Just read

If you've read here for any length of time, you are aware that reading to our children is extremely important to us. We start when they're babies and continue often though high school. J. still reads to Y. every night (her choice). Between reading out loud for school, reading at tea time, and reading at bedtime, we probably averaged well over an hour a day of books read out loud through the elementary and middle school years. 

There are so many positive benefits to reading out loud to your children:

• Increased vocabulary 
• Increased sense of how written English sounds
• Increased ability to follow oral speech
• Increased ability to follow complex sentence structure
• Understanding of the idea of story and story structure
• Connection between parent and child
• Exposure to stories a child might not be accessible if the child has to read the stories themselves 
• Exposure to different ideas and concepts
• Focus

I'm probably missing some benefits from that list. There is pretty much nothing bad that can happen as a result of reading to your child, but a whole lot of good. Since I'm always on the lookout for articles relating to reading out reading out loud, I was thrilled to come across this one yesterday about how reading to children improves their empathy and creativity. What was most interesting was the researchers learned that it is the actual act of listening to stories read out loud that improves a child's empathy and creativity, not because of anything else the parent did, such as pause to discuss the book. 

Other studies have indicated that children are evincing less empathy and creativity. (Actually it seems many people are evincing less empathy and creativity these days, so it's not really surprising that children are as well.) For this and all the other reasons I gave, children need to hear stories, and they need to hear them from the caring adults in their lives. Not from media, but from a real person. It's also not just little children who need this, though it does significantly impact a child's ability to learn to read; it is older children. Grade school aged children... Middle school aged children... I happen to think high schoolers could also benefit. 

Don't rush to have your child grow up. Enjoy any time you can snuggle up together and enjoy a book. Don't stop reading out loud just because your child knows how to read. You can share books together that they can understand but don't yet have the skills to read themselves. Reading together not only helps your child succeed academically, but it can also help them be a better human being.