Why Reading to Your Child is Important?Benefits of Reading to Your Child

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Reading to your child is very important for a good vocabulary, developing literacy, and a vivid imagination. A lot of recent studies have shown that there are more benefits of reading to your child the traditional way when they are still young. One study had evaluated the relationship between reading to your child at a young age and their language development when they started going to school. To evaluate this study, researchers conducted brain imaging to examine the activities in the brain of children who are read to by an adult and those that were not read to by an adult. The result shows that there is a much greater brain activation in the brain of the children whose parents read to at home. This region of the brain (the part of the left hemisphere) that was being activated is the same activated part in older children who are always reading to themselves.

Even though babies are only listening to what you are reading to them with no visual aids, they tend to develop more brain activity in the visual association area of the brain. Reading to babies will help them develop making visual associations especially when they are reading books without pictures. They will become better readers later when they grow up because the part of the brain responsible for language development is fully developing; this will make it easy for them to understand what is in the story easily.

Benefits of Reading to Your Child

1. Reading Together with Your Child Increases the Thirst for Knowledge

After reading a book to your child, the book will prompt your child to ask different questions concerning the information you read to them and the book itself. These questions will give you the opportunity to talk more about what is in happening the book, and you can also use this to improve their learning experience. Your child will also develop an interest in learning about different languages and cultures. Your child will love to learn, and his knowledge will be increasing.

2. Reading Helps to Increase Your Child’s Concentration

Although you may think that it is useless to read to a toddler or a baby who will only want to swap books, turn pages, or throw those books around, it is very vital to read to babies at this age. Reading to your child at this age will help to improve his or her concentration, and they will learn to sit for longer periods. When they learn this, they will have no problem concentrating in school classes.

3. Reading to Your Child Helps to Exercise Your Child’s Brain

Babies have small brains that are just developing and any slight teaching will help to improve their brains. Reading to babies will affect the activities of their brains. These positive effects will help to boost the support they need and also improve their reading skills when they grow up and started schooling. According to recent research, certain parts of the baby’s brain are affected when they are still young and when they are exposed to reading at home from a younger age. These changes are very important for the language development of your child. Read to your baby and increase their chances of effective language development.

4. Reading to Your Child Makes Him or Her Understands a Lot

Since you are not going to be reading just a type of book to your baby, your baby is likely to learn different things and a lot of topics. When you read to your baby, they grab from what you read, and reading more than just one type of book will help improve their knowledge. To give a wide range of information to your baby, you need to include different informative books on diverse topics to your babies like objects, places, and on animals. You can also get different books that will teach your child about vital life skills like diversity, being kind, and sharing among their peers when they grow up. To improve the understanding of your babies, you can get them amazing personalized books as gifts on their birthdays.

5. Reading to a Child Help to Improve Memory

While your child is still very small, reading to him or she will help stimulate his or her cognitive thinking skills, language skills, and boost their memory. When a child has all these skills, he will be engaged, and be creative. Such a child will encourage curiosity and have a creative exploration of what is happening in the world around them. You can see this benefit of reading to a child at an early age.

6. Reading to a Child develops His or Her Imagination and Creativity

Watching your child’s imagination and creativity growing is one of the great benefits of reading to your children. Typically, we imagine the characters in a story when we are fully engaged with such a book. We imagine the display as reality. The same thing happens to a child. The most amazing experience of reading to a child is watching them get excited when you turn to the next page because they are expecting something to happen. You can even ask your child to guess what will happen on the next page to boost his or her imagination and creativity. This will help develop the thinking ability of such a child.

7. Children Are Set to Succeed When You Read to them at Early Age

Your child will absorb more knowledge the more you read to them. However, children will surely succeed once they acquire enough knowledge. So, reading to your child will surely give him or her a head start when he or she starts school and later in his or her career life. Your child will be prepared for school when it is time when you read to him when he is still a baby or a toddler. Your child will have enough skill to start reading by himself when the time is right.
Once you started reading to your child at an early age, your child will learn how to read from left to right on a page, across the page, and turning of pages normally. All these are the skills that will improve their reading ability when they grow up. Once your child enjoys reading books, he will be the best in both literacy and language subjects and all other subjects.

8. Reading to Your Child Help to Build His or Her Vocabulary

Studies have shown that reading to a child can also aid in the growth of such a child’s vocabulary. Children who grow up from homes where they are talked to regularly and read to always are likely to develop a much greater vocabulary in the future. Reading to a child at an early age will give the child vocabulary words to be used for the rest of his life. According to research, it has been shown that a normal children’s book contains 50 percent more distinctive words than a usual conversation between two adults who are educated or in a television show.

Although babies may find it hard to understand the storylines and concepts of books you are reading to them, they will be comforted with your voice, and they will find meaning to the words with time. In fact, a child develops a greater vocabulary at the age of 3 with the words you read to him or her when he or she was an 8-month-old infant.

9. Reading to a Child Builds Language and Understanding

The ability to read depends on listening and understanding what is on the page. It also has to deal with the ability to work out what is printed on the page. Children are open to different words when they hear different stories. This will help them develop their own language and they will improve their understanding of what they heard from you; this is very important to them when they start reading on their own. Your child has to understand what is in the story and how stories work.

Although your child may not understand all the words in the stories you read to him or her, they will hear new phrases, words, and sounds, pronounce them, and became part of them. They will get to know the meaning once they start reading themselves. What you have to do to help your children once they start reading at school is to get them some books and improve their interest in those books. Give them books that will be fun and engaging by finding out what interests them. Also, read those books together when they came back home from school.

10. Reading with Your Child Improves Your Relationship with Him or Her

According to research, reading with your child is seen to improve and strengthen the relationship between the two of you and your family at large. The main way you can influence your child positively is by spending a lot of time reading with him. When you read to your children, they will trust you and the trust of kids cannot be exaggerated. You will not only get a stronger relationship when you read to your children, but you will also get a sense of well-being and intimacy from them.

With this sense and feeling, your child will move closer to you with increased feelings of attention and love which will boost positive growth and development in them. Although younger children may find it difficult to understand what you are saying but sitting together with them and reading to them always will improve the relationship they will have with you. This is because they will be hearing your sweet voice always and they will get used to it in no time. With time, they will wait for you or remind you to read to them in case you forgot or getting late.

Best Tips to Getting the Full Benefits of Reading to Your Baby

1. Be in a comfortable position and switch off distractions. You need to do this so that your baby will hear only your voice and not that of TVs or radios. Your baby will connect with you easily especially if you move to a quiet place or by switching off the radio or TV that may disturb you.

2. Always stay at the level of your baby by following his or her lead. Be restless or tired whenever he or she is restless or tired and try again later. It may take a while before you finish that book, you have to take it easy because babies have short attention spans.

3. Choose the right books to read to your baby; those books must have clear and simple pictures. Since the baby’s vision will still be growing up to the age of 6 months; so they may have a preference with high contrast shapes and patterns or black, red, and white books.

4. Sing, read and repeat to your baby! Sing your favorite songs and read your favorite stories over and over again to your baby. Your baby will be able to have positive feelings about book reading and full language development.

Above all, there are several other benefits of reading to a child, and these benefits are mostly seen when such a child grew up and started going to school. If you don’t know what to read to your children at an early age, you can try children’s stories of different types and on different topics. Your children will love to hear from you. You can also try some Phonics Reading Lessons for them to improve their verbal ability when they grow up.

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