Listening is one of the speech activities that a child first encounters. The sounds and words he hears from birth form his world over time and instill an imminent grammar in it. But listening to stories has a special role in children’s lives. Stories are an irreplaceable part of every growing up and have multiple roles in the formation of personality and the development of all aspects of a human being.
No child is too young to listen to stories, nor too old to enjoy their favorite stories that they have already heard many times. Sometimes parents simply have no idea what to read to them, so reading subscription box for kids comes as a very useful idea that you can read more about at bookandbear.com. Parents who read to their kids usually have children who enjoy reading. Reading and encouraging reading is important in a child’s social, intellectual, and emotional development, and the love of books is without a doubt one of the greatest gifts you can give him. Reading is an activity in which any member of the family can participate, and it brings numerous advantages for his further development. Why is reading every day important? These are just some of the reasons:
1. Vocabulary enrichment
Knowledge is the greatest wealth that a person can have and the only kind of property that no one and nothing can take away from him. If you pay attention to the daily conversation with your child, you will notice that everything comes down to repetitive sentences. Developing vocabulary and talking with the child about a wide variety of topics is crucial for the development of communication competence in children, and that is exactly why reading is important because in this way they are exposed to different sentences, writing styles, and ways of expression.
2. Emotional development
The development of emotional intelligence is important from a young age, and reading is a great way to boost children’s self-confidence and introduce them to different emotions that they can then verbalize more clearly, thus encouraging conversations about dealing with negative states such as discomfort, anxiety, or fear.
3. Improves speech and memory
When we read, we speak differently, talk about other topics, and are more articulate. For a kid who is old enough after a few readings, ask him to just retell the story. This is how you practice your speech, but also your memory.
4. Developing imagination
Children should be read aloud from birth so that they can associate reading and books with pleasant feelings, hear sounds, rhymes, and words so that they can use their senses of hearing, sight, and touch and make sounds and begin to understand that pictures depict certain objects from their environment. When we watch a movie, we just follow the audio and video effects, not leaving much room for developing imagination, but when we read to children, we enable them to create a vision and experience the story and characters in their own way.
While reading or listening to stories, children will try to imagine characters, places, events, and so on. While reading, we can also come up with answers to the problems we encounter in the stories – thus, we encourage the development of children’s creativity.
5. Making memories
People today live a fast life and very often do not have as much free time as they would like to devote to their private and social life and their family. In order to make them feel less guilty, parents often buy their children everything they want to make up for it. However, know that it is not the best solution because children do not remember gifts, but want you to create memories with them, and we are sure that holding a child in your lap and reading his favorite story is exactly what he will remember forever.
6. Developing compassion
Encountering different emotions arising from different situations described in the stories, the child develops empathy. In books, we can meet different situations and characters with different forms of behavior, which will later help the child to accept the differences between people.
7. Reading “between the lines”
As is known, writers often wrap real meanings and real messages in similes, metaphors, and other stylistic figures, so reading requires interpretation. Children need to be taught to read between the lines; they are not used to that deeper level of reading and that is one of the reasons why reading is not interesting to them. Once they learn to interpret the text in their head, reading itself becomes more interesting because they know how to turn a book into an interlocutor, and read itself into a conversation.
8. Mental health
Scientifically based research says that reading to a child from a very early age is as important for development as it is for meeting primary needs: food, safety, play, rest, and love. The synapses developed by reading are not developed by any other activity.
Final thoughts
Given that early childhood is the most intense time of human psychophysical development, it is quite clear that this time is ideal for introducing a child to the world of books. Of course, at that time, children still do not know how to read and write, but this does not prevent parents from reading picture books and children’s books to children.
Books are an excellent window to the world. They are full of the most diverse people, unusual and ordinary places, wonderful adventures, and interesting events, and reading is without a doubt the greatest gift you can give your children. Reading will contribute to bonding with the child, it will strengthen the bond between parent and child. It is also an opportunity to interact with the child because through various stories the child will learn life lessons that he will apply in real life. They will learn to sympathize with those who do not have much and be grateful for all that they have.
