Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Encourage Your Child to Read More

Let me begin by saying that, the benefits of reading are not limited to 10 reasons, but are the top most important reasons.This post should encourage you to pick up that book you’ve been meaning to finish so you can start the next one.

There are endless stories that can both broaden your understanding of the world and help you get through a point in your life. Those who read have been known to have a more finely-tuned brain than those who prefer more passive activities. With this said, anyone hoping to improve their mind both psychologically and cognitively might want to think about taking up the habit of regular reading.

1. To Develop Your Verbal Abilities

• Although it doesn’t always make you a better communicator, those who read tend to have a more varied range of words to express how they feel and to get their point across. This increases exponentially with the more you read, giving you a higher level of vocabulary to use in everyday life.

2. Improves Your Focus and Concentration

• Sitting down with a book takes long periods of focus and concentration, which at first is hard to do. Being fully engaged in a book involves closing off the outside world and immersing yourself into the text, which over time will strengthen your attention span.

3. Readers Enjoy The Arts and Improve The World

• A study done by the NEA explains that people who read for pleasure are many times more likely than those who do not to visit museums, attend concerts, and most likely to perform volunteer and charity work. Readers are active participants in the world around them, and this engagement is critical to individual and social well-being.

4. It Improves Your Imagination

• You are only limited by what you can imagine, and the worlds described in books, as well as other peoples views and opinions, will help you expand your understanding of what is possible. By reading a written description of an event or a place, your mind is responsible for creating that image in your head, rather than having the image placed in front of you when you watch television.

5. Reading Makes You Smarter

• Reading gives you a chance to consume huge amounts of research in a relatively short amount of time. Anne E. Cunningham and Keith E. Stanovich, authors of “What Reading Does for the Mind” also noted that heavy readers tend to display greater knowledge of how things work and who or what people were. Reading has been linked to academic achievement.

6. It Makes You Interesting And Attractive

• This goes hand in hand with reading to become smarter. Having a library of information that you can pick-up from non-fiction reading will come in handy in any academic or scholarly conversation. You will be able to hold your own and add to the conversation. You will be able to engage a wider variety of people in conversation and in turn improve your knowledge and conversation skills.

7. It Reduces Stress

• A study by Mindlab International at the University of Sussex, showed that reading reduces stress. The study had individuals only read, silently, for six minutes to slow down the heart rate and ease tension in the muscles.

8. It Improves Your Memory

• Maryanne Wolf, author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain says that, “Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight.” The benefits of increased reading keeps your memory sharp and your learning capacity nimble.

9. Helps Discover and Create Yourself

• We should read to increase our wit and imagination, our sense of intimacy-in short, our entire consciousness-and also to heal our pain. With the endless amount of perspectives and lives we can read about, books can give us an opportunity to, and still allow us to learn the life skills they entail.

10. For Entertainment

• All of the benefits of reading mentioned so far are a bonus result to the most important; It’s entertainment value. Reading is not only fun, but it has all the added benefits that we have discussed so far. A book can be much more enthralling than watching a movie or a TV show (although they have their benefits), a good book can keep us amused while developing our life skills.

These reading benefits are not just exclusive to adults. These benefits apply to our children as well. We all know that reading is one of the most important fundamental skills children (or anyone) must master to succeed- to succeed in school and to succeed in life. Almost everything we do involves reading of some form, and it is undoubtedly one of the best practices to stimulate intellectual development in our children.