visits, until they meet stories in it that feel current and fun.
Does reading only in English hurt the mother tongue?
Not in the way parents fear, but the mother tongue does need its own time. In 1979 the education researcher Jim Cummins proposed the "developmental interdependence" hypothesis: how a child's second language develops depends partly on the skills already built in their first (Cummins, Review of Educational Research).
Later evidence adds detail. A 2011 meta-analysis found a moderate to large correlation between children's first- and second-language decoding and phonological awareness, but only a small one for oral language, meaning vocabulary and listening comprehension (Melby-Lervåg and Lervåg, Journal of Research in Reading).
In plain terms: skills like sounding out words tend to line up across languages, so English reading is not wasted. Vocabulary is much less closely linked, so words in your language mostly come from hearing, speaking and reading that language.
India's National Education Policy 2020 says that "a language does not need to be the medium of instruction for it to be taught and learned well" (NEP 2020, paragraph 4.11). The same idea applies at home: an English-medium child can still become a confident reader in Hindi, Bengali or Kannada.
How do I bring back mother-tongue reading without pressure?
Keep pressure low. A 2012 review of 20 years of research on reading motivation found that reading out of curiosity and involvement went with more reading and stronger reading skills, while reading for grades or out of compliance showed small or even negative links (Schiefele and colleagues, Reading Research Quarterly). The authors note that cause and effect is not yet settled, but the aim is still a language your child wants to read in, not one they are made to.
Here is a four-week plan:
Week 1: Listen first. Read aloud in your language for ten minutes at bedtime, or ask a grandparent to tell a story on a video call. Your child only listens.
Week 2: Comics and pictures. Find two or three comics or picture-heavy books in your language, a level or two below your child's English reading. Put them where the English books usually sit.
Week 3: Read together. Take turns: you read a page, they read a speech bubble or a line. StoryWeaver, an open platform, offers free illustrated storybooks in hundreds of languages if your local shop has little choice.
Week 4: Family reading time. Fix one slot, say Sunday after lunch, when everyone reads for twenty minutes in any language, including you. Children often copy what they see adults do.
After four weeks, ask which book they liked best and get the next one in that series. If your child sticks to one kind of story, that is fine too; this guide to a child who reads only one type of book shows how to widen it slowly.
What should I say, and what should I avoid?
A few swaps:
Instead of "Why can't you read your own language?", try "Dadi loved this story when she was your age. Want to hear how it ends?"
Instead of "One page in Hindi first, then your English book", try "I'm reading this one tonight. You can listen or read your own."
Instead of correcting every mistake, say the word once and move on.
When your child slips English words into a retelling, let it go. That is normal, as our piece on why children mix languages and how to support them explains.
What about teenagers with a heavy study load?
For a Class 9 or 10 student, keep mother-tongue reading purely for fun: a comic on the bus, or a story with a grandparent. It should never feel like another subject. If schoolwork is what crowds out reading, Fermi's AI tutor works out what a student already knows and builds a plan for the session, so science revision takes less guesswork.
For ideas aimed at younger readers, read how to get your child to read in their mother tongue, then pick one week from the plan above and start tonight.
