Read to your children

I have many fond memories of reading to my daughter when she was little. "Read it?" was one of the things she would ask many, many times a day. I loved children's books, so it was a chance to revisit all my favorites as well as find new ones. As a parent, I knew it was good to read to her so she would eventually learn to read herself and express her thoughts in words, but I had no idea of the learning processes that were going on in her young brain.

From Reader, Come Home:
"When you read to your children, you are exposing them to multiple representations - of the sounds or phonemes in spoken words, of the visual forms of letters and letter patterns in written words, of the meanings of oral and written words, and so on across every circuit component. The young brain is setting down re-presentations of this information every time the child hears, sees, touches, smells books" (pg. 131)

"It is the stuff of conceptual and linguistic development (even though you might come to think it the stuff of something else entirely after the upmteenth rereading). Just remember that it is both contributing to the concepts and words your child knows already and laying the base for what comes next. Analogical thought builds within those well-worn pages, and language development flourishes. When you speak to your children, you expose them to words that are all around them. A wonderful thing. When you read to your children, you expose them to words they never hear in other places and to sentences no one around them uses. This is not simply the vocabulary of books, it is the grammar of stories and books and the rhythm and alliteration of rhymes and limericks and lyrics that are not to be found anywhere else quite so delightfully." (pg. 132 italics mine)

"Physical pages are the underestimated petri dishes of early childhood. Pages give physical substance to cognitive and linguistic repetition and recurrence, which provide the multiple needed exposure to the images and concepts on those pages which are the earliest entries in the formation of a child's background knowledge. I want children to experience the physical and temporal thereness of books before they encounter the always slightly removed, slightly ersatz screen. Many very young viewers all too quickly are literally and cognitively left to their own devices - to be continuously entertained by a very flat thing, which posses neither the lap nor the voice of their most beloved persons reading and speaking just to them."  (pg. 133)

When I read the above selections last night, I loved the way the author wrote of exposing children to "words they never hear in other places and to sentences no one around them uses." Do you remember learning a new word from a book that was so cool that you wanted to use it whenever you could (and sometimes incorrectly)? I can. Books can also become friends by their physical "thereness." You know exactly where to turn to find a favorite passage by where it is on the page to be reread again and again like comfort food for the soul.

As technically an "older" woman, I am often reluctant to dish out advice. but this is one area where I will encourage you. If you have children in your life, read to them with real books. If you don't have books at home, go to the public library. But read. Even the simplest board books can open up a world of discovery of all the good things God has made and develop the minds God has given them.

(Note: This isn't meant to guilt anyone. Read to your kids for the joy of it.)