The Bond Books Build
Reading to toddlers reinforces lifelong love
By: Ginny Clark
Published by: Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette on January 30, 2019
It was truly exciting for me to read an essay in the Wall Street Journal on Jan. 19 called “The Secret Power of the Children’s Picture Book” by Meghan Cox Gurdon, that paper’s “Children’s Books” columnist.
The subtitle, “even infants get profound cognitive and behavioral benefits from sharing a vivid story,” positively jumped out at me. It is a strong statement supporting the work of the BookStart Fund to encourage parents to read to their little ones.
Not only does the author make a persuasive argument for the benefits that being read to have on babies’ developing brains, she also convincingly explains why the shared attention over a picture book is so much better for a toddler than seeing the parent looking attentively at his or her phone. Gurdon quotes psychologist Catherine Steiner-Adair: “Babies are often distressed when they look to their parent for a reassuring connection and discover the parent is distracted or uninterested.”
Expecting a toddler to benefit from watching a video on any size screen ignores what research has shown about what children’s developing brains need.
Gudrun writes: “Looking at a book with an adult, a child increases his capacity for ‘joint attention,’ noticing what others see and following their gaze. This phenomenon has a remarkable tempering power in children. It encourages the development of executive function, an array of skills that includes the ability to remember details and to pay attention.
“Given that parents and grandparents are going to spend some time using devices, it is all the more important to balance it out with times of intense engagement with babies and toddlers. Glancing down to catch a baby’s eye while reading a story, meeting a child’s inquiring gaze – these acts bring the child’s brain waves into greater synchronization with the adult’s, according to recent research at Cambridge University. … Reading picture books to them thus has a double effect: It removes the negative of extra screen time while adding a terrific positive in the form of skill and brain-building effects.”
Good things happen when parents share enticing picture books with their toddlers in warm and nurturing moments.
During these times children learn to love books, they find that books contain all sorts of fun and interesting things, and they develop even stronger ties to their parents. If children have to wait until they start school to be introduced to the pleasures of books, they will have missed the most important years for their developing brains to be exposed to the experience. That’s what makes getting books into homes without them is so vitally important for the future of our community.
The BookStart Fund spends donated dollars to purchase hundreds of copies of enticing, sturdy books for local agencies serving families in poverty to give to their clients during parent-training visits. The gifts of these books, repeated over many months, mean that over the past five years several thousand children in Allen County have enjoyed the “secret power” of being read to.
To learn more:
The full article by Meghan Cox Gurdon is available at BookStartFund.org/News/Articles. While there, you might want to make a donation.
Ginny Clark of Fort Wayne is founder and manager of the BookStart Fund.