By Gavin Boyle
As many parents worry over their children’s development, especially as kids spend much of their day on screens, experts suggest that one of the best options for parents is to read to their kids starting at birth.
“By age three, 85% of brain development is complete, so waiting until school to start to start a love of reading is too late,” Melissa Tigges, the vice president of strategic initiatives at Cottage Door Press, told Fox News. “There’s vocabulary growth, the stimulation of creativity and imagination, and children that are read to from birth tend to have exposure to a million more words than children who are not read to from birth.”
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“The first couple of years it’s just more about engaging with them and reading to them so they can hear this language,” she continued. “[Then] by 3 or 4, giving them some independent reading time, giving them books that are at their level and letting them go to the library and pick out the books they want to read.”
Giving kids a head start on their reading ability grows more important as America faces a literacy competency crisis. Recent studies show that reading competency levels are on the decline, largely due to children spending their free time on technology, rather than with a book.
This is one of many basic skills that children are struggling to learn and master as technology takes over their lives. A report from January found that Gen Z does not know how to take notes by hand, while a study from September 2024 also found the generation struggles to type. These inabilities are concerning as they not only impact the generation’s ability to communicate, but also greatly limit how they consume information.
“It’s very tempting to type down everything that the lecturer is saying,” said Audrey van der Meer, a professor of neuropsychology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology when discussing the decline of taking notes by hand. “It kind of goes in through your ears and comes out through your fingertips, but you don’t process the incoming information.”
While future technology will only make it easier for children to get away with poor basic skills, the loss of these skills comes at a great price. Now more than ever, parents need to fight for their children’s future, starting by helping them get a grasp on reading by reading out loud to them when they are still toddlers.
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