I’ll be the first to confess that I don’t have a lot of winning or proven parenting advice. My son, a fourth-grader, is skillfully acquiring the language of profanity and last month broke two windows in the garage after hurling a baseball in anger. My daughter has drawn on the walls of her room and won’t let anyone comb her hair. Sometimes my kids do their chores without too much pleading, even though it’s attached to their allowances. And they’ve said unkind words to me, and some of their friends, and that hurts. But there is one area of parenting that I confidently say has positive, long-lasting, even lifesaving outcomes: reading aloud to your children. Read to your kids, that’s my best piece of parenting advice.
Reading is one of the lowest barriers of family activities short of playing with a cardboard box and wooden spoon. Books are free at the library, and I know of one pediatrician’s office that gives away books to kids during their wellness visits. You can find books in Little Free Libraries across the Flathead Valley. Thrift stores sell tons of kids books. Chances are you already know someone who’s gifted you many books for kids or is culling their shelves now that their children have outgrown certain titles. Books are accessible, and kids books are simply brilliant.
The simple pleasure of reading every day to your kid has a massive positive impact on their development. Researchers have found that reading aloud has cognitive benefits, and brain scans showed that hearing stories strengthened the part of the brain associated with word meaning, story comprehensions, and visual imagery. Nearly 40 years ago the landmark “Becoming a Nation of Readers” report concluded that the single most important activity to build knowledge and literacy success is reading aloud to children. Despite ongoing research that indicates how much reading aloud to children builds their vocabulary, helps the brain develop, and provides emotional connections, the rates of reading aloud, and reading for pleasure in the United States ,continues to decline. This past spring, a recent report indicated that parents reading aloud to children is at an all-time low. Only 41% of children ages zero to four are read to frequently, and one in five boys ages zero to two are never read to. Less than half of parents surveyed reported that reading was fun and considered reading to their children as a subject to learn rather than an activity for pleasure. The study also found that reading rates in children, especially boys, continues to drop dramatically.
I’m a writer and a bookworm, so my bias is that books are fun, more fun than most other activities other than skiing, rafting, and playing in the woods (and in that order, too) so it was always a natural impulse to read to my kiddos, even when they were infants. My own parents, who had their faults as all parents do, read to my brother and I nightly throughout my childhood. My husband’s family has a similar love for books, and he grew up listening to his mom reading books before bed. I drop the ball a lot as a parent and sometimes do and say things I wish I could take back, but I have never not read to my kids. It’s what we do to celebrate, it’s how we calm down when we feel upset or angry, and it’s how we connect. We laugh, sometimes we cry, and we dare to dream about what it would be like if we were picked to join spy school or found ourselves in the type of deep, deep snow that Robert Munsch writes about. It’s the enchanted hour, says Meghan Cox Gurdon, who’s book is titled exactly that. The cognitive, social, emotional, and relational benefits of reading come out of it not as a forceable exercise like doing burpees but the fun of twisting your tongue while reading Green Eggs and Ham.
Coupled with these alarming statistics in a drop in reading rates is an increase in depression and anxiety in children. A lot of the indicators point toward raising children in a digital culture and their reliance on social media, video games, and screens are causing detrimental impacts.
Reading aloud, even if it’s for 15 minutes before bedtime, is an antidote. Reading rebuilds those connections that screens sever. Reading fosters connection between humans while social media frays them. Reading is a lot cheaper than a Nintendo Switch and typically doesn’t result in constant negotiation on screen time rules.
Very few areas of parenting, including feeding and educating, are free from often conflicting advice. However, reading is not. There are no adverse effects unless you are the kind of person who has a low tolerance for toilet humor and in that case, please skip the Captain Underpants series. Otherwise, start with “once upon a time” and keep going.