Parents of young children can do one simple thing this year that can change their children’s lives: read aloud to them every day. Reading to children has been proven essential to ensuring a child’s success in school. Not only does it improve their language development, it also brings parents and children closer together.
Yet a study conducted for Reach Out and Read shows that fewer than half of American parents read to their children daily. Young children who aren’t read to are at the highest risk of reading below grade level once they are in school.
In Washington, less than half of all children start kindergarten ready to learn. Many do not have the pre-literacy skills they need to help them learn to read in school, simply because they haven’t been exposed to books and reading aloud.
My colleagues and I have been Reach Out and Read doctors for eight years. Reach Out and Read is a program proven to increase the number of parents who read daily to their young children. ROR partners with doctors to give free books to children and reading advice to parents during medical visits during those crucial years before children enter kindergarten.
I am excited to be training other doctors and nurses to begin Reach Out and Read in their offices as ROR expands across our state. Beautiful board and story books are as much a part of my “doctor bag’ as my stethoscope and reflex hammer.
Reach Out and Read is fun, cost effective and, most importantly, it works.
The program focuses on the children at greatest risk – children ages 6 months through 5 years living at or near poverty. Doctors distribute brand-new, developmentally and culturally appropriate books, starting with board books for babies and moving on to more complex picture books for preschoolers. Each child who participates in Reach Out and Read starts kindergarten with a home library of up to 10 terrific books. Parents hear about the importance of books and reading at every checkup from a trusted medical professional, their child’s doctor.
Multiple scientific studies have proven that this simple program works. Parents who get books and literacy advice from their doctors are up to four times more likely to read to their young children, read to them more often and provide more books in their homes.
By using the health care system to deliver books and literacy counseling, we can help ensure that every parent reads to their child every day, and that every child enters school ready to learn. We are happily partnering with libraries in our community to further this goal.
This year, children will receive more than 80,000 new Reach Out and Read books at their checkups at 70 practices across Washington. The 14 Pierce County programs will distribute more than 20,000 books. We are thrilled about the focus on young children through First 5 Fundamentals, Pierce County’s early learning initiative, and know that ROR is a vital part of early learning efforts here.
Nationwide, 3.5 million at-risk children – including 25 percent of the United States’ most impoverished tots – will receive 5.7 million Reach Out and Read books at 4,121 sites this year. More than 20 million books have been distributed through Reach Out and Read, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2009.
Reach Out and Read is proud to help so many of America’s children grow up with books and a love of reading, but it is critical that we redouble our efforts in the new year to reach even more families.
Please join us as we encourage every parent in Pierce County and across Washington to resolve to read to their young children daily in 2009. Cuddling together with a book helps build the social and emotional connections that are vital for early learning. Together we can help every child enter school loving books. Here’s to a year filled with stories and choruses of “Just one more book please?”
Dr. Mary Ann Woodruff is a Tacoma pediatrician.
