Why Should Parents Read Aloud to Their Child?

Many families read aloud to their children as part of their nightly bedtime routines. Aside from being a wonderful bonding activity, reading aloud often helps children unwind, relax, and get ready for sleep. From a learning perspective, there are many benefits to reading aloud to children. Reading aloud to children helps them understand the structure and language of stories. It aids children's vocabulary development, their understanding of the complexity of sentence structures, and strengthens overall comprehension. Research has demonstrated that students' listening comprehension is higher than what can readers can comprehend when reading themselves. In short, reading aloud to children helps to build a bridge from where they are currently reading to being able to read and understand more complex text. Armed with this knowledge, families will want to continue to read aloud to their children long after they can read on their own.

There is a large body of research that positively links reading aloud to children to their future literacy development. Several articles can be accessed in the Links and Resources page of this website.