Reading is so important! You hear it all the time, but why? Well, imagine going through life not knowing how to read. Not a pretty picture. It would be frustrating, for some embarrassing. I was having a discussion with Cousin Bernie who has studied child development. I told her I read to Pinky everyday, and I enjoy it. I just didn’t understand how important it was to start reading to her at such a young age. Daddy started reading to her when she was in my tummy.
So after reading Pinky three books, because Pinky kept bringing them over to her, Cousin Bernie brought up a very interesting point. We read to our children when they are babies so they can learn how to read. Here’s the punch line, reading isn’t just reading the words on the page! We can’t expect our children to arrive on their first day of kindergarten and start reading, or wait for that time to begin teaching them to read. We need to prepare them. And that is exactly what we are doing when we read to our children in their earliest stages – we are preparing them to learn how to read. How to open a book, how to hold it right side up, how to look at the pictures, how to imagine, how to read the words, and how to put the sentences together. Cousin Bernie even said that the action of Pinky bringing her a book to read is a part of the learning and development. It displays her interest in reading.
If you think about it, we are also nourishing our children’s hunger to learn and be educated. We are setting them up for success. Books share knowledge, they contain the information we need to learn new things. As we continue to read to our children at every stage in their mental development and physical development, they in turn learn how to read through the sounds, the repetition, the pictures and so on.
Reading is important during every stage of a child’s life. After some online research, I found that reading is an important form of stimulation. Here is a list of reasons why it is important to read to your children early on from KidsHealth.org.
Reading aloud:
- teaches a baby about communication
- introduces concepts such as stories, numbers, letters, colors, and shapes in a fun way
- builds listening, memory, and vocabulary skills
- gives babies information about the world around them
Here’s my personal theory about why we are encouraged to read to our children before they are even born:
1) The bonding experience, enough said! Who doesn’t love bonding with their babies?
2) To train ourselves as parents to continue reading to them because even if we don’t understand at first why it’s important to read to them, eventually we realize it! .
The bottom line is, read to your children! In my last post, I mentioned a saying that goes, the most important 20 minutes of your day, should be spent reading to your children. They know so much more than you think, and they learn ten times faster than we ever could! At least now in our old age 🙂
Let us know what thoughts you have about reading and what books are your favorite. Happy Reading! Thanks to Cousin Bernie for sharing her knowledge.
Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young, but set an example for the believers in speech, in life, in love, in faith and in purity.
1 Timothy 4:12 NIV