From the moment your baby is born, they begin taking in the world around them – absorbing all the new information that’s exposed to them – whether that’s through simple play or reading.
Books are a powerful tool in these early stages of life, helping to aid with the cognitive and emotional processes and development, whilst also simply being a fun and enjoyable activity for you to do with your little one.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the benefits of introducing reading to your baby.
Relaxing Your Baby
Bedtime stories are great for getting your baby relaxed before sleep, and as days can be quite overstimulating for the youngest members of the family, reading acts as a form of downtime away from those busy daytime activities.
Spending that one-on-one time reading with your baby when it’s time for sleep helps them feel safe and secure, comforting them after they wind down. It establishes a calm environment, soothing them during those more difficult nights where sleep doesn’t seem to come so easily.
Encourage A Love Of Reading
Introducing books at an early age helps to encourage a love of reading, imperative for their future educational needs. Stories help to develop their imagination and retain information, setting them up for learning in years to come. As they grow older, reading will become more interactive, allowing you both you and your child to begin discussing certain aspects of the book and helping them develop their own thoughts and ideas about the story they’re reading. Asking them simple questions about characters, what they think happens next or what options they’d choose if they were part of the story will all help to develop cognitive processes, getting them to think for themselves and come up with answers and solutions to the questions they’re asked.
Improve Listening & Attention
Reading starts to help your baby focus, understand speech patterns and rhythms and centres their concentration. Becoming more attentive is great for developing their communication, and whilst they’ll be too young to fully understand or follow along with stories in the first few months, starting reading from that stage of life will start to build all of these skills that makes them more adept to understanding books and details when they become more alert and curious to their environment.
Improve Their Language Skills
Exposing your baby to new vocabulary and sentence patterns boosts the development of language skills, letting them learn new words, what they mean and how language works in general. As you read, the rhythm, speed and pattern in which you tell these stories will aid their language acquisition and help them learn how to express themselves when they begin talking.
How To Read To Your Baby
When you read to your baby, being animated can make the experience more enjoyable and engaging. Use different voices for each character, change your tone and pitch and put emphasis on certain parts of the story that are important to keep their attention locked on you. Point to pictures and make facial expressions that correspond with the emotions in the story, keeping your baby entertained and helping them understand the stories better by connecting words with actions. Books that are created to be interactive, using different textures, buttons for sounds or having flaps that can be lifted are all beneficial to keeping your baby fully engaged with reading as their curiosity begins to grow.
By reading to your baby, you’re laying the foundations for development and improving their listening and language skills that will aid them in life going forwards. There are many books on the market for children to enjoy, so start you little one’s journey into the world of storytelling and imagination today.