Some Advantages of Reading to Your Child

If you want your children to be smart, helping them acquire a love for reading is a must.   If you read to them, this love for reading can be instilled in your children as early as in their first few months. 

Many studies have shown that reading to your child has many priceless benefits. 

For example, a study was made in a Rhode Island Hospital to compare two groups of eight-month-old babies – one group was read to often as babies, while the other was not.  It was shown that those who were read to have their “receptive” vocabularies (number of words they understand) increased 40 per cent since babyhood, while the non-reading group increased by only 16 per cent. 

Here are some of the advantages of reading to your children.

• Reading to your children helps you bond with them, and this gives them a sense of intimacy and well-being. 
• The intimacy of reading to your children is such a pleasurable experience to them that they will have a positive attitude towards reading as they grow up.
• It calms your children, especially when they are fretful and restless.
• It promotes increased communication between you and your children.
• Pre-school children who are exposed to language by hearing words that are read to them and in conversation tend to do well in school.
• It promotes longer attention span, concentration is an important skill for your children to develop.
• It builds listening skills and imagination.
• Your younger children learn about shapes, numbers, and colors, while your older children discover an expanding chain of knowledge.  Their interest in cars, for example, will expand to their interest in trucks, and other transportation like planes and rockets.
• Books teach your children about relationships, situations, personalities, and the difference between good and bad in the world they live in.  Fantasy books provide material for their imagination and free play.  Fairy tales fascinate your chlldren, and help them distinguish between what is real and what is not.

After a while, you may be surprised at how fulfilling reading to your children can become for you too. You will start looking forward to those minutes almost as much as your child.  Plus, you will have built another link of love in the bonding process.