Reading skills capacity in babies

Learning capacity

    Parents and Educators alike are learning more and more about the importance of early literacy. The advantages of early reading are numerous and extend through a child’s lifetime. American children are generally beginning to be taught to read around the age of five. 

    However, many researchers and early childhood educators are looking at both new ways, and new ways of looking at old methods, to begin teaching literacy beginning in infancy. Children have the greatest learning capacity between birth and the age of five years old. Children who develop better vocabularies during this time will most often continue to have better vocabularies throughout their lives. 

    Studies also show that early childhood is the best time to introduce a second language, because a child’s brain is more easily able to make the neural pathways needed for learning. This is the main reason to begin early reading exercises with young children – their brains are able to absorb them more quickly and fully at a very young age. 

    Likewise, it may actually be easier for you teach your child to read when you begin teaching these skills earlier. Working on these skills can become a positive habit for both of you. You have a valuable opportunity to gain long term benefits to your child in reading, language, and learning and study skills as well as bonding with your child. Utilizing the greater learning capacity of young children to begin learning to read allows them to develop good learning patterns as well as greater self confidence. That self confidence will carry over in to other aspects of life as well, and is a tremendous advantage to a child when beginning school. Learning is a skill. 

    The earlier we teach a child that skill, the more adept they will become at using it. While good learners tend to become better learners over time, poor learners often continue to be poor learners. This is part of the reason early literacy is so important – being able to competently use language opens the door to many other types of learning. A good grasp of language makes the arts and sciences easier to comprehend, as you have the words and the comprehension of those words to explain and describe it with. 

    Teaching young children to read is valuable in and of it self. However, in the pursuit of early literacy, we gain something else as well – our children learn how to learn, a skill that will change their lives for the better, forever.