Parents often treat the move from reading aloud to a child reading independently as a milestone to hit and then leave behind — like crawling before walking. In practice it's less of a switch and more of a long overlap, and treating it as an overlap rather than a handoff tends to produce more confident readers.
Independent reading ability arrives before independent reading enjoyment
A child can often decode words on a page well before they enjoy the experience of reading alone. Decoding is effortful in the early stages — sounding out letters, tracking a line of text — and effortful things aren't naturally enjoyable yet. If read-aloud time stops the moment a child can technically read solo, reading risks becoming associated with effort rather than pleasure, right at the point it should be building the opposite association.
What to actually watch for
Fluency, not just accuracy. A child who can sound out every word but reads haltingly, word by word, is still doing heavy cognitive work just to decode — there's little attention left over to enjoy the story. Independent reading time is more rewarding once words come without visible effort, even for simple books.
Whether they choose to read alone, unprompted. This is the real signal, more than any decoding test. A child who picks up a book during downtime, without being asked, has crossed into independent reading as a genuine preference, not just a skill they've been assessed on.
The overlap that works best
Keep reading aloud even after a child can read alone — just shift what you're reading aloud to books slightly above their independent reading level. This does two things at once: it keeps the shared, pleasurable side of reading alive, and it exposes them to richer vocabulary and longer sentences than they could yet manage solo, which pulls their own reading level up over time.
Meanwhile, let independent reading time be genuinely easy books — often easier than a parent instinctively wants to offer. A child rereading a book they've already mastered, alone, is building fluency and confidence, not "wasting time" on something too simple.
A rough shape, not a rule
Most children spend a year or more in this overlap — reading some things alone, being read other things — before independent reading becomes the default. There's no fixed timeline, and slower doesn't mean behind. The goal isn't to complete the transition quickly; it's to make sure reading stays something the child wants to keep doing once they can do it alone.