Benefits Of Reading To Your Child

When your children are young, they learn so much so fast.

Simple things such as reading or singing to your little one can help them with their imagination, and can help them to learn to express themselves in new and creative ways.

If you’re hesitant to start reading to your child, here are just a few of the main benefits of reading to your child.

Why is Reading to Your Children Important?

Reading is an enjoyable activity both for parents and children alike, but there are a lot of reasons why it’s important. Reading your children stories can help them to learn words, sounds and language as they grow up.

For many children, communication from their parents and loved ones is often their first experience of language, and reading together is a great way to get your child used to the words they will likely use for the rest of their lives. It can also help them to develop critical early literacy skills.

That’s not all though! Here are some other things reading helps with.

Engages Your Child in Reading

As time goes on and more technology is created, children are starting to gravitate more towards technology, and may not even think to pick up a book outside of school.

If you read to your children, it helps them to appreciate the value in the stories and books they read, not to mention that it’s a valuable bonding experience between parents and children. 

Helps with Empathy

Reading isn’t just a fun activity. Part of the joy of getting engrossed in a book is that we really start to feel for the character, and we put ourselves in their shoes. By reading about other characters in books, children can start to understand more about other people, their feelings and experiences.

It can help your child to develop empathy. Not only this, but as your child develops empathy they can also learn how to better interact with their peers, helping with their social development.

Building Relationships

Ultimately, when you read to your child you are spending precious time with them, helping them grow. If you read to your child on a regular basis you are likely to develop a much stronger bond with them.

Reading is a shared experience, and it can also give you both something to look forward to every day. As an added bonus, it helps your child to feel loved and gives them that much needed attention that many children crave.

Building Imagination Skills

Often, reading is just words and pictures for children. When they see a book, they have to do a lot of the work themselves to truly see and experience the world that they’re reading about.

Children need to visualize what’s going on, and use their imagination to put themselves in that character’s shoes. As you can imagine, children can develop their imagination skills thanks to this and it can help your child’s creativity.

Improved Reading Skills

With any skill, practice makes perfect. This is certainly the case when it comes to reading.

Pretty soon, your little one is picking up a book all on their own without even needing your help! 

Building Knowledge

The childhood years are pivotal for gaining vital knowledge that your children will use throughout their lives. Especially young children get to grips with things like numbers, letters and colors.

If you have an older child, they may be able to expand on knowledge they already have. For instance, they may find out more about their favorite dinosaur, which may lead them to learn more about history and animals. 

Stress Relief

New situations can be quite scary for young children.

Reading with your child can help them to calm their anxiety.

Sometimes children can get scared about leaving their mom to go to their first day of school, and to counter this you may read him a book exploring how fun school can be to calm him down.

Better Academic Performance

Studies have found that children who were read to as children perform better academically.

This is likely because your child is constantly exposed to new experiences and scenarios through the medium of reading. 

Faster Speech Development

You may know that children can learn languages much more easily when they are very young. Children keep their ability to differentiate between foreign sounds while their speech is developing, and their brain evolves much faster up to the age of 5 than it does at any other stage of life.

In fact, if your child hears a second language a lot as a child, they are more likely to learn it. Each and every time you read to your child you are introducing them to key phonetic sounds that will later inform your child’s use of language. 

Better Concentration

Some children simply can’t sit still for long! Reading to your child can help your child to concentrate as they have to focus on the words being said.

It can also help your child to learn to sit for longer periods of time, which is an essential skill as they enter school.

Larger Vocabulary

When you read, you are exposing your child to all sorts of new words and phrases that they may not have heard otherwise in every day life.

Reading is a great way to get your child familiar with new and unusual phrases. 

Conclusion

Those are just a few of the key benefits of reading to your children every day.

By taking just an hour or so a day to pick up a book with your little one, you are helping to encourage them to become life long readers.

You are helping them to develop their language skill, and all while you bond with them.

A child’s formative years are so precious and fleeting, so helping them to get a head start at an early age can make all of the difference to raising a well rounded child.

Why not give it a try? You won’t regret it!