The more you read and the earlier you start, the better for children’s learning. Discover the importance of reading to your child.

Importance of Reading to Your Child

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The more you read and the earlier you start, the better for children’s learning. Discover the importance of reading to your child. Reading to kids is an important part of running a home daycare.

books to read to children and a grown up reading to a small child

Importance of Reading to children

Sometimes it’s hard as a daycare provider or a parent to find the time to fit in reading to your children every day. It’s super important to MAKE that time. Your children will be better off for it and in turn, our future will be as well. 

The benefits of reading to young children include language development, early literacy skills, cognitive development, understanding of the world, a lifelong love of reading, academic success, problem solving skills and so much more. Children’s books nurture a child’s imagination and story time on a regular basis is one of the most important parts of your daily routine.

two kids laying on the couch with books.

Do you have a favorite reading memory as a child? Mine is when my 3rd-grade teacher Mrs. Nelson would read to us at circle reading time every day. She read us the Ralph books and the Ramona books by Beverly Cleary.

5 kids sitting on the couch looking at a book together reading

Recently, Beverly Cleary celebrated her 100th birthday. Bonding through reading helps kids to learn to build healthy relationships. Healthy relationships are the foundation for success. I still think of Mrs. Nelson fondly because of that reading time. 

Reading leads to school success

Reading to your child also helps them learn and understand interactions with others. This even further helps with building healthy relationships. It helps improve social skills which are the foundation to school success.

There are pathways in your brain that are formed through experiences upon which future learning follows. If those pathways aren’t built, future information cannot travel on them.

Reading helps build these pathways. The importance of reading is unparalleled. The more you read to your child, the more pathways are built. The earlier you begin, the more pathways are built. Children learn 50% of what they will learn in their entire lifetime by the age of 3, these are critical times to build on. Reading is a great way to build them. Cognitive skills are greatly improved by reading to your child.

Reading programs in daycare

Books take people on adventures to faraway lands. They teach life lessons. Reading helps us imagine or even travel through time. Reading to your child early will give them amazing ways of looking at things. It will help them develop a sense of wonder.

Children who are read to have higher vocabularies and develop earlier speech than they would if not read to. Vocabulary is linked to IQ and other types of intelligence.

The lack of strong reading skills gives kids many challenges in life. Studies show children who aren’t reading at grade level by third grade have a higher rate of continued struggle with reading as adults, are more likely to drop out of school in later grades, face unemployment, and even jail later on.

The root of many problems for people who fail to succeed is social issues. Many of them are rooted in a lack of education. Reading to your child can stimulate a child’s readiness for education. Literacy boosts economics, keeps families together, and reduces poverty. Reading is even shown to help reduce gender inequality for women in the workplace.

All further learning is affected by a child’s ability to read. Reading to children can stimulate the desire to read, the understanding that words have meaning, and the comprehension of what is being read and how to read themselves. The importance of reading to your child trickles down into every part of life. 

kids sitting on the couch and floor reading at daycare

It is vital for success in school and college. It also is vital for success in the workplace.

Reading is fundamental to so many other forms of learning. It’s necessary to cook a recipe, read a prescription label, operate equipment and so many other things that are vital for life. It’s the basis of everything else around us. There’s nothing more important than reading to your child for their development and future. 

Grab a book and read to a child today! You will be making a huge investment in the future. Or throw a reading celebration that will help them remember how much fun books can be!

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24 Comments

  1. Great post as always!
    Promoting the love of reading in children has been a great passion in my life.
    Reading is the key that unlocks all the doors 🙂

  2. I love this! I also am a firm believer tgat children should be read to EVERY day! I love the books you have in your pictures! We have some of the same books!

  3. Reading to our kids makes them want to read. All of our adult children LOVE to read. Sometimes life gets in the way, but loving reading has made them into continuing learners.

    It’s the best thing you can do for your kids and grandkids.

  4. I participated in the Early Birds Program and it taught us if you read out loud to kids 20 minutes a day from the time they are babies until 3rd grad they will always be where they need to be in school. It works.

  5. Reading to a child is one of the best things you can do for them. Even now, we do read alouds and audible books as a family

  6. I ADORE this!!! I have read to all 4 of my kiddos since infancy. Although the older two would rather read ‘how-to’s’, they still read!

  7. YES! Absolutely! When I used to nanny I would read to the baby – she was less than a year old, but I would read her children’s stories as well as novels like Little Women! It’s great for kids (even teeny tiny ones) to hear the language, the cadence of reading, and so much more! Big reading lover over here!

  8. This is so true! Some of my fondest memories are of my mom and I reading together. I try to read with the little girl I nanny, but often times she insists on “reading” it herself (she’s not even two and there is no reading happening) lol.

  9. I couldn’t agree more! We’ve been reading to my son since he was born and now he’s five and has a love of books. It’s a great way to bond with your kids and chill out after a long day.