Milkbank Blog

It’s never too early to read to your kids

March 5th, 2009 @ 6:00
Written by Jason Sperber

Tonight, like every night since I can remember, our eldest daughter’s bedtime routine ended with books. Though the number of books has varied over time, the routine has evolved to include two books, both chosen by our daughter [who I call "The Pumpkin" on my own dadblog and so will do so here], one to be read by mommy ["la dra.," my wife the doctor, of course], and one by me. And since her birth just six weeks ago, the routine now includes propping her little sister ["The Button"] up on the pillow next to her for mommy’s story, before she takes her out to feed or rock her and I finish up with The Pumpkin’s bedtime.

I can’t imagine not doing this, or not reading to my girls throughout the rest of the day, or not surrounding them with all the books I can afford to, just as my parents, both public school teachers, did for me. Apparently, though, there’s been some talk lately that more parents are reading to their kids less, at least according to a recent study of British parents. Of course, the study’s a little suspect, as it was commissioned by a television network as part of its promotion of a new literacy-focused kiddie show. Even more disturbing, to this book-loving dad, was the study’s finding that only 3 percent of the dads surveyed read to their kids at bedtime.

The concern raised by this kind of study, of course, is that if reading to young children is important to fostering early literacy, then not reading to children will negatively impact that literacy. But this isn’t the only study floating around the internets on this matter lately. Another posits that it’s not time spent sharing books between parent and child that’s important, but how orderly the home and household is in fostering early literacy. Counterintuitive? Considering that much of my home’s perpetual clutter is made out of books, I’d think so. But this study goes further to speculate that order, as a manifestation of higher level executive function, only comes into play in households in which parents can already afford to spend lots of time reading to their children and surrounding them with books.

All this reminded me of a book I read in my education classes, anthropologist Shirley Brice Heath’s Way With Words. Two working-class communities in different cultural contexts showed varying degrees of literacy and reading, and one key predictor seemed to be how “print rich” a home was—that is, how surrounded by a variety of reading materials a child was in her home. While another recent article points to the challenges (and opportunities) computers and online technologies pose to the inculcation of the reading habit—in a world in which more people get their news online than from print media, does “print rich” necessarily mean having tons of books around?— for me, as a parent, the bottom line is this: for both my daughters, I want them to love reading as much as I do.

How do I do this? By taking them to bookstore storytimes when they’re still in infant carseat carriers. By surrounding them with, and letting them play with and get familiar with, all kinds of books and magazines and newspapers, and yes, the computer too. By getting them to see reading as fun, as a treat rather than a chore. And I know that, because of what we’ve done with our eldest, our new baby won’t only be getting this from us, but from her big sister as well.

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