The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) is asking its 62,000 members to advise parents of newborns to read aloud to their children on a daily basis. Although many more affluent parents read to their children as a matter of course, the AAP has found that many parents do not read to their children as much as they should.
The AAP believes that reading aloud may help reduce the literacy gap between wealthier and low-income children. “Children who are read to during infancy and preschool years have better language skills when they start school and are more interested in reading,” the AAP said. “In addition, parents who spend time reading to their children create nurturing relationships, which is important for a child’s cognitive, language and social-emotional development.”
“If we can get that first 1,000 days of life right,” an assistant professor of pediatrics told the New York Times, “we’re really going to save a lot of trouble later on and have to do far less remediation.”
Another concern of AAP is that parents of all income groups are forgoing reading in favor of having very young children use smartphones and similar technology, the Times reported.
