It’s wintertime! Cold days and freezing nights are the perfect time to snuggle up with your child and a good book. From board books to young adult novels, reading is one of the most robust and valuable things you can do with your child.
The speech and language therapists here at Imagine Pediatric Therapy understand the value of reading aloud to children not just to build a closer parent-child bond but to enrich their language skills.
Reading builds vocabulary
Your child learns new words by hearing them in context. When your child hears a new word in a story, they learn how it’s pronounced, what it means and how to use it in a sentence. When your child is unclear about the meaning, it gives you both an opportunity to talk about what the word describes, whether it’s an action or an object, and explore what other words might have been used and why the author made that particular choice in their story.
Studies show that when parents read multiple stories aloud to kids each day, children start kindergarten knowing about 1.4 million words than kids who are not read to.
Reading builds muscles
We think of reading as just words, but exploring silly books with the littlest children introduces them to the joy of making sounds, which translates into stronger physical speaking capabilities. Encourage your child to imitate words such as pop, splash and wuff. Read “Mr. Brown Can Moo! Can You?”, and explore how they think a fish would kiss, how rain drops sound or how a hippo chews gum. All this sound-generating movement strengthens the muscles in their lips, tongue, cheeks and mouth, enabling them to enunciate as they grow.
Reading builds story telling skills
Enjoying a book with your child prompts story telling. As you end each page, ask your child what they think will happen next and why. Your child will learn quickly that stories and conversations can go in many different directions, with no correct or wrong conclusion. Your child will grasp the concept of past, present and future and build executive function skills like planning, memory, flexibility and inhibition control.
Because your child is thinking about characters in a deeper way, they also build empathy, putting themselves in problematic situations and working through all available solutions and their repercussions.
Reading expands horizons
When a child enjoys a story about a child in another country, it gives parents an opportunity to introduce them to so much more. Explore that country’s cuisine in the kitchen, learning to follow instructions, make accurate measurements and taste new flavors. Play games played in this different locale; you might discover a new family favorite. While all this discovery is going on, you’re also accomplishing the original goal of enriching language skills. Your child is learning new words, honing their ability to precisely create sounds and building executive functioning skills.
Reading aloud to your child can occur at all times of the day. Consider a short book at breakfast, a story as a get-home-from-school break, a pre-nap tale, or just a Sunday afternoon of book after book after book. Don’t forget bedtime, which is of course, a perfect way to help your child relax and fall asleep.
When you have questions about reading to your child, just ask your child’s therapist at your next appointment. At Imagine Pediatrics Therapy, we are always happy to help!
