6 Benefits of Reading Aloud to Your Kids (even after they can read too)

It's fairly common practice to read aloud to your kids when they're young. You probably have fond memories of reading all sorts of books with adults before you were able to read yourself — hearing dramatic tales, learning new words, cuddling up with your parents. Once kids are able to read on their own, reading aloud tends to stop as the kids want to be independent and do this activity on their own. However, statistics show that continued reading aloud actually benefits children long after they're able to read on their own. 

The Read-Aloud Handbook by Jim Trelease studied children's interest in reading books outside of school. For kids in kindergarten, 100% of children still wanted to read books when they were at home. However, these numbers dropped dramatically as they got older: 54% in Grade 4, 30% in Grade 8, and just 19% by Grade 12. So researchers got to work and asked themselves: What changes during these years?

The answer: Read aloud time!

Approximately 85% of brain development happens in the first five years of life, so reading during these critical years significantly increases a child’s lifelong capacity to learn. However, kids are able to read on their own by Grade 4, so parents stop reading to them, but we now know that reading enjoyment drops after reading aloud stops. One particular study showed that one-third of kids ages 6-11, whose parents had stopped reading to them, had actually wanted it to continue.

So in addition to boosting reading enjoyment, here are six benefits to reading aloud to your children, even after they've learned how to read on their own:

Stimulate Brain Development

Reading aloud to your child promotes brain development in different areas than it would if they read on their own. Areas such as mental imagery and narrative comprehension are tested, as they create characters, scenes and plots in their mind by listening to and comprehending exactly what's happening. Each child who listens creates a completely unique vision in their imagination, thus developing their brain and neural pathways.

Learn New Language

Your child may be a very advanced reader for their age, but that still doesn't compete with the average adult's vocabulary. An adult native English speaker knows 20,000-35,000 words, compared to 4,000 words at age 4 and 10,000 at age 8. Therefore, you can read more advanced books to children and teach them new words along the way.

Gain Knowledge

Just as you can teach your child new words as you read higher-level books, the same goes for concepts. Whether you're reading about geography, industries, politics, medicine, biology or other specialized areas, you are helping your child gain information in new areas by expanding their knowledge base.

Build Literacy Skills

By letting your child follow along while you read aloud, they can learn at an accelerated pace. They can listen to how words are pronounced, observe how words are spelled even though they are pronounced differently, and begin to understand the cadence of reading with punctuation. By observing your reading habits and behaviours, your child can learn by example.

Bond With Your Child

By extending the age you read aloud to your child, you increase the amount of time you spend together. Once kids start to read on their own, you lose that precious time that you used to cuddle and sit close together. Reading aloud again allows you to regain that time and further increase your parent-child bond.

Foster A Love Of Reading

And above all, we hope that by extending the time you read aloud to your child, you will also be fostering a lifelong love of reading and prevent the drop off of enjoyment gained from this meaningful activity.

If your kids are slightly grown, it may be hard to get them back in the habit of listening at first, but we think they'll get used to it pretty quickly. It's time for family nights spent cozied up on the couch with a good book, don't ya think? If you're looking for some good new reads, check out my online bookstore here.