When to Start Reading to Your Baby

Why are we as parents encouraged to read to our children way before they have all the skills that are necessary for them to see, pay attention, and understand the story? Reading is actually an activity that can be experienced with our children at any age.  Each age and stage will provide its own unique learning opportunity for your child.  As a newborn your baby will love to hear your familiar voice.  Your voice will soothe and calm your baby.  Your voice is the first voice your baby recognizes and responds to. Listening to the different tones of your voice, how you pause and start at different points in the story will help train your baby in the finer points of language use. At a few months old, your baby will be relying on his sensory system to figure out the many things in his environment.  At this point your baby will want to look at, touch, and taste the books.  This is a good time to have plastic and cloth books handy. Don't be discouraged if your baby appears disinterested, crawls, walks away, or rips a book.  This just means that your baby is not interested in the story at this moment. Keep trying and eventually your baby will develop the interest in books that you have been anticipating. Introducing sensory books with varied textured pictures to feel, movable parts, and shiny interesting pictures are a great way to cultivate initial interest in books. Once your child has learned what a book is through his senses he will develop an interest in the book as a story.  Your toddler will now start to recognize the book’s pictures and learn to label them increasing his vocabulary. With repeated reading your toddler will begin to anticipate seeing items and people that are familiar helping build his memory and attention. You can help build your Toddlers language skills by using songs and sounds in the story that he can anticipate and eventually participate with. I have found that rather then having a great variety of books to read to babies and toddlers they actually prefer the same books over and over again.  Give your toddler the opportunity to turn the pages of the book and "read" the book him self when he is feeling comfortable and familiar with the story. As your toddler's attention and interest in books increases you can use the books to have your toddler look for and find various pictures and items on a given page or answer questions related to the story. So reading to your child at every age and stage has its benefits. The younger you start reading to your children the sooner you will help them build the skills they need for independence with literacy.