Many parents are still unaware of the vital role reading takes in their child's educational future. A parent who reads regularly to a child is paving the way to successful future for their child.
By the time many children start school, they are already behind a lot of their peers. That sounds funny, but it's true. Children who have been read to regularly are already way ahead in skills such as vocabulary, listening, and comprehension. Parents play a big part in how well their child learns to read as well as in the development of reading as a lifelong activity.
When a child learns to talk, he starts building a working vocabulary. It only makes sense that the more words he hears, the more words he learns. He can get some words from watching TV, but he learns to understand and use many more words from the interactions that come when parents and caregivers read to him. After all, if someone is reading to him personally, they can help him make sense of words he may never have heard before. If he hears a new word on TV he'll be more likely to just ignore it. Or he'll tuck it into his brain and use it without knowing for sure what he's saying.
As the child begins school he will be faced with new people and situations. He'll search his vocabulary for answers to these new experiences. When the teacher reads to the class, he will be able to understand what she's reading if he knows the individual words and can gain meaning from them. It's sometimes hard to believe, but there are many children who start to school with very little understanding of the English language and, therefore of what's read. These children often have poor listening skills, too, since they have had little practice in listening. They spend the first semester or year of school learning the vocabulary other children learned during their preschool years if they listen and learn at all. They will already be behind and starting to build a self-image of themselves as being dumb or a failure, and they're only in Kindergarten.
The more experiences you give your child, the more he will understand when he starts to read himself. He'll be able to figure out what new words might be. He will be able to transfer information from what he's already learned and use it to help himself comprehend what he's reading. A lot of parents can't afford to take their children on expensive vacations; however, with public libraries everywhere, they can check out books on many subjects to share. . They can also expose their child to many learning experiences just by taking them to the grocery store, the park, or laundromat, for example. At each of the places you go with your child, talk to him about the things around you. Attach words to objects and people so that his mind can connect the two.
Too many parents take the position that the child's teacher should be the one to teach him to read. This is true to a point, but the parent is still in the most opportune position to teach the child themself
