image credit: Read Aloud, via Flickr

Most of us know that reading aloud to children is important, but what exactly is it that makes your daily reading routine so essential to your child’s wellbeing? Fear not faithful readers, you’ll be happy to know that your efforts are not in vain. Written language often differs greatly from oral expression, so by reading aloud to your children you are also exposing them to new ways of combining words. Bilingual children whose parents or other caregivers read to them in more than one language have the added benefit of reinforcing phonemes, vocabulary and sentence structure from each individual language. If you still have your doubts, decades of research have shown that shared parent-child reading helps develop skills such as hearing and distinguishing language patterns, rhythm and rhyme, labeling objects, learning the meaning of words, predicting what comes next, following simple instructions…(trust me, this list could go on and on).

So just how soon can your reading routine can have an impact on your child’s language development? Although babies don’t begin to associate sound with objects until around eight months, studies show that parents who begin reading to their children at four months are more likely to continue to read consistently to their children throughout their childhood. Bear in mind that your baby’s brain is still constantly growing and developing during his early childhood years, and reading aloud to your children is the number one tool for helping your child’s language development along.

The most important reason to read to and with your children in the early development years is the impact this will have on your child’s view of reading in the future. It has been shown that kids who enjoy reading with their parents will be more motivated to learn to read in school. Parents who take the time to read with their young children are setting the stage for strong literacy skills in the future. And the better your children read in both their languages, the stronger their mastery of each individual language will be. Your children will not only have a better grasp of the languages they speak and read, but they will also have a greater understanding of the world they live in. All that in one neat little package. Aren’t books cool?