Syncing up your heartbeat with your child
There’s so many fabulous things about reading together with your child.
Way up there at the top is the connection that is formed while you have your joint attention on the same activity.
What’s happening in this shared moment?
Your heartbeats can sync up, your breathing slows to match each other, and feelings of safety, love, comfort, and joy can be felt.
These feelings of emotional safety can be fostered and felt right through to your child’s own adult relationships.
Below are just a few of the additional and amazing benefits that come from reading with the young children in your life.
Language development
It’s no surprise to us that reading will help build language skills in your child, but it’s more than that - research also suggests that reading books together, the joint attention of you both focussing in on the same story is one of the most important factors in your child’s vocabulary development, which in turn helps them prepare for social relationships.
2. Bonding you together
And it’s even more than that!
Reading bonds you. It nurtures your relationship with your child. It’s time you spend together, often without television or phones, without needing to cook food or run to the shops for something. Reading together helps your child feel safe, comforted, and bonded to you.
3. Reading encourages play, and enhances imagination
New worlds are opened up, imagination is sparked and children can begin to conceive of places, creatures, people, and situations they haven’t experienced before. They can play at being a tiger, sailing a ship, being powerful and brave. Children can explore possibilities that do not exist for them in their day-to-day life.
4. Positive mental well-being.
Children who are connected with reading and writing are more likely to have stronger mental well-being than children who aren’t engaged with literacy. This can come about through developing an understanding of characters in books, having an opportunity to learn about other people's lives, develop empathy, grow in confidence, and begin to understand bigger issues. These concepts contribute to children’s world understanding and give them a solid base to understanding social interactions.
These are just a few of the positive benefits of reading with the young children in our life, - and there’s so many more!
Just knowing that the time we spend with them each day can foster a lifetime of wellbeing benefits is an amazing encouragement to make it part of our daily routines, (plus it can be a really enjoyable time for adults as well!).
Here’s a few of our other blog posts about reading with children
The day the libraries closed -
It's not what's on the outside, it's what's inside the book that counts!
Reading changes you, shapes you, and grows you
Plus here’s a resource about reading together at different ages
