Magic in a Read-Aloud Book Club

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Photo by Ben White

Recipe for fostering community and connection through books: Gather 2 or more kids. Add their moms and a splash of wine. Stir with the classics. Yields: Comfort, belonging, and the joy of shared stories. (Caution: May inspire imaginative play.)

[The following is reprinted from the Los Angeles Times, January 2, 2017; by Tess Taylor and Edan Lepucki]

“When the world felt hard–as it has this fall and winter–turning to a children’s book was a singular opportunity to settle down, unplug the phone and the news, light the light and be together.”

The plan was simple: We would start a book club for our 5-year-old sons. Bennett and Bean had just started kindergarten and were crazy for stories. They couldn’t read chapter books on their own but they took pleasure in listening, imagining the story playing out. Besides, we, their mothers, had basically been waiting to read big books to our kids from the moment they were born.

And, like that, Bennett and Bean’s book club was born. We figured we could handle a book a month, and we dug out the ones we remembered loving as kids: “The Phantom Tollbooth,” “Pippi Longstocking” and “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” Our meetings would be whatever the boys made them, but the book club would be for us too.

All fall, we read to the boys. That wasn’t unusual, but it felt different because we were doing it with another family across town — picking up the same book, laughing at the same jokes, falling in love with the same characters.

Bean and Bennett had never read on deadline before, and we all became more disciplined about the reading hour. Sometimes it was the best part of the day. When the world felt hard — as it has this fall and winter — turning to a children’s book was a singular opportunity to settle down, unplug the phone and the news, light the light and be together.

“What could be a greater gift to pass on to our children? Sharing stories, weaving a small community together.”

The boys loved it. After all, who doesn’t want to belong to a club? We didn’t hold our kids to teacherly standards. The meetings often consisted of talking about books for all of 10 minutes before we poured ourselves glasses of wine and let the kids run in circles around the redwood tree in Tess’ backyard.

Still, everyone said what they loved best about the stories, or shared a sentence or two. We snacked: for “Phantom Tollbooth,” tollhouse cookies; for “Pippi Longstocking,” chocolate cake because the market was out of Swedish Fish. Our kids began to name what they wanted most in a story. Bean: epic battles. Bennett: careful observation. They both wanted magic. In this we agreed: Who doesn’t want magic?

Our picks weren’t perfect. “The Phantom Tollbooth” was too complex for 5-year-olds. Its  puns and math sailed over their heads. Bean thought it a bit dull; Bennett wished for whales. “Pippi Longstocking” was full of adventure, but we moms found the way she described her travels around the world imperialist and dated. Bennett said that, like Pippi, he wanted to live alone. Bean wondered if he could get his own pet monkey. Each meeting ended with both boys asking why the party had to end.

And us mothers? From the beginning, we assumed we would enjoy ourselves, but even we were surprised by how nourished we felt. The book club reminded us of the deep pleasure of losing oneself in a rich story. The reading hour was an antidote and balm for adult distractions, fears and responsibilities. However chaotic and cruel the world seemed, setting aside time to read classic books with our children, letting our imaginations take flight, made the universe seem legible again.

What could be a greater gift to pass on to our children? Sharing stories, weaving a small community together. The days got shorter and we curled into the reading light.

Ultimately, it was “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” that offered what we all wanted most: magic. The sentences were clear, easy to read aloud, spellbinding. There were the children escaping the air raids of World War II, brought to a house in the country. And like a house within the house, there was the wardrobe, and inside it a land where long winter had fallen, and people and animals were being kidnapped.

Yet C.S. Lewis’ book also contained bravery, camaraderie, light. And the assurance that even in the most ominous times, it is possible to fight the darkness. The White Witch might seem all powerful, but the children were working to set the long winter right. How lovely the writing was, we exclaimed. How urgent the book felt, to us, in 2016.

That afternoon, Tess hung extra coats in a closet and Bennett and Bean went in and came out ready to fight the witch. They waged a great battle in the backyard, armed with wrapping-paper tubes. Bean wore a lion mask and roared and roared. Bennett put on a cardboard crown. Everyone ate Turkish delight. Everyone got powdered sugar on their noses. We ducked together into the magic wardrobe and emerged as new avengers, ready to battle for the light.

[Tess Taylor’s collection “Work & Days” was named one of 2016’s best books of poetry by the New York Times. Novelist Edan Lepucki’s latest book, “Woman No. 17,” will be published in May.]

What Else is in Your Child’s Invisible Toolbox? (Part III)

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caucasian-man-reading-to-babyThe benefits a child gains from being read aloud to are many, and they contribute directly to success in school.

A child who has been read to regularly from birth arrives on day one of kindergarten with an invisible toolbox overflowing with the pre-literacy skills that are the foundation for all learning. They include not only the number one predictor of school success— a rich vocabulary—but many other essential understandings. Check out Parts I and II and then add these to the list:

They gain the ‘background of experiences’ necessary for understanding what they read in school.

Stories expand the boundaries of a child’s world in the best possible way. The greater the exposure to stories and ideas from outside their immediate experience, the better children are able to understand what they read in school. The reading a child eventually does in school is filled with countless references that will fall outside her natural orbit, and her degree of familiarity with them will determine her ability to understand what she reads.

They absorb how stories work on an unconscious level.

Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There is a protagonist, a problem, a struggle, and a resolution. These are understandings that a young child will generally not consciously express, but they will understand intuitively that this is what constitutes a story. This unconscious familiarity will become very apparent as a child moves into writing in school.

They possess the tools to become effective writers.

Children who have been read to not only gain a greater vocabulary for expressing themselves in writing, they develop an innate grasp of how sentences are formed and have an easier time constructing them. Just as they have greater expressive fluency orally, their writing is also more fluent than that of their non-reading peers. Through hearing many stories read aloud from a young age, they have absorbed the structural rhythm that stories possess. They will draw on this to write their own more easily than their peers who have not been immersed in stories.

The simple act of sharing a daily read-aloud with a child will fill his invisible toolbox to overflowing with a rich vocabulary, an inherent understanding of the pleasure of books, knowledge of the way books and stories function, an ability to attend to what is important, and familiarity with expressive reading and the rhythm of language. These are the essential tools of literacy that are the foundation for all learning in school.

The Power of a Reading Promise

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If you think a nightly read aloud ritual between parent and child is a luxury only for those who are well off with smoothly running lives, think again. Alice Ozma’s best-selling memoir, The Reading Promise: My Father and the Books We Shared doesn’t just dispel that notion; it illustrates that this simple, daily communion between a book, a child, and a parent can shine a light that soothes the pain of the present and points the way to a hopeful future.

Alice’s father, an elementary school librarian, was fortunate to have a mother who read to him as a young boy. When his daughter Alice was nine, they made a pact to read aloud together for one hundred nights straight. The pact eventually became known as The Streak, stretching out into 3,200 nights and nearly nine years. They marked the final night of The Streak on the steps of Alice’s college dorm, reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, symbolically, because it was the book with which they started.

One suspects that their commitment to The Streak was intensified by the family’s rupture. The Thanksgiving Alice was nine her mother, who we later learn suffered from mental illness, abruptly moved out, leaving Alice’s father to parent two daughters alone. As a man not prone to talking about his feelings, he wasn’t able to help his youngest directly process her own. What he was able to do though, was give her the gift of himself, his time, and his love of books. Through sharing fiction together daily, he not only strengthened his connection with his daughter, he opened worlds of possibility to her.

Recent studies in neuroscience show that we experience fiction as if it’s actually happening to us. Beyond the language-processing parts of the brain that are triggered when we read, the sensory regions are as well. So when we talk about entering into the world of the story, this is in fact what our brains do. Despite the obvious pain that is far below the surface in Alice’s retelling of her story, she is carried along and buoyed by her father’s love and the worlds they share. The loss of her mother, a father who is not comfortable talking about feelings, and her family’s limited financial resources are not determinative for her.

Throughout her school career Alice scored at the top of her class in reading and won awards in writing. Then her graduate school admissions essay on The Streak became a New York Times article which led to publishers taking notice. And so she found herself writing a memoir at the age of twenty-three. Hers is a story that will make you laugh out loud and maybe tear up too, but never is it sentimental or cloying. It is deeply moving, though. If you’re a parent of young children, it may inspire you to make your own reading promise. For this parent of a young adult, I found myself wishing for a do-over—wistful that I didn’t continue read aloud time with my son beyond elementary school.

Originally published by Kim Jocelyn Dickson at fractuslearning.com.

AAP’s Latest Guidelines for Children and Media

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images-6Parenting in the digital age can be challenging and confusing. This week the American Academy of Pediatrics–informed by dozens of studies on screen time and its effect on the emotional and physical health of children–released new guidelines for parents. Here is some of their advice:

  • Children under the age of 2 should avoid all digital media use except for video chatting via apps like Skype and Facetime.
  • If you must introduce digital media to toddlers between the ages of 18 and 24 months, choose high-quality programming and sit with your child. Solo viewing should be avoided.
  • Children ages 2 to 5 years should have no more than one hour of screen use a day. Be sure to select high-quality programming and watch it with your children.
  • Keep bedrooms, mealtimes and parent-child playtime free of screens. (Parents, that goes for you too: Set your phone on “Do not disturb.”)
  • If you have children between the ages of 5 and 18, place consistent limits on their hours per day of media use, as well as the types of media they use.
  • Discourage the use of entertainment media while doing homework.
  • Children of all ages should avoid exposure to devices and screens for one hour before bedtime.
  • Keep smartphones, TVs and other devices out of the bedroom.
  • Communicate the family’s media guidelines to grandparents, babysitters and other caregivers so screen rules are followed consistently.
  • Have an ongoing conversation with older children about online citizenship and safety. This includes treating people with respect online; saying no to cyberbullying and sexting; and avoiding communications that can compromise personal privacy and safety.

To help your family develop a plan that is right for you, visit www.HealthyChildren.org/MediaUseplan.

Source: American Academy of Pediatrics and Los Angeles Times

What Else is in Your Child’s Invisible Toolbox? (Part II)

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aa-mother-and-baby-readingEvery child walks through the doorway of kindergarten with a lunchbox in one hand and an invisible toolbox in the other. As we learned in “What’s in Your Child’s Invisible Toolbox?”, children who have been read to regularly in the early years enter school with an invisible toolbox brimming with rich vocabulary. Through hearing stories read aloud, children pick up on and begin to understand the rare words that don’t crop up in ordinary conversation. These words become the foundation that enables a child to comprehend what is taught in school. In fact, research tells us a child’s vocabulary is the number one predictor of school success.

A strong vocabulary is not the only gift in the invisible toolbox of the child who has been read to. There are several tools, or, what educators call “pre-literacy skills,” that make a significant difference in a child’s ability to appreciate and learn from what the world of school offers. A child who has been read to regularly will arrive at school having already internalized these attributes:

They are attracted to books.

Young children who have been read to will make a bee-line for an attractive display of books in a classroom. They will be curious and eager to explore because they already understand that there is something in it for them.

They attend to what is important.

Reading aloud to a child teaches them to listen, pay attention, and focus visually and auditorily. It is easier for them to shut out distractions once they begin school because they are habituated to doing so.

They understand the nuts and bolts of how books function.

We begin at the front and read to the back. We start at the top of the page and read to the bottom. We read the words from right to left. Pictures give us clues to what is happening in the story. Children may even begin to intuit that symbols on the page stand for sounds that become words.

They will become expressive readers.

If a child has been read to regularly by an expressive, engaged adult, he or she will read aloud in the same way because it’s what they know.

You may be thinking, “But can’t all these things be taught in school?” The answer is yes, but the reality is it will be more difficult for the child. The optimum place to learn all of the above is on the lap of a loving parent.

There are many more items in the invisible toolbox, so watch for them in Part III.

Why Children Need Their Own Library Cards

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When I was growing up every kid I knew had a library card. It was standard issue for a child of my generation, used once a month when the bookmobile came to school and bi-weekly during the summer when our mothers took us to the library to pick out a stack that would last us—maybe—for two weeks.

Entering the library or the bookmobile as a child was like embarking on a treasure hunt. One never knew what new discovery might lie around the corner. I loved the sense that there was a seemingly endless supply of books for me to browse through and that any number of them—within reason of course—could come home with me if I so chose. If one of them turned out not to be my cup of tea, no problem, it simply went onto the return stack that would go back to the library. More often than not, the books I hauled home turned out to be a delightful haven for me in quiet moments.

Not long ago, I visited friends in a tiny eastern seaside town where they spend their vacations. Jack, who had grown up summering there, was especially eager for me to see the town’s charming stone library that had remained nearly unchanged for over one hundred years. He led me into the children’s section with as much gravitas as if he were leading me into King Tut’s tomb to see the Egyptian king’s riches. We came to the “B” shelf, and there he lifted one of Frank Baum’s original, much worn, hardcover copies of one of the Oz books. He had checked them all out many times as a child, and here they remained decades later. I moved farther down the stack to the “L’s,” curious to see whether one of my favorite series, Betsy-Tacy, had also survived. I was thrilled to see that it had, but even more elated when I discovered all the original Lois Lenski books shelved above them. I hadn’t seen these books, which I’d adored through grade school, in decades. It was like meeting old, beloved friends.

Books that we grow up with and love can come from any source, of course, but there is a special value in teaching our children to use the local library. The reasons for introducing our children to the library, helping them get their own library cards, and creating a habit of use are twofold and both have to do with empowering them.

First, using the library encourages children to regularly and frequently make their own reading choices. When books are purchased children make a greater commitment, which often necessitates adult involvement in the decision making process. This is not a bad thing–I don’t at all discourage buying books— it’s just limiting. Unlike a bookstore or online shopping, browsing and sampling are not restrictive. The world of books is a child’s oyster in a library.

Second, it’s empowering for a child to have a library card of their own as it implies both responsibility and privilege. Parents also ought to have and use their own cards. Making regular trips to the library in which both parent and child check out their own books–and shared books too for read-aloud time–communicates a powerful message to a child about the value, pleasure, and importance of reading.

As a teacher, I’ve seen the number of students who have library cards and use their local library rapidly dwindle in recent years. Many of them use only the school library or buy their books online. While both of these venues are fine, they are missing out on the uniqueness of what libraries have to offer–limitless browsing, freedom of choice, and the frequent reminder of the value of reading that comes when they visit regularly with a parent and exercise this privilege with their very own library card.

What’s in Your Child’s Invisible Toolbox?

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Third grade is a watershed year in the life of a child. Research indicates that when children are not proficient readers by the end of third grade they rarely catch up and are at risk of dropping out of high school.  According to the Annie E. Casey Foundation,  “The ability to read is critical to a child’s success in school, life-long earning potential and their ability to contribute to the nation’s economy and its security.” (http://www.aecf.org/resources/early-warning-why-reading-by-the-end-of-third-grade-matters/)

As one who taught third grade for many years, I observed this unfortunate reality too many times. Despite strong teaching and intervention programs, some of our students continued to lag far behind their peers in reading and, because the skill is so foundational, they usually struggled in the rest of their subjects as well. These were students who had come up through the grades with the rest of their classmates, beginning in kindergarten. They had been exposed to outstanding teaching, just as their reading peers had.  So what accounted for the growing gap?

Looking back through the years I could imagine my third graders arriving at school on the first day of kindergarten, each with an invisible toolbox in hand. I knew that some of their toolboxes were filled to overflowing with language and love of story. Some of them, sadly, were empty. These were the students who were still struggling in third grade, who’d had very little exposure to books, who had not been read to regularly. The students with full toolboxes had been read to. A lot.

Research tells us that a child’s vocabulary is the greatest predictor of success in school. Children who know more words understand more of what is taught in the classroom. They actually get more out of school than their peers with limited vocabularies. According to Jim Trelease (The Read-Aloud Handbook) there are approximately 5,000 words commonly used in general conversation known as the Basic Lexicon. Beyond this, there are 5 ,000 more that are known and understood called the Common Lexicon. A child’s acquisition of these words is affected, of course, by the quality of conversation in the home. Beyond the 10,000, however, are the ‘rare words’ that do not crop up in ordinary conversation. These are the words that are found in printed text–not in conversation or television or movies. These are the words that make a difference in school.

Students who have been read to arrive at school on the first day of kindergarten with an invisible toolbox flush with language. Their familiarity with the ‘rare words’ enables them to comprehend stories and much more of what comes their way in instruction.  For the child who arrives at school with a deficit in vocabulary, it is extremely difficult to catch up to their peers whose rate of learning grows exponentially with each passing year.

I often wished in those days that I could roll back time, meet my students’ parents at the doors of  the maternity ward, hand them a stack of wonderful children’s books, and let them know how important it was for them to begin reading to their children for pleasure right away.

Every child should arrive on day one of kindergarten with a brimming invisible toolbox. An enriched vocabulary is just one important byproduct of reading aloud to a child from birth. Many other skills will be tucked into the invisible toolbox as well, enabling a child to take full advantage of what the world of school has to offer.

Your Baby’s Brain: Wired to Connect

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The work of the brain at birth is to begin laying down an internal infrastructure of language that enables the child to make sense of the outside world, preparing her for her ultimate purpose—which is to connect.

Watch the drive to connect in action in three month old Piper’s focused alertness and vocalization as her daddy reads The Hungry Caterpillar to her.

According to Susan Brink, author of The Fourth Trimester: Understanding, Nurturing, and Protecting an Infant Through the First Three Months, hearing develops long before birth. The newborn, already accustomed to the sounds of the muffled maternal voice, recognizes and responds to a mother’s voice first. Beyond a mother’s voice, the sounds in a baby’s world are a meaningless din. But here is where the real learning begins.

“…lest anyone think these undifferentiated noises are useless, think again. With an innate skill that would be the envy of a statistics student, newborns are keeping track of probabilities; setting up neural connections in response to the patterns of the words they hear. They are learning where one word ends and another begins before they utter their first da-da.”[i]

Patricia Kuhl, a neuroscientist and leading expert on speech development at the University of Washington, has discovered that babies are born with the ability to hear the sound distinctions of every language that exists, but by ten months of age—maybe sooner—that ability is lost, “pruned away by a brain eager to cultivate what will be needed and get rid of what won’t.” [ii]

Human babies arrive in this world poised to learn.

At birth, Brink claims, babies possess “…billions of brain cells, or neurons, but little in the way of an internal communication network. Immediately, every interaction with the world–each touch, word, smell, look—helps the baby lay down an infrastructure of dendrites, the branched projections that receive and send signals between neurons.”[iii] The science that enables us to understand that infants begin learning immediately at birth, or even before, is clear and its implications are profound.

But perhaps even more profound than the fact of how soon learning begins is the beautiful metaphor that the brain cell reveals to us, for it organically demonstrates a truth about what it means to be human.

The work of the brain at birth is to begin making connections that enable the child to make sense of the outside world, preparing her for her ultimate purpose, to love. As parents it is important for us to understand that learning is a drive organically rooted in a child’s physical being, and its ultimate aim is to create a meaningful life. When we speak, sing, and read to our child from birth, this loving way of engaging builds neural pathways in the brain that become the physical infrastructure for all future learning and loving.

Learning, therefore, is connection, rooted in relationship.

Major religions throughout history have proclaimed a life of love as the highest human calling, and the observations of those who work in hospice care are equally compelling. Paradoxically, death often illuminates what is most important in life, and those who accompany the dying in life’s final stage are privileged to bear witness to their reflections as they look back over their lives. Social worker Grace Bluerock wrote,

“For six years, I had the amazing gift of being able to experience with people their final days and weeks. For most, these last days and weeks were spent looking back over their lives in deep contemplation. Many regrets were expressed, and many tears were shed. As a hospice social worker, I got a front row seat into the lives of those precious souls as they attempted to come to terms with how they spent their time on this earth. Everyone’s story was different, but each held common threads and similar regrets.” [iv]

The number one regret Bluerock observed in the dying during her years of service is that people wished they had loved more deeply. No one dies wishing they had made more money or worked harder. Ironically, at the moment of our departure from life we are perhaps most conscious of the instinct that existed as an unconscious urge from the very beginning—the longing to connect.

Our very purpose is imbedded in the work of our brain cells as we enter the world, and its function is a metaphor for what we as humans are destined to do.

A child’s drive to connect with his parents is important to understand, as it is the foundation for all learning. From birth on, babies are at work making connections and building the mental and emotional infrastructure that will make sense of the world and carry them into life. As parents of a newborn, we are that world, and the primary responsibility to nurture this process is ours. Speaking, singing, and reading aloud honor our infant’s drive to bond with us and nurtures the emerging internal infrastructure that will carry him into future learning and life.

[i] Susan Brink. “Through a Newborn’s Senses.” Los Angeles Times, May 11. 2013.

[ii] Ibid.

[iii] Ibid.

[iv] Grace Bluerock. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/grace-bluerock/5-most-valuable-life-lessons-i-learned-hospice-worker_b_7499030.html

A Culture at Risk

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girl w ipadTwo-thirds of U.S. Students Currently Underperform in Literacy Proficiency

Only about one-third of students performed at or above the proficient level in reading in 2015, according to the NAEP, our nation’s report card. The corollary to this is sobering: Nearly 70% of students in the United States are not proficient readers. 

Every two years the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests “representative samples of approximately 279,000 fourth-graders and 273,000 eighth-graders. Results are reported for public and private school students in the nation, and for public school students in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Department of Defense schools. In addition, results are available for 21 participating urban districts.” (nationalreportcard.gov)

Dire Predictions

  •  “…if static literacy levels continue , then by 2030 the entire Literacy Level of the U.S. population will have decreased, creating an American work force that is unequipped and unskilled to work in the demanding global market.” Educational Testing Service (ETS) (Fact About Kids and Reading. balanced reading.com/Scholastic_reading_facts)
  • “Literacy problems in the United States have reached the point of being considered a major public health problem with serious consequences.” Dr. Margot Kelman, The American Speech-Language Hearing Association (Literacy Development in Infants and Toddlers: Research Findings. speech pathology.com).

Targeted Solutions

Our efforts to raise the literacy level in the United States must be targeted where learning begins—in infancy. It is no wonder the American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends that all parents read aloud to their children from birth. Recent findings in brain science prove that infants begin learning at birth and that their senses of touch and hearing actually begin developing en utero (Susan Brink: The Fourth Trimester: Understanding, Nurturing, and Protecting an Infant Through the First Three Months). Physicians and health services in obstetrics and maternity must follow their lead. Right alongside classes on baby care and breastfeeding, parenting education should include the importance of reading, speaking, and singing to a newborn.

What’s Missing from our National Conversation on Education

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lightbulb pendulumAs the chasm between rich and poor continues to grow and the middle class shrinks in the United States, we look to education as the primary tool for rectifying inequity across the socio-economic classes and leveling the economic playing field. Politicians stump for education reform and pass legislation. Head Start. No Child Left Behind. Common Core. Teachers are held responsible for student achievement and often vilified and scapegoated by the media when test scores don’t improve. Cyclically, educational reform swings like a pendulum between the poles of ‘meeting children where they are’ and ‘raising the bar’. The conversation is ongoing and shifts nearly every decade but there is one constant, and that is the absence of discussion about what happens before a child arrives at school.

New research in brain development validates what some educators and parents have long suspected to be true. The first years of life are critical in the formation and receptivity of the primary predictor of success in school: language skills. The answer to what parents can do to enable their child to have the best possible start in school and in life is simple. Speak and read to your child. Continually. Begin at birth, or even before.

That the essential role of parents in their child’s learning is not in the forefront of our national conversation on education is a glaring omission. One might assume the reason for this void is that it’s politically inexpedient to put it there. Parents might take offense and feel blamed, and the economically strapped who live in survival mode may feel they can’t afford the time and don’t have the money to acquire and read books to their children. While fear of appearing insensitive no doubt contributes to the silence, after thirty years in education I’ve come to believe something even more fundamental is involved.

Many well-intentioned people—from politicians to parents from all walks of life and even some in education—simply do not fully understand the phenomenal and far-reaching impact of spending a few minutes each day reading aloud to their child. Having taught children from a wide variety of economic and educational backgrounds, I’ve observed that this lack of awareness on the part of parents cuts across all socio-economic groups and seems to have accelerated in proportion to the proliferation of technology in our daily lives. While it’s surprising that educational experts have only recently begun to look at the importance of the early years and their impact on learning in a new field called “emerging literacy,” it is also heartening. Research in the fields of psychology, neuroscience, and language acquisition are also demonstrating that infants are far more receptive than we may ever have realized.

For our children’s sake–their future and our own–it is time to put aside our reluctance to consider this phase of children’s lives and look at the facts. As responsible parents we quickly learn what we need to do to care for our baby’s physical health. Regular visits to the pediatrician, proper nutrition and hygiene, bathing, and, eventually, a sleep schedule. We practice all these things so that our children will be healthy and thrive. What we also must understand is that the choices we as parents make during these early years have a tremendous impact on our child’s emotional, intellectual, and spiritual growth as well. Because of its ability to cultivate all of these things, it’s time to bring reading from birth into the conversation.