There are several things we hope will come to pass for our children. We want them to be smart so they can be well-equipped to make decisions an separate good from bad. We want them to be creative so that they are able to solve problems and stand out amongst their peers. We want them to feel loved so that they know they never have to go it alone. When it comes to achieving all three at once, there are few things as potent as reading to your child.
As a parent, you want to give your child the best start in life, and one of the most powerful ways to do that is by reading to them. Reading to your child from an early age can have a profound impact on their mental, emotional and social well-being. Let’s hop right into discussing what the biggest of these benefits are.
Benefit 1: Language Development
When my nephew was a kid, my teachers used to praise him for his understanding for the English language at such a young age. They thought that there must’ve been something special that had been done at home, but it wasn’t really that phenomenal. He just liked to read, and so that’s what he spent a lot of time doing. Almost any time he was asked where he learned a certain word, the answer was “I read about it in a book”.
Reading to your child exposes them to a much larger vocabulary than what they’ll get during their day-to-day activities, and so it helps them develop their language skills. It exposes them to new words and phrases that they won’t hear anywhere else. Pick up a book right now and I bet you’ll find at least one word per page that isn’t used in everyday conversation. Not every word is useful, obviously, but the compounding effect it can have for children to learn all these new words is priceless.
Benefit 2: Cognitive Skills
Reading to your child will also help improve their cognitive skills. When you read to your child, they are actively engaged in the story, using their imagination to visualize the characters, settings, and events that are taking place. This, in turn, helps develop their critical thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making skills.
The brain, after all, needs to be used and worked out just like every other part of our body if it is to stay healthy. It’s no shock to anyone that parents are busy people, and so they sometimes find themselves doing what they can and hoping that school will handle developing their brains. The fact is, however, that schools are only equipped to do so much. Giving your kids that extra time before bed or whenever you can fit it in will pay dividends far into their futures.
Benefit 3: Bonding Experience
Children crave a deep parental bond; it is something that is biologically wired into us at birth. There’s a reason that there are so many fully-grown adults struggling with negative childhoods involving their parents, and that is partially due to the fact that people often discredit the importance of this need during our developmental stages.
Reading to your child is a great way to bond with them. It provides an opportunity for one-on-one time where you can cuddle up and share a story together. It can help strengthen your relationship and build a sense of closeness and trust between you and your child. It’s also nice because it is a forming bonding that can help them “calm down” rather than rile them up like a game or toy might. This can make bedtime much more manageable for parents with kiddos who hate going to bed.
Benefit 4: Imagination and Creativity
We talked about this some in the 2nd benefit, but it’s also important enough that it warrants its own listing.
Reading can spark your child’s imagination and creativity, helping them develop their own ideas and perspectives. Being imaginative is a major benefit for a kid, especially when it comes to staying active and building their creativity. That same creativity and out-of-the-box thinking that their imagination provides will serve them greatly as adults when they are faced with problems that can’t be solved using conventional methods. If you look at a lot of high-level job descriptions, creativity and problem-solving are often near the top of the requested skills.
This is especially important because children do not culturally get a lot of time through the day to flex their ‘imagination’ muscles. They spend the day at school working primarily on academics, and then at-home they may have chores to do or get themselves tied down to their screens. As such, it’s important to fit in creative time wherever is possible to help them balance out the other skills they are building.
Benefit 5: School Success
Speaking of academics, it is a no-brainer that getting read books will help their grades at school as well! After all, books were the primary method of passing knowledge down from one generation to the next (prior to the advent of the internet). To be able to absorb the ideas and experiences of others during their youth can lead to a child that is very gifted scholastically.
This is especially true if the child enjoys being read things that aren’t fictional. Very few children are going to want to have a biography or textbook read to them, but most kids have passions that they’d love to read more about. Maybe it’s dinosaurs, space, Ancient Egypt? In any case, you can pass on information about their interests to them so that they’re well-equipped when that subject comes up during classtime.
Benefit 6: Social and Emotional Development
As we talked about in #3, a parental bond is super important for a myriad of reasons. One of the reasons we want to highlight extra, in particular, is the benefit it brings to a child’s social and emotional development.
Child psychology is a very complicated thing, especially since your kiddo’s brain develops so rapidly. That being said, there are some basic principles we can keep in mind when it comes to our children. If we spend time with them in a positive light, they will feel that they are safe and accepted for who they are. If they feel safe and accepted, then they are more likely to try new things or approach life with a growth mindset. If they approach life in this manner, they are much better geared for success – which is a stark contrast to kids who are more concerned about being accepted by their peers because they don’t feel supported in other areas of life.
Benefit 7: Love of Learning
I don’t think it’s a big surprise to anyone that most youths and adolescents don’t really find school all that enjoyable. Given this simple fact, it’s easy to see why many adults don’t end up finding much interest in the idea of learning more than they have to in order to survive. For most kids, it starts in a very simple place: school = learning, school = not fun, and so learning = not fun.
As parents, we want to fight this mindset with every tool at our disposal. Teachers in schools are limited in the ways they are allowed to present educational material, so it’s up to us to figure out how we can show kids that learning can be a ton of fun. While reading with them isn’t the only method of achieving this, it is certainly an effective one that has minimal drawbacks and can be started at a very young age.
They’re Only Young Once
Parenting is difficult; there are no ifs, ands, or buts about it. To try and balance your child’s needs with your own (personal and professional) can be a daunting task when there’s only 24 hours in any given day. I’ve known many parents who, given the pressure, will prioritize their career growth or their personal relaxation higher. There’s always tomorrow night, right?
While it’s important to have balance in life, and we definitely encourage people to take time for themselves, it’s also really important to think about the opportunity cost. Your child is only going to be interested in “mommy and daddy reading time” for so long. After that, they will be pre-teens, teenagers, and then spend the rest of their life as adults. If you wait too long, that time could slip by before you know it, and we can’t get it back.
If you got this far, we’re glad we could be of some interest! Reading to your child isn’t something you’ll regret doing during your twilight years. I’ve spoken with many young adults about it. Those who had their parents read to them are grateful, and those who didn’t wish that it had been a possibility. In the end, if this helps move the needle towards you being able to spend some reading time with your kiddo, then we will consider it a success!