Why Is It Important To Read To Your Child?

Before you learned to read, you might remember your parents reading to you.

Reading to your child is a great way to help them build their own literacy skills.

However, there are a whole host of other benefits associated with reading to your child as well.

At Forte Speech & Language Therapy, we’re a clinic that provides at home and online speech therapy in LA and the surrounding area.

In particular, our team specializes in pediatric speech therapy.

So we understand the importance of the first few years of a child’s life from a developmental perspective.

On our speech and language therapy blog, we often cover topics related to certain speech and language delays and disorders.

But today, we’re taking a look at how reading together can provide so many wonderful benefits for your child and your relationship with them.

What Happens When You Read To Your Child?

Reading to your child is a great way to plant the seeds for their own literacy, it’s true.

But there’s much more to it than that.

Let’s take a look.

They Learn New Words

Children learn to speak words through hearing them.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Do Children Acquire Speech Sounds

Their brains take in the words they hear and they start to develop their own language repertoire.

In fact, exposing your child to words even before they can communicate is a great way to help build these language pathways in their brain.

A 2019 study by Jessica Logan looked at the number of words a child might hear based on how much they were read to by the time they reached their fifth birthday.

Children who were never read to might hear 4,662 words.

But children who were read to just 1-2 times per week would have heard 63,570 words.

And if you read five books a day to your kids?

They’ll hear a whopping 1.483 million words.

That’s a gap of more than a million words.

The more words they hear, the more words they’ll learn.

Building your child’s vocabulary can then translate into school and work and make learning new topics in these environments easier.

They Develop Their Social Skills

Books can help provide children with a model for social language that they can use in their day to day lives.

This includes learning things like:

• Taking turns
• Kindness
• Respect for others
• Social greetings

These are all important for helping children learn to interact with others.

In addition, your child can learn how to handle difficult situations in a constructive way.

For instance, as your child is getting ready to start school, you can read them a book that teaches them about kindness and consideration in the classroom.

They Develop Greater Empathy

Empathy is an important skill that involves the ability to understand and share the feelings of others.

Reading to your child helps them develop this skill of empathy.

It teaches them about diversity and appreciation for others.

Stories are, after all, designed to provide you with someone else’s point of view.

Reading a story about a child who’s a different ethnicity than they are, for example, can help them foster a sense of tolerance and compassion.

The same is true for stories about neurodiverse people, disabled people, the opposite gender, and more.

If your son or daughter has a child with cerebral palsy in their daycare or classroom, reading a story about a kid with the same diagnosis can help them better understand the challenges they face.

RELATED ARTICLE: How Can Cerebral Palsy Affect Speech?

In addition to learning about others, children learn about their own big feelings by seeing characters display them.

You can use reading time to help your child develop awareness of these big emotions and teach them skills to cope with them.

They Feel More Connected To You

Children benefit from having consistent, uninterrupted time with their parents or caregivers.

Therefore, reading to your child, even just for a few minutes, allows for this connection and supports cognitive development.

It’s the experience of hearing your voice and sitting with you in particular that gives your kid these benefits.

This is especially true for young children.

They Learn More About The World

You may notice that kids have a natural curiosity about the world around them.

It can feel like they have a thousand questions a day, and there’s always a “why” to follow whatever answer you give them.

Reading to your child is one way to help your child gain knowledge of new ideas.

This includes ideas they may not be exposed to in their day to day lives.

You can also help stimulate this knowledge building by asking them questions about the characters or asking them to make predictions about what may happen next.

This can help them discover the answers to some of these curious questions and also help them learn about animals, places, and events that occur in the real world.

How Old Should A Child Be Before You Read To Them

When it comes to the “when” of reading to your child, there’s no such thing as too early.

Kids of all ages benefit from being read to.

There are even benefits to reading to your child before they’re even born.

Reading to your baby in utero can help to develop their language skills.

When your baby is born and as they start to grow, continuing to read to them helps continue to expand their vocabulary and discover new speech sounds, words, and concepts.

They’re able to build on the vocabulary they’ve acquired and use it for important aspects of their lives, such as work and school.

Children who are read to early on in their lives end up having larger and more complex vocabularies by kindergarten than children who are not read to daily.

But, while it’s beneficial to read to your child early, what you read is also important depending on their age.

Let’s explore this more.

What Should You Read To Your Child

As a newborn, your child may not be too fussy about what you read to them.

In this case, you can read what you want to read to them.

As children age, they will be able to understand and pick up on the content of the books more.

In this case, reading content that is relatable to some aspect of your child’s life may allow you to open the door to a wider conversation that can support their growth and learning.

In addition, reading can be externally or internally rewarding.

In an externally motivating situation, this would involve giving a reward, such as money or candy, for reading.

However, if your child is read something they enjoy, they are more likely to pursue reading on their own.

Reading is enjoyable in itself when it involves your child’s own interests.

It’s always a good idea to build intrinsic motivation, especially when it comes to reading.

Furthermore, repeating these same books over and over will help them master certain words, sentence formations, grammar, and more.

When your child is old enough to read to themselves, you can then read books beyond their current ability level.

It allows them to continue to develop their language and literacy skills, while also building their independence.

If you’re a multilingual family, these same benefits apply regardless of the language spoken.

They’re also transferable from one language to another.

Book Your Appointment With Forte Speech & Language Therapy Today

Is your child having trouble learning to read despite your best efforts?

If so, it’s possible they may have a learning disability or another underlying issue.

It’s important for you to recognize the signs of a speech or language delay or disorder in your child, to get them the intervention they need early on.

Here at Forte Speech & Language Therapy, our experienced speech-language pathologists can help.

We offer speech therapy for children in a compassionate, strengths based, neurodiversity affirming environment.

Book your appointment with our speech therapy clinic today, to get started.