Read to Them or Weep

For many families with working parents and young children, the day runs at an breakneck pace. In the morning, there are cereals to pour, lunches to make and adults and kids who must be dressed and out the door by the stroke of 7 or 7:30 or 8.

When everyone reassembles, dinner, homework and a myriad of chores stretch far into the evening. When the house finally quiets down, Mom and Dad are often dog-tired and understandably want little more than a few moments to themselves.

With unrelenting schedules and the wide availability of computer games, read-along audiocassettes and television, little wonder that the read-aloud parent is becoming an endangered species. And as fewer parents find time to read to their children, everyone is the poorer for it. Reading aloud is the single most important factor in developing a child’s language and reading skills. Schools can’t do it alone.

But the benefits of reading aloud for parents and children go far beyond reading skills: Seven-year-old boys, usually too embarrassed to be kissed by their parents, will burrow into their mothers when being read another chapter of “Stuart Little.” Three-year-olds, fighting sleep even harder than their overburdened parents, will talk about their day at nursery school after yet another reading of “Goodnight Moon.” And as parents share the stories etched deeply in their own childhood memories--”The Little Engine That Could,” “The Little House on the Prairie”--they are sharing their own ethics and values as well.