It is a well-known fact that regularly reading to your young child can enhance your relationship with them. Spending time with your child is one of the most significant ways to positively influence their development. Reading together provides a fantastic opportunity to establish a consistent, shared event where you can enjoy spending time with each other. Through shared reading, your child will develop a sense of trust and expectation that you will always be there for them. This trust is critical to young children and cannot be emphasized enough.

Reading a favourite book to your children not only helps you bond with them, but also gives your children a sense of intimacy and well-being. This feeling of intimacy helps your child feel close to you, and the feelings of love and attention encourage positive growth and development.

Especially with infants and toddlers, they may not be able to understand what you’re saying when you read to them but reading aloud provides a level of invaluable nurturing and reassurance. Very young babies love to hear familiar voices, and reading is the perfect outlet to create this connection.

Reading daily to young children, starting in infancy, can help with language acquisition, communication skills, social skills, and literacy skills. This is because reading to your children in the earliest months stimulates the part of the brain that allows them to understand the meaning of language and helps build key language, literacy and social skills.

At a broader, more scientific level, it’s the parent-child relationship, nurturing relationships between either mother or father and children that set a positive life course. If you are able to read aloud with your child at a predictable, scheduled time that fits with the daily routines of home and school, you’ll be able to provide something constant that they can expect and likely even look forward to.

Reading aloud together and having a shared activity gives you and your child something to talk about, which in turn supports the development of reading and writing skills. And down the road, reading together can be used to discuss real-life experiences and issues. A children’s book can provide springboards to meaningful discussions about many different topics which can further develop a child’s critical thinking skills. Reading to your child helps to expose them to all types of subjects and concepts, building our children’s understanding of humanity and the world around them.