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Why you should start reading to baby... now s
It’s never too late – or too early – to start reading to baby. Start today and make it part of your daily routine. That’s the strong recommendation from Marian Bailey, a remedial therapist, teacher and mother of two who runs Raise a Reader, a Gauteng-based literacy resource for parents and teachers. She’s a firm advocate for reading to your child from day one because “reading is the foundation of all future learning”. “Learning to read doesn’t begin in Grade 1, it starts when your child is a baby,” she says. Of course a newborn won’t understand a word, but that doesn’t matter – it’s the sound of your voice and the pattern of speech that are important for her to hear.
By the time your baby is a year old, she will have learned all the sounds necessary to speak a first language, explains Wilma Tindall from Cape Town’s Centre for Early Childhood Development (CECD), a nonprofit organisation dedicated to ensuring quality early childhood development for South African children. So the more you read to baby, the richer her vocabulary and memory will be. It’s also likely that her verbal communication skills will be more advanced than a child who has not been read to regularly.
Melanie Commeignes, 38, believes reading to her twoyear-old every day since she was an infant is why her daughter is verbally advanced. “She began speaking at 10 months and was forming basic sentences by 12 months, before moving on to more complex sentences – with pronouns and adjectives – by the time she was 15 months,” she says. “Her memory also seems to have benefitted from reading as part of her daily routine. She does what I call ‘fake read’ – repeat entire passages from her favourite books, on the correct page, from memory.”
GETTING STARTED
Bailey recommends starting off with basic storytelling and then moving onto touchyfeely books by the time baby starts crawling. “The tactile
sense is very valuable; it’s one of the main senses that help us learn,” she says. “Soft books, flap books, colourful board books, books in the bath, texture books – those are all good to begin with.”
Wilma adds that while baby doesn’t understand the meaning of words, it doesn’t matter so much what book you read (it can even be a magazine) as much as how you read it. Tell stories using different voices with animated or silly expressions to captivate your child’s attention or you’ll lose your audience quickly, she advises.
As baby grows, Wilma recommends engaging her more in the stories. For example, replace the main character’s in the book’s name with your child’s, ask her questions and have her repeat sounds. Creating a reading routine is also important – aim to spend 15 to 30 minutes reading at least four times a week, if not every day, suggests Marian.
Wilma points out that toddlers thrive on repetition, which is why they begin asking for the same book over and over. As tiring as it can be to read The Gruffalo three times a day, every day, this repetition and routine helps children build language skills quickly.
And remember to make reading time special and relaxing so that baby will associate books with love, connection, quality time and physical closeness. “I have a 10-year-old and a seven-yearold. I’ve found reading gives me a great time to connect with them, especially as they get older,” says Marian.
For Melanie, the bonding aspect is even more important than the learning benefits. “Every morning my daughter comes into my bed and we cuddle and read for about 20 minutes. It’s a wonderful, calming way to start the day for both of us. Because I work full time, it’s often the only quiet, one-on-one time we have all day.”