10 Reasons Why Reading Is So Important in Early Child Development
Reading lets you and your child take a trip into a whole new world of fact or fiction. Your child can become immersed in a world of learning, fun, fantasy, and their future reality. The benefits of reading on early child development are numerous, and they’re present whether you’re reading a book about the real world or a magic school bus. Reading should be part of your child’s daily routine.
10 Reasons Why Reading Is So Important in Early Child Development
1. It Aids with Brain Development
When your child’s brain makes connections very early in life, it forms the basis that all future intellectual ability and learning will be based on. Reading stimulates your child’s brain cells, and this lets the cells grow stronger. The cells then forge connections with other cells, and it leads to a heightened sense of learning as your child grows up.
Reading during early child development can lead your child to become a better listener, communicator, learner, and reader. If you read with them often enough in their early life, then you’re setting them up for a lifetime of enjoying learning. In fact, research on early child development shows that reading to your child can promote higher IQ and language scores all the way up to their teen years.
2. It Leads to Higher Grades
If children learn to love reading at a young age, then they’re creating a useful skill that they can use when they reach school age. They’re also expanding their vocabulary and general knowledge. The more your child reads, the more they’ll learn, and the more that improves their concentration and attention span. They also gain superior literacy and oral skills from the activity.
It will become much easier for your child to understand what they read, and they’ll learn to research what they don’t understand. Skills like this lead to higher grades, as children who can do these things have an easier time at school because of it.
3. It Has Psychological Benefits
Keeping the child psychologically engaged and healthy during early child development should be one of your priorities as they grow. Having a healthy imagination is vital in young kids. Letting them read varied age-appropriate books will ignite curiosity, spark creativity, and stimulate their growing imaginations. Being able to use their imagination will enable your child to easily develop empathy, morality, and problem-solving skills.
Having such a keenly developed mind can encourage your child to be independent from a young age. Being allowed to explore their imagination and figure out how the world works through books will also promote greater maturity. If your child only starts learning to read when they reach school age, then they can feel psychological pressure. If you teach them to read in early childhood, they won’t feel that pressure, and they’ll reap the psychological rewards.
4. It Can Boost Your Child’s Self-Confidence
Learning to read in school can often lead to psychological pressure, as mentioned above. This may lead to a drop in your child’s self-confidence. Social awareness is strong in children, even from a young age, so that confidence will take a huge hit if they struggle to learn to read while their classmates are excelling at it. These self-confidence issues can impact their self-image all the way into adulthood, so it’s best that you teach your child to read early.
Teaching your child to read early will ensure they’re confident when they have to do it in a classroom environment. If your child struggled when they were learning to read, then their teachers and classmates won’t know. All they’ll see is a smart young person with enough initiative to learn to read before starting school, and that will set the child up for a major confidence boost throughout their school life.
5. It Will Help Your Child Learn Better Communication
Communication is present in all aspects of life. When your child grows up, they’re going to need to know how to effectively communicate ideas verbally, in emails, in letters, and in other forms of writing. The best communicators have great grammar and a wide vocabulary. Communication also includes deciphering someone’s tone from text rather than speech, and reading will help them learn to do that.
A well-read child will grow up with better oral and written communication, comprehension, grammar, and spelling. This will set them up for a life of success in the classroom and outside of it.
6. It Will Help Them Understand How the World Works
The world is a complex and scary place for children. Growing up with a blissful childhood and happy home can leave children painfully unprepared for what awaits them when they reach adulthood. Reading stories about the different things that exist in the world will help them know what to expect from a young age. Reading books containing stories rooted in the real world will help them feel more confident when they enter different parts of the real world later in life.
Reading books about children slightly older than themselves will let them know what to expect in the next few years as they grow up and go through the school system. Letting your child read books about different cultures and practices around the world will ensure your child has lots of knowledge about the kinds of people and events they may encounter as they grow.
7. It Can Help You Build a Stronger Relationship with Your Child
Having an unchanging part of your day every day that you and your child share will undoubtedly strengthen your relationship. You’ll both have something to look forward to that you’ll associate with each other, and this will boost your relationship greatly.
Furthermore, the child will feel that they’re getting adequate love, nurturing, reassurance, and attention. This is vital for their well-being. You’ll also be happier knowing that your child feels safe, secure, and well looked after with you. Fostering a strong relationship from such an early age can lead to a better parent-child relationship throughout your child’s entire life. You’ll thank yourself for it when your child is a teenager and an adult.
8. It Can Teach Life Lessons
Books often teach your child a lesson hidden within a fun story. Non-fiction books broadcast those lessons outright in easy, understandable words that your child can take in. Learning life lessons later in life can be tough, as some life lessons directly go against your child’s view of the world.
Letting your child encounter and read how people work through different life lessons in early childhood sets them up knowing that life is varied, and new lessons lurk around every corner. They’ll also know that sometimes the world can be unexpected, and that’s okay, as they’ll know that they can handle it.
9. It Can Make Your Child Feel Less Alone
Children can be severely impacted by small things, such as being the only child in the class that’s allergic to gluten. Some children are the only ones with learning disabilities and physical disabilities, unique family situations, or differences in their appearance, too. This can lead to a sense of loneliness in your child, and it doesn’t matter how many friends they have or how many positive affirmations you provide them with each day.
Show your child books with characters they can relate to. This will help your child realize that they’re not alone in their situation, and there truly is someone else out there like them. Showing your child that their circumstance is normal and shared will boost their self-confidence and alleviate their fears. This is especially important in early childhood, as they’ll need that knowledge and confidence going forward.
10. It Helps Them Concentrate
The average human attention span isn’t very long, and in children, it can be even shorter. The world is full of screens and media that trigger a fast reward response in the brain, and it can hinder your child’s ability to concentrate on a task for longer periods. Reading with your child can help them overcome that difficulty, as they’ll be engaged in a highly rewarding activity, but it’s slow and requires concentration for them to get that reward.
This ties in with many earlier points. For example, better concentration leads to better grades and an easier time at school. It can even help them as they grow up; your child may end up more likely to reach for a book instead of a phone screen when they need to relax and be entertained. This will ensure your child’s ability to concentrate stays with them all the way into adulthood, and that will benefit them at work and in their future family life.
Would you like a great book to start reading with your young child? Visit KrystleJoyDegraide.com to get your copy of The Story of You by Krystle Joy Degraide. It teaches your child all about their time in the womb, and it’s a wonderful read for an eager learner.