The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) announced a new policy directing pediatricians to encourage reading to babies. Pediatricians are urged to use each contact with families to promote reading aloud and conversation from the earliest weeks of life, according to Dr. Pamela High who wrote the policy.
While I’m delighted with AAP’s new stand, they’re a bit late to the party. Programs like Baby TALK have been giving books to families of newborns for decades, encouraging parents to surround their babies with an environment of "language, literature and love" which was Baby TALK's motto at our launch in 1986.
Educators and parents have known for a long time that early reading in the home impacts children's emergent reading skills and more. Children read to from birth have a more natural approach to the written word and stronger conversational skills. They have a deeper vocabulary and sense of language usage.
Parents and children who’ve read together since the beginning also share a view of the world based on the many stories they've shared. Early interaction sets the pattern for how families communicate throughout their children's growing up years.
I understand that pediatricians needed to wait for the hard science in order to establish this policy, but that evidence has been around for some time.
In 1995, researchers Betty Hart and Todd R. Risley spent two years studying 42 Kansas families. They identified that children of wealthier professionals who read to their babies heard words millions more times than children of less educated, low-income parents. They identified this 30 million word gap in the lives of toddlers as “The Early Catastrophe.”
Given the high stakes for children to arrive at school ready to read, many efforts have arisen through the years to provide books to families and support parents' mastery in reading, talking and singing to their children from the beginning. And while reading readiness is a great result, even greater is the increased closeness parents and children share as these activities support the building of their relationships.
So welcome to the effort, AAP. Maybe if we all work together, little ones and their parents will get the support they need for this most important task.