We know the benefit of children learning to read as soon as possible. But did you know that reading with them can improve their literacy?
November is National Family Literacy Month, and it stresses that reading with our kids and not just to them can not only build language skills, but also create memories for parents and offspring alike, according to the National Today Calendar.
In short, children will learn that reading is worthwhile because their parents believe it, too.
“It’s no secret that activities at home are an important supplement to the classroom,” notes the website readingrockets.org. “There are things that parents can give children at home that the classrooms cannot.”
No age is too early for children to read with parents, because kids learn to love the sound of words before they know what they are.
“At just a few months of age, an infant can look at pictures, listen to your voice and point to objects on cardboard pages,” explains the website. “Parents can guide (a) child by pointing to the pictures and saying the names of the various objects.
“By drawing attention to pictures and associating the words with both pictures and the real-world objects, your child will learn the importance of language.”
Experts recommend reading out loud with a child at least once a day at a regularly scheduled time, according to readingrockets. You can skip a day if need be, as long as you read as often as possible. In families with more than one child, parents should try their best to read alone with each child.
“Reading aloud to kids can benefit them cognitively,” offers Deborah Farmer Kris, an education journalist and parent educator, in an article for PBS, because brain scans show hearing stories strengthens the part of the human brain associated with visual imagery, story comprehension and word meaning.
The 1985 report “Becoming a Nation of Readers” concluded that the most important activity in building literacy in children is reading aloud to them.
“It’s a truism in child development that the very young learn through relationships and back-and-forth interactions, including the interactions that occur when parents read to their children,” wrote Dr. Perri Klass in a 2018 article for The New York Times.
Klass also quotes a study that provides evidence of just how sustained an impact reading with young children can have, shaping their development in ways that can even go beyond literacy.
“The parent-child-book moment even has the potential to help curb problem behaviors like aggression, hyperactivity and difficulty with attention,” she pointed out.
“We think of reading in lots of different ways, but I don’t know that we think of reading this way,” said Dr. Alan Mendelsohn, an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine, in the New York Times. Mendelsohn was the principal investigator of the 2018 study, “Reading Aloud, Play and Social-Emotional Development,” published in the journal Pediatrics.
“When parents read with their children more,” he stated, “they learn to use words to describe feelings that are otherwise difficult, and this enables them to better control their behavior when they have challenging feelings like anger or sadness.”
So the value of reading with kids can’t be stressed enough. Think of it the way astronomer Carl Sagan might have.
“A book,” he once said, “is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
