One More Really Big Reason to Read Stories to Children

If you Google reading to children you will find no end of websites telling you why you should do so. One that comes up near the top has the stern (and therefore somewhat off-putting) title Seven Reasons Why You MUST Read to Your Kids at All Ages (link is external). Another is titled, more gently, Ten Reasons Why You Should Read to Your Kids (link is external). And still another (link is external) lists fifteen benefits to reading to children. Most of the benefits described at such sites have to do with the warmth and closeness that reading generates between you and your children, the opportunities for conversation and mutual understanding that are opened up by the stories, and the linguistic and pre-reading skills and positive attitudes toward reading that children develop when they are read to. These are all good reasons.

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