Why You Should Read to Your Child
             It's 7:00 at night and you are tired from a long day. You still have to finish doing the dishes and vacuum, but after that the TV and recliner are calling your name. There is a tug on your pants, "Please read me a story," your little one asks. You say, "Not now sweetie." Studies show that only half of all parents with children between two and eight years of age read to them daily. "There just isn't enough time in the day," is a common excuse. The fact of the matter is that the person who does read to their child has the same twenty-four hours in a day that the person who was too busy to read to their child, yet did watch their favorite program, or talk on the phone for 35 minutes. We have time for things we value, and reading to your child should be one of those things for many reasons.
             One of the common questions is, "How old must a child be to start reading to them?" I like the response of the author of "The Read Aloud Handbook 2001" He asks, when did they start talking to their child? Did they wait until he was six months old? Of course not. They spoke to their child the day he was born using complex sentences and multi-syllable words with out thinking twice. Yet the same parents often would never imagine reading to an infant who couldn't understand the story. If your kid is old enough to talk to, then he's old enough to be read to.
             "Expectedly, from birth to six months of age we are less concerned with the child understanding than with conditioning the child to your voice and the sight of books," says Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, former chief of the child development unit of Boston Children's Hospital Medical Center. The human voice is a powerful tool for calming a child. Research has been done that suggests its influence begins even before birth. University of NC psychologist Anthony DeCasper conduct...