Parents and educators juggle numerous responsibilities to give children the best chance of a happy future. Kids need to learn lessons in school while building skills at home, like becoming responsible for chores or helping their family members.
Reading is a childhood pastime that people often overlook, but it’s a powerful tool for kids to use early in life. This guide explains how childhood reading leads to success and what kids can gain from reading every day.
1. It Teaches Kids to Focus
Watching a movie or listening to music is fun, but it allows kids to let their minds wander. Books require their full attention if they’re going to understand the plot and follow it through to the story’s resolution.
Practicing their focus will help young children learn to slow down, focus, single-task, and perform better in school and their careers. Without it, they might never devote the necessary time and energy to each task.
2. It Introduces New Ideas
There’s only so much time in the day for school, but kids can continue learning at home through books. Stories introduce children to new ideas, cultures, and lifestyles that are crucial to interacting with the world. When they understand characters who teach them about diversity, they’ll be more open to new friendships with people who don’t look or live like them. By exposing children to diverse cultures and ways of thinking, reading helps prepare them for an open-minded, accepting future.
3. It Improves Memory Retention
Reading as a child improves grades in college by assisting in the development of memory retention skills. Research shows that people who read aloud retain memories more easily because the brain is actively involved in the effort. Kids who read will grow into teens and young adults who ace exams because their minds hold on to materials more effectively.
Reading also improves students’ grades because they have to surround themselves with books to find the information they need — which gives them good research skills. If they know how to find books on course content, they won’t guess on grade school tests that make or break their placement in colleges. Fewer visits to the library have actually been shown to result in poor grades — which shows how important reading is to long-term learning.
4. It Challenges Critical Thinking Skills
Educators and parents can also discover how childhood reading habits lead to a more successful career by measuring their critical thinking skills. Kids piece together plot lines as they turn each page, figuring out how the main character will solve their dilemma or conquer their quest.
Everyone needs critical thinking skills to think ahead and eliminate problems in school and the workplace, so it’s worth investing in a collection of books that kids can access at any time.
5. It Develops Language Skills
Introducing books to babies and toddlers is another way parents can figure out how childhood reading leads to success. Language development begins at 3 months old and continues long past a child’s first words. Seeing words pointed out in books and connecting them with pictures builds the necessary vocabulary for kids to thrive in relationships, school, and future jobs.
6. It Builds Self-Confidence
Everyone enjoys the feeling of accomplishing something on their own. Kids feel the same way when they finish a book. They’ll build their self-confidence as they read increasingly challenging books.
Establishing and maintaining self-confidence is how reading as a child improves grades in college. They’ll know how to push through frustrating pages or prose until they fully grasp the reading material and perform better on related tests.
Start Reading Habits Today
There are many ways educators and parents can learn how childhood reading leads to success, but the best way is to see it in action. Introduce children to age-appropriate books to begin building their vocabulary, self-confidence, and understanding of the world. Their lives will become much more enriched in every aspect because reading gave them numerous tools at a young age.
About the Author
Ginger Abbot is an education and learning writer with a personal love for reading. Explore more of her work on her website, Classrooms, where she also serves as editor.