The Importance of Reading to Your Child

I have written a blog post about this before but I find it too detrimental to a child’s learning not to restate what I feel might be the obvious. There have been numerous studies linking consistently reading to your child to academic success in school. In fact, studies show that reading to your child before the age of one and continuing throughout childhood is beneficial for proper brain development and is linked to higher-level thinking along with language acquisition and literacy skills. This is because reading to your children in the earliest months stimulates the part of the brain that allows them to understand the meaning of language and helps build key language, literacy, and social skills.

So how do you go about reading to your child properly? That’s right, I said “properly.”

Many times, as parents, we are tired when it comes to reading to our children with enthusiasm and detail. It is so easy to just open the book, read the words written, close the book, and move on. The amount of time spent on the book is as little as possible and the learning that could have taken place falls by the wayside.

Here are some tips for you to follow when reading to your child DAILY.

1. Point out the cover of the book and where the binding is. This tells children the front of the book and that the binding should always be on the left-hand side.
2. Discuss the title page and why it’s called the title page. Based on the title, what is the story going to be about?
3. Do a picture walk through the book. Look at all of the pictures on each page and try to have the child figure out what the story might be about, who the characters are, if it is fiction or non-fiction, What the mood of the story is, etc.
4. Discuss tricky words you might come across prior to reading the book and have your child listen for those keywords during reading.
5. Talk about how you might feel or your child might feel if they were in the shoes of the main character for the day. Why would they feel this way?
6. Discuss the setting of the story, the problem that arises, the plot and the solution. Your child is NEVER too young to hear these keywords that they will be hearing during their schooling years.

Formative years are so detrimental to your child’s future academic successes.  By putting key strategies in place, you are giving them the advantage and boost they need. Why not enrich your child’s learning the best you can for as long as you can?!? Happy Reading!