Dr. Perri Klass is a well known pediatrician, journalist and professor. She and I have been on the same page on many topics for years.
Here is her latest NYT article from April 2018, ‘Reading Aloud to Young Children Has Benefits for Behavior and Attention.’ Research confirms that shared reading with very young children has enormous benefits. Beginning with the closeness of parent and child sharing a book, we begin to understand its power. Shared reading fosters closeness, shared experience, reference points for both parent and child.
The challenge remains to get more shared reading into the lives of more families. My Read To Me Program focused on doing just that. Just giving a family a book as they leave the hospital with their newborn doesn’t create shared reading behaviors. Laughing, pointing and turning pages are all exercises guaranteed to support an unaccustomed parent reader’s best efforts. Seeing his/her baby respond to books is a kind of magic!
Thanks, as ever, Dr. Perri Klass for reminding and promoting reading with babies and very young children.
