Reading to kids: Benefits, book recommendations

MANILA, Philippines — With all the high-tech gadgets at their disposal these days, including laptops and tablets, plus all the computer games and movies they can access through the mobile phone, children hardly read anymore. Which is unfortunate for them.

Reading, after all, is one of the most incredible adventures that one can ever embark on. Books open doors to new worlds, provide entertainment, boost the imagination, and have positive neurological and psychological benefits on those who read them.

As Dr. Seuss, an American children’s book author and cartoonist whose real name is Theodor Seuss Geisel, puts it, “The more that you read, the more you will know; the more that you learn, the more places you will go.”

If reading is all that it is vaunted to be, then it means that one of the most valuable things parents can do for their children is to introduce them to the world of books by reading to them in the early years of their lives and instilling in them the love for reading.

Here, Fully Booked mentions some of the most incredible benefits that reading has in store for children:

Did you know that in the first few years of a baby, more than a million new neural connections are formed every second? Yes, that is how fast a baby’s brain is growing and developing its architecture.

Recognizing this, pediatricians urge parents to read to their children every day. In the U.S., for example, the American Pediatrician Academy has issued a policy for its 62,000 member pediatricians to become powerful advocates for reading aloud, every time a baby visits a doctor.

Even though babies will probably spit up, cry, or babble in response, their brains are actually absorbing every word.

Book picks for boosting brain development are "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by Eric Carle and "Hop on Pop" by Dr. Seuss.

Researchers estimate that babies who are read aloud to every day are exposed to around 78,000 words per year. This means that by the time they reach kindergarten, they would have accumulated around 1.4 million more words than children who are never read to. This piece of information is from a 2019 study, Journal of Development & Behavioral Pediatrics.

Therefore, reading to a