Every child's inalienable right

If only I could— I would ask that every child who comes into the world be granted their personal fairy godmother who will make sure children have loving parents and caregivers read to them. Simply stated, it should be every child’s inalienable right, but all too often the reality is something different. The nurturing and love that is transmitted when parents read to their children is not something you can put a price tag on and those who have that experience know what I am speaking about.

A recent finding from Read To Grow, an organization dedicated to building literacy from birth, shows that reading difficult is linked to later trouble with the law. The following statistics tell a chilling story.

57% of incarcerated youth ages 16-24 had only rudimentary reading skills

56% of the adult prison populating had only rudimentary reading skills

"The literature shows a clear correlation between a grade-level reading problem and, later on, incarceration in the juvenile justice system," said Ralph Smith, managing director of the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading, a national collaboration of foundations, nonprofits, business leaders, and communities focusing on school success for children in low-income families.

<a href="http://readtogrow.org/">http://readtogrow.org/</a> to learn more

Give your children a solid launch—grounded in safety and love—into the world

No matter how old or young your children are, I hope they never outgrow the desire and need to be read to.  They will leave the world of a safe and loving childhood, but the experiencing of being read to is a felt memory that will anchor them in life. When they have children of their own and they begin the journey of reading and talking about the day with their children,
all the books and conversations with you will come flooding back.

As always, a poem, Talking About the Day  by Jim Daniels, says it best.

           

Each night after reading three books to my two children—

we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland,

I’d turn off the light and sit between their beds

in the wide junk shop rocker I’d reupholstered blue,

still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me,

and ask them to talk about the day—we did this,

we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes

not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now.

Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease

into sleep’s regular rhythm.

                                          They are grown, you might've guessed.

The past tense solid, unyielding, against the dropped bombs

of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding

the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

p.s. A dad who wanted to read to his 2 children, built this rocking chair for 3. An inspiration for a summer project...

Give your children a solid launch—grounded in safety and love—into the world

No matter how old or young your children are, I hope they never outgrow the desire and need to be read to.  They will leave the world of a safe and loving childhood, but the experiencing of being read to is a felt memory that will anchor them in life. When they have children of their own and they begin the journey of reading and talking about the day with their children,
all the books and conversations with you will come flooding back.

As always, a poem, Talking About the Day  by Jim Daniels, says it best.

           

Each night after reading three books to my two children—

we each picked one—to unwind them into dreamland,

I’d turn off the light and sit between their beds

in the wide junk shop rocker I’d reupholstered blue,

still feeling the close-reading warmth of their bodies beside me,

and ask them to talk about the day—we did this,

we did that, sometimes leading somewhere, sometimes

not, but always ending up at the happy ending of now.

Now, in still darkness, listening to their breath slow and ease

into sleep’s regular rhythm.

                                          They are grown, you might've guessed.

The past tense solid, unyielding, against the dropped bombs

of recent years. But how it calmed us then, rewinding

the gentle loop, and in the trusting darkness, pressing play.

p.s. A dad who wanted to read to his 2 children, built this rocking chair for 3. An inspiration for a summer project...

Conversations build a child's brain

A child’s brain is built word by word. We have the data that supports the importance of early childhood education for future success in and out of school. We also have the economics behind the benefits of early education because less money is later spent on juvenile courts, prisons, health care and welfare says James Heckman, a Nobel-wining economist at the University of Chicago.

The findings show that children need to be raised with lots of play and conversation. By age 4, a child of professionals has heard 30 million more words than a child on welfare.  Talking develops a child’s use and understanding of language, which is the basis of reading. Vocabulary development by age 3 has been found to predict reading achievement and has been empirically connected to reading comprehension. Heckman says, “ the best metric of child poverty may have to do not with income but with how often a child is spoken and read to. Sixty to seventy percent of the achievement gap between rich and poor kids is already evident by kindergarten.

Children's brains grow at a dazzling pace in the first years of life.  Research tells us the first three years of life offer a critical window for brain development. Each of us is born with a genetic blueprint—a basic design. The brain at birth is only 25% developed. By the age of 3 the brain is 80% developed.

Most of a baby’s 100 billion brain cells aren’t yet connected in networks. Those cells become connected when babies have stimulating experiences— reading singing, talking, playing—all language related activities.  Early language experience actually stimulates a child’s brain to grow and speech and language development require stimulation.

The time you spend reading and talking with your child is far more valuable than spending time trying to teach them to read. Reading is a developmental skill and many of the skills a child’s brain needs to enter school, ready to learn to read, are first learned in conversation. Words are the building blocks of a child’s brain.

Simply stated—children are too small to fail. Parental involvement and early childhood education protect children from failure.