If you have young children, you should read to them every night before bed. This study shows why.

We all want to be the best possible parents for our children. But it’s also true that parents’ lives are more hectic than ever.

In the past, society moved at a slower pace, and there were fewer things for parents to have to deal with. Nowadays, with the pressures of work and just everyday modern existence, it can feel impossible to commit to all the things that people say that parents “should” be doing.

Of course, parenting is a balancing act, and every parent can be forgiven for spending some time on their own self-care now and then. But one thing that every parent of a pre-k child absolutely should try to fit into their routine is to read to their child every single day.

The reason why parents should read to their young children every day is simple: the children get a huge developmental advantage if parents do this. This isn’t just an opinion, but a fact, and it has some incredibly solid evidence behind it.

The advantages of young children being read to every day were discovered by one of America’s leading colleges, Ohio State University.

The college conducted a study on the amount that parents read to their children before pre-k and analyzed what kind of advantage the children who were read to the most had. The results were stunning.

Children whose parents had read them one book a day had heard 290,000 more words by the age of five, giving them a huge advantage when it came to learning.

And kids who were read an average of five books a day by the age of five had a whopping 1.4 million word advantage over children who hadn’t been read to at all.

The advantages of a child having an increased vocabulary should be obvious to all. The sooner they learn more words, the sooner they can form complex sentences and start learning more complex subject matter.

Ohio State University’s Jessica Logan, who works in the college’s Crane Center for Early Childhood Research and Policy summed the message up best: “Kids who hear more vocabulary words are going to be better prepared to see those words in print when they enter school. They are likely to pick up reading skills more quickly and easily.”

Sadly, Logan has also discovered some sad truths about the literacy of children in America. A quarter of children are never read to by the age of five. A further quarter of children were only read to once or twice a week by the age of five.

That means that half of American children are currently at a severe educational disadvantage the day they start kindergarten. And it’s all because their parents didn’t take the time out to read them a children’s book every day.

Everyone knows that books aimed at kids aged under five are easy to read to children.

They are short and only take around five minutes for a parent to read to a child. And yet, this activity has the ability to significantly boost a child’s chances of success in life.

The message is clear: take time out to read to your children. Reading five books to them every single day may be unreasonable, but reading one book a day to them is absolutely possible.

And just think, if you are able to read five books a day to your kid aged under five, they’ll probably end up in a great career and have enough money to buy you your own mansion when you retire! If that isn’t enough motivation to read to your kids every day, then what is?

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Source: Scary Mommy