A Speech Pathologist’s Guide To Reading With Your Child
There are so many reasons to read books to little ones (especially during the current lock-down)! Cassie and Chloe from Inner North Speech Pathology share their creative and professional tips on getting the most out of reading to your children. Below they explain why reading with your child is so essential in setting young minds up for emotional and academic success.
Reading and sharing stories with children has been found to be one of the best ways parents can prepare their child for learning to read. BUT did you know there are also many additional (and lesser-known) benefits to reading to your child from an early age?
8 TIPS FOR READING WITH YOUR CHILD
Find a quiet place. Turn off the TV or radio and move away from noisy places.
Choose an age-appropriate book. The Australian Parenting Network has book suggestions for many ages: https://raisingchildren.net.au/babies/play-learning/literacy-reading-stories
Let your child hold the book and turn the pages. Don’t worry if you skip pages or don’t finish the book, the goal is to make reading an enjoyable experience.
Talk about things in the book. Discuss the characters, what you think might happen or relate the story to something in your own life.
Give your child time to respond. You don’t need to read or talk for the entire duration of the storytime, give your child time to respond in any way they can e.g. babbling or pointing.
Don’t pressure your child to respond. Instead of asking your child to copy, you praise them when they do name something, repeating what they say e.g. “You’re right, there’s a dog!”.
Don’t be scared to read the same book many times. Repetition helps children learn the language in books so it’s ok to read the same story again and again (and again and again and again). Similarly, try reading a new book if your child becomes bored of one.
Don’t read for too long. Young children get bored quickly so read for small amounts of time, often, and build up to longer durations as your child’s attention span improves.
REASONS TO ENCOURAGE READING
Language Development
Reading daily to young children, starting in infancy, can help with language acquisition through the sheer exposure of varied sentence structures and vocabulary that books provide. The language used in books is often more descriptive and uses more formal grammatical structures than that used during face to face conversations and books provide a good opportunity for children to hear words they may not be exposed to during their everyday activities. Language acquisition is an important precursor for successful literacy and social skill development and reading to your child is one of the best ways to assist in their language development.
Cognitive Development
Reading to children has been found to help with their overall cognitive development (the ability to think and understand e.g. problem-solving, remembering, and decision making). Through stories, children are exposed to a number of different situations and environments that they may not otherwise experience. These learning opportunities prepare a child’s brain for the world around them and develops their ability to make sense of new situations as they arise.
Improved Creativity & Imagination
Young children are naturally drawn to imaginative play and reading or creating stories together is a great way to foster a child’s ability to use their imagination through the exploration of places, times, people and events beyond those they have actually experienced. This can also help to stimulate your child’s curiosity. Taking breaks during a story to discuss a character or an event with your child is another way to encourage their imagination or help them understand new or frightening events and the emotions that go along with them.
Increased Attention
Often toddlers are unable to sit and listen to a book being read to them from start to finish however regular reading with your child will eventually result in their ability to attend to an entire story. As they grow, this increased attention will be beneficial to many other areas of their life and will produce stronger self-discipline, a longer attention span and better memory and information retention which will serve them well as they enter school. Remember that while it can initially be difficult to capture a young child’s attention long enough to read a book together, the act of reading a book from start to finish is not the most important thing when reading with an infant. Simply looking at and talking about books has many benefits.
Academic Success
Many studies have shown that children who are read to from an early age have stronger language skills, a higher number of words in their vocabulary and are more likely to learn to succeed in learning to read when they enter school. Through the process of shared reading children are exposed to the way books are held (up the right way vs upside down) and pages turned, the way words look on a page, the correlation of these words to spoken sounds, the differences between similar words (rhymes) and how words and sentences are combined to form stories. These are some of the foundations required to learn to read and by exposing your child to reading frequently and from an early age you will set them up for literacy success.
Bonding
Reading to your child is a great opportunity for the two of you to bond and forge a strong relationship. These quiet times will provide them with a sense of intimacy, love and attention and are perfect for building a strong connection. Any quality time spent with your child is worthwhile and the added benefits that come with reading makes this and activity you should invest in. Babies thrive on being nurtured and feeling reassured and are soothed by the sound of a familiar voice reading to them. One on one reading times is also a great time to sneak in a cuddle!
Creating A Love of Reading
If you can instil a love of reading in your child at an early age then they will be motivated to read on their own and are likely to continue to do this for the duration of their life. While reading can transport us to an alternate place in times of despair and create a sense of pleasure it is also the mode with which we continue to learn as we age. Modelling good reading habits is ultimately setting your child up with the possibility of lifelong learning and starts with reading to them in infancy.
Speech Pathologists Chloe Shields and Cassie Wilcox studied together and share passions and philosophies. Together they hold extensive and far reaching experience in all aspects of speech pathology.
