The American Academy of Pediatrics announced it will ask its doctors to start encouraging parents to read aloud to their child, every time a baby visits the doctor.
More and more research is showing that important brain development begins in the first three years of a child’s life, and that reading — as well as singing and talking — is important to improving a young child’s vocabulary and other communication skills. But this was the first time the academy, which issues recommendations on all sorts of parenting concerns, talked about early literacy education.
From a New York Times article on the change:
“The pediatricians’ group hopes that by encouraging parents to read often and early, they may help reduce academic disparities between wealthier and low-income children as well as between racial groups. “If we can get that first 1,000 days of life right,” said Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, an assistant professor of pediatrics at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, “we’re really going to save a lot of trouble later on and have to do far less remediation.”
At Waterford, we’re all about the power and importance of early learning, so we’re thrilled to know the AAP’s 62,000 pediatricians across the country are joining us as powerful advocates for early reading literacy.
