Children love to be read to by their parent. They will take a book and ask their parent to read to them especially before their bedtime. But do you know that more than just acceding to your child’s request, reading to your child is very important and beneficial to your child?
Parent-child bonding time
After a hectic day at work for you and an equally busy day for the child, this is the only time you can find some time to get close to the child. And there are many choices for bedtime stories to help you bond every night with your child. . Usually after reading the book, I will also spend some time talking to my child and to understand how his day was in school. Many a times, he will share how he feels, whether it was a happy or sad day. So I cherish our daily bedtime reading time make sure I set aside time for it regardless of how busy I will be.
Reading to children at a very young age can lead to faster learning developments in all subjects when they are in school. Children nowadays need to master language well before they can even excel in mathematics, science and other subjects. As the child listens to the parent reading, they are actually learn the art of grasping the languages. Try to get books that are relevant for their age so that it is easier for the child to understand.
Every child learns how to speak by listening to their parents, siblings or people around them. When you read more books to the child, the child will definitely absorb more and speak faster and better than children with parents who do not read to them. They will follow the tone and pronunciation of words as they listen to their parents read.
Besides learning how to speak, the child will indirectly inculcate the skill of communicating with people around him/her from the reading of books. Choose books with more dialogues to read to your child. I will mimic different types of voices for different characters so that my child will better understand the story.
Relating to life experiences
Books are very good tools for parents to teach the child how to handle certain situations in real life, whether interacting amongst the siblings, friends or classmates. There are a lot of books which teach about sharing and other values which children can apply in their everyday life.
Longer attention span
It is never easy to get younger children to sit down for classes as they have very short attention span. Getting these children to sit down and read books from a young age will help stretch their attention span longer so that they can concentrate better in classes when they go school.
Let their imagination run wild with reading books. Books help to improve the child’s imagination and hence creativity, through their different characters and story plots. I will usually buy a variety of books for my children, ranging from simple life stories to fairy tales, to those about super heroes and outer planets.
Reading is fun
More importantly, we want our children to find reading a fun activity so that they will not resort to watching television programmes or playing with the iPad. Parents nowadays can get a lot of fun books for preschool to primary school children, readily available in the market.