Engaging Parents in Early Literacy Programs

• Parents aren’t to blame for the decline in early literacy, but structural pressures and behavioral frictions make it hard for them to engage with solutions, leaving children to start school behind despite aspirations.
• Reframing programs around immediate, tangible wins helps parents choose literacy today. Bite-sized commitments and low-friction delivery counter present bias and scarcity, directly addressing deferral and drop-off.
• Embedding storytelling, games, and heritage languages makes literacy programs feel inclusive and relevant. By validating identity, parents see “people like us” here—countering disengagement rooted in norms and confidence.
• Light-touch nudges, progress cues, and micro-commitments turn attendance into routine. By sustaining momentum and salience, families move beyond the first session and continue showing up.

For most children, their first introduction to the world of letters, words, and books is at home, whether through a bedtime story, games, or on a tablet. But globally, early literacy interactions are declining. In the UK, research shows that shared reading with young children has dropped sharply in the past decade: today, only 41% of children under five are read to frequently, compared with 64% in 2012. Younger parents, in particular, are more likely to see reading as a task to be ticked off rather than a joyful routine.⁵ 

Let’s be clear—unlike the governments that underfund early childhood education, parents and caregivers are not to blame. Many families face diverse and complex challenges that stop them from investing fully in their child’s early literacy and education. For some, reading is crowded out by long work hours and busy schedules, hampered by limited resources, or not considered due to a lack of awareness of how powerful a few minutes with a story can be. The result is a widening gap: children who arrive at school equipped with the skills to read, and children who are already behind at the start and struggle to catch up. On a global level, this translates into children who can easily read books by the age of 10 and others who can’t even read a single word or simple text by the same age.⁶

Across different cultures and societies, research has stressed the importance of family literacy programs in setting up young children for success in later life. In Qatar, a study found that kindergarten children whose parents participated in family literacy programs significantly outperformed their peers on measures of print concepts, phonological awareness, letter knowledge, vocabulary, and emergent writing.⁴ And according to research conducted in the United States, children whose parents regularly read to them at least three times a week are two to three times more likely to perform at their age level in reading once they get to school than children who weren’t read to.⁶ When parents attend early literacy programs, they are more likely to continue reading and writing activities in the home. This results in greater exposure to reading for the child and the fostering of a positive relationship with literacy. 

So what’s the key to getting parents engaged in their child’s early reading and writing, despite the complex barriers they face? While addressing structural barriers—such as access to books or busy lives—can go some way to solving the issue of parental engagement in early literacy, they won’t move the needle unless behavioral and perceptual challenges are also considered. By understanding families’ complex and diverse decision-making environments, educators, policymakers, and funders can craft solutions that truly meet the needs of children and their caregivers.

For many parents, especially those facing economic pressure, attending an early-literacy program is a real trade-off: an hour at a session can mean an hour not working a shift, not queuing for services, or not caring for another child. Around the world, parents reflect, “If I go this week, what will I get out of it?” When program benefits are framed as distant (e.g., “better test scores when your child takes their first exams”), attendance falters, despite parents’ genuine aspirations for their children. In other words, there’s no clear benefit in the moment. This discrepancy between how programs communicate value and how parents experience daily constraints is a central engagement hurdle. Studies have shown that despite strong evidence of the importance of parents as “children’s first teachers,” parental participation is persistently under-leveraged, partly because systems don’t meet families where they are.⁷

From a behavioral perspective, present bias and scarcity often drive decisions. When capacity or time is limited, immediate, concrete payoffs dominate decisions—even when long-run benefits are bigger. As noted in The World Bank’s World Development Report 2015, scarcity narrows attention to “now,” crowding out good intentions like course attendance.¹¹ Education programs that ask for big, ongoing commitments (“Come every Tuesday for 12 weeks”) also collide with the planning fallacy—parents overestimate what future-them can juggle. And information-only outreach (“Come, it’s important”) usually fails because it ignores the other important tasks that are competing for priority (e.g., healthcare appointments or shift work). 

So what do these challenges look like on the ground? In the UK, interviews with parents of under-fives found that even low- or no-cost supports weren’t always used because families didn’t immediately see how a given session would lighten this week’s load. Time, energy, and logistics often trumped generic “it’s good for development” messages.⁸ In low- and middle-income settings, early literacy initiatives often exist but aren’t designed around the lived realities of caregivers’ schedules and constraints, dampening uptake.⁹ 

Interventions that have fallen short tend to share common features: they over-index on information (lectures about why literacy matters), require large “lump-sum” time commitments, offer benefits that are abstract or delayed, and place administrative friction on parents (forms, travel, childcare). They treat parents as an audience for content rather than as decision-makers juggling competing priorities under cognitive load. The result is the “value gap”: parents and caregivers understand that programs are worthy, but they don’t feel worth it this week, causing them to be triaged behind more pressing needs. Unless this gap between what’s ideal for the child and what’s practical in the moment is properly addressed, attendance will remain low, even among highly motivated caregivers.

Parents and caregivers know that literacy matters, and most are motivated to create opportunities for their children to engage with reading.²⁶ A survey of American parents in 2019 found that 85% of 3- to 5-year-olds were regularly read to, while 96% were taught letters, words, or numbers by a family member at least once.²⁷ For those who can confidently read and write, they’re well aware of the doors that having a good level of literacy has opened for them. Likewise, those who struggled to gain a basic level of literacy recognize the daily challenges this brings. Assuming that parents don’t value their child’s literacy is a gross misinterpretation of the problem. 

Yet, reading and learning letters at home is very different from attending a scheduled literacy program outside the home. This brings its own unique challenges. Rather than assuming that parents aren’t bothered about literacy, programs need to encourage parents to commit to their child’s literacy and do it in a way that doesn’t adversely impact other aspects of their lives. This can be done by reframing program offerings and touchpoints so that the near-term value to parents is obvious, tangible, and easy to access. That means reframing benefits around “this week” outcomes (confidence with a tricky behavior, a bedtime routine that actually works, a new free set of local-language stories), shrinking commitments into bite-size modules, and stripping out friction (childcare on-site, transport vouchers, drop-in windows, hybrid delivery). UNICEF, for example, emphasizes that early childhood education platforms can mobilize parents effectively when they provide concrete, actionable support and recognize parents as critical stakeholders—not passive recipients.¹⁰

So why does this approach work from a behavioral perspective? By putting immediate rewards in front of parents and reducing the hassle costs that usually outweigh benefits, this approach directly counters present bias and scarcity. Small reductions in cognitive and administrative load can significantly increase follow-through with parent-based literacy programs.¹¹ Concretizing the promise (e.g., “Leave today with three games to build phonological awareness on your commute”) converts abstract value into immediate, graspable outcomes. This raises perceived return on the time invested.

In the Global South, Save the Children’s Literacy Boost provides a good example of how to make parent engagement feel easy and worthwhile. Its Community Action strand brings families together through reading festivals, neighborhood clubs, and simple at-home activities. These formats fit around busy lives and travel constraints by coming into the communities themselves. In other words, the program comes to families, not the other way around. Evaluations across Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Malawi, Mozambique, Nepal, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe found that Literacy Boost was linked to improvements in reading outcomes and richer literacy environments at home. While the magnitude of impacts varied by country and subgroup, several studies suggested that children from disadvantaged backgrounds benefited meaningfully when programs were designed to fit community contexts.¹²

In the UK, the National Literacy Trust’s First Words Together program takes a similar approach. Sessions are co-designed with speech and language therapists, anchored in practical, hands-on activities, and delivered through trusted local hubs such as libraries and Children’s Centres. According to external evaluations, parents leave with techniques they can try the same day, benefiting both caregivers and children.¹³ These successful interventions demonstrate the effectiveness of embedding programs into the lives of families.

One obvious application for this approach is clinic-adjacent “micro-sessions.” Programs can easily piggyback on pediatric or immunization appointments with a 10–15 minute mini-workshop and a take-home activity kit—meeting parents where they are and keeping friction to a minimum. If parents are already there for another commitment, they don’t feel that they’re losing time or juggling priorities. The clinic-based Reach Out and Read model in the US shows how this can shift parent behavior at scale. The program’s network of clinicians deliver information to caregivers about the importance of reading during routine pediatric sessions. They demonstrate how to position a book, use images and text to guide attention, and share practical conversation prompts tailored to infants, toddlers, and preschoolers. This initiative also leverages the trust that many parents have in their pediatric clinician, leading to greater engagement with key messages around early literacy. 

In many Global South contexts, workplace and market-day pop-ups can capture natural footfall: short, lively demonstrations on paydays or market days, delivered in local languages, align with UNICEF guidance on mobilizing parents through existing systems.¹⁰ Finally, hybrid “anytime” modules—WhatsApp or Telegram video nuggets paired with downloadable activity cards—let caregivers who miss an in-person session catch up asynchronously while preserving the social pull of occasional group meetings. Toolkits from Save the Children illustrate how to balance school-based content with community components so that families can dip in and out without losing momentum.¹⁴ By making the weekly payoff clear and the path effortless, programs become an easy “yes” within parents’ crowded decision space.

Even when logistics are solved, many parents still see literacy programs as “for teachers,” “for other parents,” or “for people who read better than I do.”8 Studies have shown that in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), mothers who had limited schooling lack confidence in their abilities to support early literacy.¹⁵ Similarly, in immigrant communities in the Global North, some parents face significant barriers such as limited local language skills and functional literacy, which impact their ability and confidence to engage in early literacy.¹⁶ In fact, a parent’s existing relationship with literacy and education can have a significant impact on their motivation to engage in literacy schemes. Research from the UK shows that parents who had negative experiences with schooling themselves were less likely to engage in early education programs that were held in educational settings such as schools.¹⁷ 

Low uptake is rarely about parents not knowing why literacy matters. When people feel a space isn’t “for us,” they avoid it, no matter how helpful it might be. That is, many people will make decisions on whether or not to attend based on the actions of those around them. So, when the visible norm is that “people like me don’t go,” participation drops, but if someone sees that “people like me do go,” they are more likely to participate. This is known as a descriptive social norm effect—similar to social proof—and it’s especially strong when the norm comes from a person’s reference group (people “like me”). 

The person delivering the information about early literacy programs can also have an impact on parental engagement. According to the messenger effect, parents are more likely to act when guidance comes from a source that feels close and credible rather than a distant expert.¹⁸ This is a particularly pressing challenge in the era of misinformation and disinformation, when families are bombarded with often competing messages on a daily basis. 

These dynamics are especially salient for immigrant and multilingual families in the Global North because language and systems barriers can routinely discourage engagement. Parents may worry that their level of local language, accent, or knowledge of “how the system works” is not enough, so they stay away even when a program could help.¹⁶ Majority-language-only materials can also unintentionally reinforce that distance.¹⁹ 

In practice, many outreach efforts miss the mark because they push content (“Come learn dialogic reading”) rather than identity and belonging (“Parents like you are already doing this—and enjoying it”). Qualitative work on family-based education interventions shows that perceived fit, confidence, and fear of judgment are common reasons caregivers don’t sign up or end up dropping out. These problems improve when programs change who invites, how they invite, and where sessions run.¹⁷ 

If parents don’t see themselves in the room, they won’t engage, and that represents a missed opportunity to leverage the benefits of parental involvement in children’s early literacy.

We often associate literacy with books, alphabets, and phonetics, which in turn are linked to academic achievement. For some parents, this can be intimidating and put them off participating in a program. But evidence from across the globe shows that some of the most profound and effective early literacy development can happen through “non-academic” mediums, such as storytelling, music, and traditional games. 

The Power of Parents project, which was implemented in communities in Ghana and Nigeria, demonstrates how recognizing parents as cultural custodians can redefine early literacy. The research was conducted through participatory community-led activities and interviews to explore literacy learning at home and in family environments. The findings revealed how storytelling, traditional games, songs, and even drumming are powerful literacy tools that parents already rely on at home to expand their children’s vocabulary, comprehension, memory, and moral insight. Importantly, parents reported that once they saw these activities framed as educational rather than informal or “just culture,” their confidence and engagement rose dramatically.

This approach holds real promise for literacy programs in both the Global North and Global South. In multicultural settings of the Global North—where immigrant families bring rich oral traditions and heritage languages—similar strategies could help literacy programs resonate deeply with potential participants. Rather than relying solely on standardized, book-based models, schools and community programs can co-create culturally relevant literacy toolkits and workshops with families, reinforced by immigrant or bilingual parent ambassadors. 

Similar culture-centered approaches can also address the challenge of majority language books or resources that don’t fully represent the identity of participating families.²⁰ A recent qualitative study in rural Zambia explored how parents engaged with a children’s book that was deliberately designed around local folktales and published in local languages.²¹ The book was distributed to over 23,000 households across two provinces, and researchers held focus group discussions with 117 female caregivers to understand its use and acceptability.

Parents described the book as both culturally appropriate and engaging. Its folktale structure resonated with their own childhood experiences, while the inclusion of morals and lessons aligned with community values. Caregivers explained that the pictures and simple language made it accessible even for adults with limited literacy, and they reported using the book in diverse ways: reading one-to-one with children, gathering neighbors for group storytelling, or letting children look at the illustrations independently. Beyond entertainment, parents believed the book was strengthening children’s vocabulary, preparing them for school, and fostering values like respect and sharing.

The study highlights how community-centered books can lower barriers to participation by making literacy feel familiar rather than intimidating. This has clear implications not only in low-resource rural settings but also in the Global North, where immigrant families may feel alienated by majority-language-only resources. Designing storybooks that reflect cultural heritage and everyday realities can boost parental confidence, invite extended family members into reading, and create spaces where families feel their knowledge and identity are valued. In both contexts, community-rooted materials can transform literacy programs from something “for others” into something owned and embraced by parents themselves.

Many programs see strong first-session turnout but steep drop-off afterward. Parents often turn up to the first session curious, hopeful, and motivated to help their children. This is then followed by steady attrition as each subsequent session sees fewer parents in the room. By the midpoint, only the most determined families remain. 

This drop-off reflects the intention–action gap: parents mean to return, but life happens.²⁴ Habits are often fragile and easily eroded when competing against multiple other priorities. Initial attendance is a decision made in a moment of enthusiasm, but sustained attendance requires repeated cues, reinforcement, and easy routines.

The barriers differ across settings but converge on the same outcome. Many of the roadblocks that parents face getting to literacy programs in the first place are the same ones that hinder continued attendance. In the Global North, parents cite clashes with work or school schedules, sheer fatigue, or simply forgetting amid crowded calendars. In the UK, parents of under-fives reported that even free, nearby sessions were often dropped after a few weeks because daily logistics made them too hard to maintain.8 In the Global South, parents’ fragile attendance is more often disrupted by irregular transport, long queues at clinics or government offices, or sudden demands for casual labor.²⁵ Missing even one session can break the routine, and without easy ways to re-enter, many never come back.

Program design can inadvertently exacerbate attrition. Long gaps between sessions weaken habit formation, while changing venues or times undermines predictability. Administrative friction—sign-in procedures, paperwork, or re-registration—adds yet another hurdle. Scarcity and limited bandwidth can make people acutely sensitive to such frictions, which can become decisive barriers even when motivation is high.8 

There is also the problem of fading salience. Parents often describe the first session as energizing: it feels new, useful, and social. But by the third or fourth week, the novelty wears off. If activities feel repetitive, overly theoretical, or disconnected from daily routines, the perceived return on time diminishes. Reviews of parenting program engagement find that when parents do not see clear, practical benefits each week, dropout rates rise sharply.¹⁸

This erosion has important equity implications. Families who are more likely to remain in programs are often those with more resources, higher baseline literacy, or stronger support networks. Those who fall away are the very families programs most hope to reach. The result is a skewed impact: the children who most need literacy support are least likely to benefit from sustained exposure.

Studies in other sectors (e.g., appointment attendance in healthcare) show that light-touch reminders consistently boost show-up rates, revealing how forgetfulness and logistical friction often drive non-attendance.²² In early childhood, text-based nudges like READY4K demonstrate that short, timely messages can change parent behavior and children’s outcomes—evidence that small supports shift real-world engagement.²³ 

Retention strategies like nudges, reminders, and progress tracking are powerful because they respond directly to the way people actually make decisions. Timely messages act as cues, cutting through the clutter of busy days and preventing the “I meant to go but forgot” problem that derails so many good intentions.¹¹ Showing parents their progress—“you’ve completed two out of six sessions”—taps into the goal-gradient effect, the natural drive to finish what we’ve started. 

Public commitments and reciprocity also play a role: a simple “see you tonight?” text from a facilitator or buddy can create a gentle sense of obligation that makes it harder to skip. Finally, how benefits are framed matters. Informing parents that they might miss out on a new word-play kit if they don’t attend leverages the cognitive bias of loss aversion, creating a sense of potential loss that is more motivating than generic encouragement. Together, these mechanisms convert intention into habit by making engagement salient, social, and rewarding.

In the United States, the READY4K program demonstrated that regular, specific text nudges improved parent engagement and literacy-related home activities. Evaluations also reported gains in certain early literacy skills among children, though the size and consistency of these effects varied. Teachers noted greater parental involvement as well, underscoring how light-touch cues can help sustain momentum without requiring large structural changes.²³ Community-based literacy programs like Save the Children’s Literacy Boost have demonstrated that when reading clubs, festivals, and circles are scheduled regularly, they build habits for families and normalize repeat attendance, especially in low-resource settings. 

These insights point to a range of practical applications. Programs could embed a WhatsApp sequence that not only reminds parents about the session but also highlights what they’ll gain and follows up the next day with a simple at-home activity, making engagement continuous rather than episodic. This is particularly effective in low-resource contexts where downloading a mobile app isn’t possible for everyone. Offering flexible “streaks” or catch-up modules—where parents can watch a short recording if they miss a live session—helps maintain momentum and taps into the psychology of keeping a streak alive. Designing buddy systems or small cohorts, where parents check in with each other and celebrate milestones like a five-week completion certificate, adds both accountability and recognition. 

When attendance is scaffolded like a habit—cued, easy, and rewarding—parents stay the course, and programs deliver the compounding gains early literacy needs.

Unfortunately, behavioral fixes like the ones described above are not magic bullets. Even the most creative tweaks can come up against structural realities. If transport, childcare, or stable funding aren’t there, micro-sessions and nudges will only go so far. While evidence from pilots in both Global North and South shows promise, many of these studies are small, short-term, and context-specific. As such, we know far less about whether enthusiasm and attendance translate into sustained literacy gains at scale and across regions. Cultural approaches, while a step in the right direction, also carry tensions. Choosing which stories or traditions to elevate risks privileging some groups over others, especially in diverse communities. 

Finally, a focus on behavior cannot let systems off the hook. It is not parents’ fault if they cannot show up; the larger problem is that programs are often underfunded, fragmented, and not designed for families’ lived realities. Behavioral science should therefore be seen not as a panacea but as a complement—helping families use programs more effectively once the bigger equity and resource questions are addressed.

The sobering reality that millions of children worldwide are entering school without basic reading skills exposes a gap that threatens not only their education but their life chances. Several behavioral challenges underlie this problem: parents setting aside literacy programs in favor of other pressing demands, parents opting out when they don’t see themselves in the room, and parents dropping away after the first few sessions as momentum fades. Each obstacle exposes the fragile bridge between parents’ aspirations for their children and the practical decisions they make each week. Yet alongside each challenge lies an opportunity: reframing benefits around what parents get now, creating spaces that feel culturally inclusive, and scaffolding engagement so that attendance becomes a habit rather than a heroic act.

Addressing these hurdles matters both locally and globally. If parents everywhere can be supported to engage more fully in literacy programs, the impact stretches far beyond individual households. In the Global South, this could mean transforming low-resource settings by harnessing traditions of storytelling, music, and community to support emergent reading. In the Global North, it could mean ensuring immigrant and multilingual families see their languages and identities reflected in programs, strengthening bonds across diverse societies. Wherever it is applied, behavioral design offers a practical way to bring parents into learning spaces and leverage their power as children's first teachers. 

Creating this shift requires partners who understand both the science and the social complexity. As behavioral science experts embedded in the education field, The Decision Labs bring deep insights into why people behave as they do—illuminating hidden barriers such as fatigue, identity disconnect, and cognitive overload. Our work—from designing inclusive learning strategies to developing scalable habit-based engagement models—creates high-impact, low-cost, and contextually nuanced solutions that can reach families where they are. 

Edunudging: The Future of Learning?

Bringing parents into educational spaces is hard, but sometimes reaching children can be even more of a challenge. Edunudging, the art of subtly changing a person’s choice architecture to “nudge” them towards desired behaviors, has been used in education settings for years. But in today’s digital age, questions around ethics, personal autonomy, and well-being have arisen. Dr. Lauren Braithwaite explores the current applications of edunudging and whether it’s got a future in our education systems. 

Gamification in Education: An Interview with Javier Velásquez

Want behavior change that sticks? Gamification has evolved beyond badges and points to become a sophisticated design discipline rooted in behavioral science. In an interview with The Decision Lab, gamification expert Javier Velásquez explains how his BEM framework blends timely feedback with intrinsic motivation—creating systems that guide learning through meaningful loops, encourage safe failure, and activate deep cognitive engagement. Rather than subtly nudging users toward choices, gamification makes tasks inherently interesting by harnessing emotion, feedback, and challenge.

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