Fine, as long as you accept that the main purpose of reading a story aloud is to relax and <i>enjoy the story together</i> rather than to develop skills. Just as the main purpose of lego and similar toys is not to develop 'hand-eye coordination' but rather to build cool stuff. (Whatever claims are advertised on the packaging.)<p>This isn't a trivial point. If you read stories with the intention of fostering skill development you will neither inculcate skills nor get the most out of those stories.<p><i>>parenting coach</i><p>Ha. The idea that there exist professional parents who explictly know what they are doing (with footnotes and sources) is a major conceit in our present culture.
I probably get as much out of reading to my daughter as she does. I absolutely love some of the stories. I will be very sad when she gets to an age when she no longer wants me to read to her. Mind you, a friend of mine was still reading to his daughter when she was 18, so hopefully I have a few years to go still!<p>Any recommendations for childrens stories that are a must read?
Why is this an article at all?<p>I also believe that playing video games with your kids has benefits. Also throwing a ball. Even kicking the ball with kids (btw, do not do that with baseball ball - lesson learned). Or just walking and talking about shit (sometimes literally).<p>I'm just sarcastic here (and angry on myself): I did many mistakes of not being around for my first kid but I'm trying to fix up with second and third. Please do listen to the old guy: spent time with your kids. Period.
Studies which divide people into two groups and do "$THING_WITH_LIKELY_POSITIVE_EFFECT" on one group and <i>nothing</i> on the other group are not very interesting or convincing IMO.<p>Normally, unless done really badly, initiatives like the one described here will have a significant positive effect.<p>More interesting studies follow the pattern of comparing different potential initiatives, or even better, comparing a surprising initiative with an obvious one. E.g. some studies have indicated that giving school children chess coaching improves their maths scores more than extra maths lessons.<p>That said, I'm hugely grateful to my parents for being very involved in reading aloud and telling stories while I was young. I'm convinced without the results of this study that there was a huge positive effect.
I just want to share my story. My son always seemed to be behind his classmates. He's a bright, articulate, has an excellent spoken vocabulary, and a has wonderful sense of humor. He just always seemed to struggle in school through the early elementary years.<p>My son especially struggled with reading. In an effort to help him with reading, I spent huge amounts of time forcing him to read different books. I used Anki to help him memorize difficult words.<p>I did help him, but by the fourth grade he was still behind his classmates<p>Everything changed one day when I decided to back off and instead read to him (and my daughter) every night for pleasure. I stopped asking to read part of the book. I tried different books and quickly my son and daughter started to enjoy the nighttime ritual of being read to.<p>About half way through Roald Dahl's book the BFG, something clicked in my fourth grade son. He started reading the BFG on his own. Then he started to read during school downtime. When I'm driving him somewhere he is often now reading books in the backseat instead of playing games on his iPad.<p>My point is reading fun books to your children can help them fall in love with reading and thus make them want to read.<p>If I could give any advice to new parents is to read to your children every night (maybe take weekends off :-) ) and try and just have fun reading interesting stories to them.<p>Hopefully my son has found a lifelong love of reading, which will serve him well.
There have been multiple and ongoing studies that show reading to your child helps develop multiple parts of the brain, including auditory processing capabilities that are essential to early reading development. The diversity of words matter, even the positive nature as opposed to negative tone of words matters.<p><a href="https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/word-gap-speak-more-words-to-your-preschooler-daily/" rel="nofollow">https://www.greatschools.org/gk/articles/word-gap-speak-more...</a> is one article that discusses some options but the original study can be found here:<p><a href="http://www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/TheEarlyCatastrophe.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www.aft.org//sites/default/files/periodicals/TheEarly...</a><p>There have been follow on studies discussed here<p><a href="https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/22/key-to-vocabulary-gap-is-quality-of.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2015/04/22/key-to-vocabul...</a><p>That show it also has to do with the diversity of words, and even their tone (the positive vs negative) that is a key driver towards how well they engage and grow.
Just anecdotally, reading is the most powerfully positive shared experience I have with my kids, and we do everything together. We paint pictures, play outside, eat dinner, watch movies, play video games together, etc. But reading is different; when I read to them, they're quiet, they're well-behaved. They are really paying attention.<p>It's not the activity they <i>enjoy</i> the most, and it's not proactively educational (at least not in the sense that I'm forcing numbers and letters down their throat), but it just seems to turn them into a different sort of kid for a few moments.