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Reading is something that everybody agrees is beneficial to children and adults alike. It cuts across the lines of diversity and the lines of disciplines to bring people together.
Reading aloud is focusing energy on a solution and is one of the most cost effective social programs we can implement. We can implement the program simply by modeling reading — by reading to our children! Reading is like walking, it is not a lot of fun until you learn how to do it. The only reason kids learn to walk is that they see us doing it! Like walking, reading is one of the most important skills your child will learn.
Reading aloud to your child is a way to counter the effects of TV and commercial programming. The stories on TV are designed to entice your child into buying something. The stories in books are designed to get your child to think!! Which story do you think is going to serve your child better when he or she grows up?
Reading aloud to your child does more to improve your child’s health and emotional stability (and your own!) than you may realize. When you read aloud you usually have children hanging all over you. There is lots of touching and bonding time, which is something we need, both as children and as adults as well. The importance of hugs to our physical health has made it into medical journals. The reason this is an issue is that we have all become so busy that many of us don’t get the bonding and touching that we need to be healthy. Many are turning to prescription drugs. Stories and hugs are a lot cheaper and a whole lot more fun!
When you read aloud to your child you are also providing them with a connection to your voice that is not disciplinary or instructional. Your voice, like your fingerprint, is unique. Your voice is how your child first comes to recognize you in the womb. The ear is one of the first parts of the body to form! Like a baby penguin in a rookery with hundreds of mothers around, each baby knows its own mother and father. So it is with your child. The sound of your voice teaches, calms and builds character and emotional stability in a way that is second to none! Your beautiful voice is the sound that gets into your child’s subconscious. No teacher can reach your child like you can. So read to them, talk to them, build them up with your voice and watch them grow.
There is yet another element of storytelling and reading aloud that is profoundly powerful and so often overlooked. It is the human-to-human interface. A TV, a movie screen, or a computer can produce some rather spectacular effects and really big explosions, but these media communicate nowhere near the information that live human beings do while looking each other in the eye. Words are only the tip of the iceberg of what is communicated. Soul speaks to soul in love and communicates cultural information that defies explanation, building bonds among people that last a lifetime.
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