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I have a three-year-old, and I think this is on the whole a great list, but I also find it very hard to believe that reading to your young kids causes them to b

I have a three-year-old, and I think this is on the whole a great list, but I also find it very hard to believe that reading to your young kids causes them to be high academic achievers. (I think also the goal of "high academic achievement" seems dissonant with the rest of the list, but maybe that's just me.)

jerf 12y ago
And yet, it's one of the few solid results science has given us on the topic of children off to a good intellectual start. The signal is fairly strong.
- mseebach 12y ago
  Does this science control for "being the kind of parent who thinks sitting down and reading with their kid is a pretty damn good idea"? I could see how reading to children is an effect of a set of values that are conductive to raising successful children, and as values often do, don't lend themselves well to being broken down into its constituent parts. Or put in a different way - if you, as a parent, consider reading to your child a chore, will it still work?
  - Retric 12y ago
    Yes, language exposure in an of it's self is useful. Also, reading interesting books often leads to children continuing to read that same book to see how it ends. And thus reading for fun which provides a lot of useful practice.
    - mseebach 12y ago
      There's got to be something more than language on it's own. Surely, you can't just leave your kid with an audiobook - or the TV on.
- watwut 12y ago
  There is whole lot of what we do not know about kids and effects of reading at various ages. There are also a lot of unconfirmed myths about it. To make it even worst, most studies on very young kids (babies) dealt with language deprived kids and not normally developing kids. You will not be academically successful if you can not read well and reading a lot of books makes you better reader. Parents who love reading and read a lot lead to kids that love reading. Depending on what exactly you mean as good intellectual start, the effects might been much less proven then we like to believe.
  - jerf 12y ago
    You know, I'm actually first on board with the idea that rather a lot of science is more poorly sourced than we'd like, and a lot of people place too much trust in "Science!". There's a lot of people who use the religion part of their brain to deal with "Science!". On the other hand, this pathological need to disprove every study that has ever come out, ever, on every topic ever, is equally wrong. Perhaps it is also sourced from the same part of the brain. Simply demanding more proof than we have right now is too powerful an argument; it disproves everything, and is thus useless. This may not be the all-singing, all-dancing result that is so easy to call for when it's not your job to provide it, but it is one of the few strong signals we legitimately have about early intellectual development, and it's as wrong to just dismiss it as it is to blindly trust it. To forever demand higher standards is not sophisticated; it is to embrace endless, profound, uncorrectable ignorance. It is not scientific.
    - watwut 12y ago
      I'm not disproving those studies, just their interpretations. Those famous baby reading studies were made on language deprived children, because it actually makes sense. Those babies are in need of help. Knowing whether twenty or whatever minutes of reading makes difference or not can change peoples lives. It turns out, that it does. However, concluding from the above that normally developing baby in family that communicates with him a lot will get the same benefit is incorrect. May or may not be. The other thing is, babies, toddlers, preschoolers and elementary school children are very different in a lot of ways. The effects of reading on those groups are going to be different. The effects of reading on interested and uninterested child are going to be different too. And it just so happens that many very small kids are not interested in being read to. Note that I'm not saying that reading to preschooler stories that the preschooler likes will not help to build love for reading. I'm kinda sure it will. However, the whole "reading every day is necessary for children of all ages" drum beats are overstating what is actually known about it.
ctdonath 12y ago
If you can't read, or read poorly, you cannot be a high academic achiever. Reading (prolific) to a child teaches how to read, and that reading is important & worthwhile - leading to voracious intake of academic material. It may not cause high academic achievement, but high academic achievement is unlikely without it.
- pc86 12y ago
  It's somewhat similar to the parenting book analogy used in (I think) Freakonomics, isn't it? It's not the fact that a parent buys parenting books that makes them a good mother or father. It's the fact that they're the type of parent who would buy those books, who cares about their children, etc, that makes them a good mother or father.
- nevi-me 12y ago
  At 4-5 I could read two languages fluently (at the rate of a typical 7-8 year-old), having been taught phonetics for both languages. There were a lot of words I didn't know, but I could at least look them up in the dictionary. > Reading (prolific) to a child teaches how to read ... So even though I wasn't read at a lot as a child, I was taught how to do it myself. Inquisitiveness goes a long way with a child. I started doing crosswords at 6-7, and that taught me other skills etc. TL;DR, I agree that you can't be a high academic achiever if you can't read well.
gavinpc 12y ago
In this radio piece about the Harlem Children's Zone, they reference a study that connects the sheer volume of words a child is exposed to with success later in life [0]. It may just be that reading is one way to increase the number of words in early childhood and that it correlates generally with more (nonviolent) language usage. [0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/going-big http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/g...
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> "I also find it very hard to believe that reading to your young kids causes them to be high academic achievers" My guess is that reading to them at a young age teaches them that reading can be fun. It probably means that as they get older they will look at reading as a fun activity - something they want to do - and not something boring. And I'd guess that someone who reads performs better academically than someone who doesn't.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  More importantly, reading is the foundation of every middle class job. Whether it is legal precedents, medical journals, technical manuals, textbooks, articles, memos, reports, or code, reading is constant.
mbesto 12y ago
It's not causative but it is definitely correlative. Source: My girlfriend's startup is in this space and they have 15 year of studies backing it up.

jerf 12y ago

And yet, it's one of the few solid results science has given us on the topic of children off to a good intellectual start. The signal is fairly strong.

mseebach 12y ago
Does this science control for "being the kind of parent who thinks sitting down and reading with their kid is a pretty damn good idea"? I could see how reading to children is an effect of a set of values that are conductive to raising successful children, and as values often do, don't lend themselves well to being broken down into its constituent parts. Or put in a different way - if you, as a parent, consider reading to your child a chore, will it still work?
- Retric 12y ago
  Yes, language exposure in an of it's self is useful. Also, reading interesting books often leads to children continuing to read that same book to see how it ends. And thus reading for fun which provides a lot of useful practice.
  - mseebach 12y ago
    There's got to be something more than language on it's own. Surely, you can't just leave your kid with an audiobook - or the TV on.
watwut 12y ago
There is whole lot of what we do not know about kids and effects of reading at various ages. There are also a lot of unconfirmed myths about it. To make it even worst, most studies on very young kids (babies) dealt with language deprived kids and not normally developing kids. You will not be academically successful if you can not read well and reading a lot of books makes you better reader. Parents who love reading and read a lot lead to kids that love reading. Depending on what exactly you mean as good intellectual start, the effects might been much less proven then we like to believe.
- jerf 12y ago
  You know, I'm actually first on board with the idea that rather a lot of science is more poorly sourced than we'd like, and a lot of people place too much trust in "Science!". There's a lot of people who use the religion part of their brain to deal with "Science!". On the other hand, this pathological need to disprove every study that has ever come out, ever, on every topic ever, is equally wrong. Perhaps it is also sourced from the same part of the brain. Simply demanding more proof than we have right now is too powerful an argument; it disproves everything, and is thus useless. This may not be the all-singing, all-dancing result that is so easy to call for when it's not your job to provide it, but it is one of the few strong signals we legitimately have about early intellectual development, and it's as wrong to just dismiss it as it is to blindly trust it. To forever demand higher standards is not sophisticated; it is to embrace endless, profound, uncorrectable ignorance. It is not scientific.
  - watwut 12y ago
    I'm not disproving those studies, just their interpretations. Those famous baby reading studies were made on language deprived children, because it actually makes sense. Those babies are in need of help. Knowing whether twenty or whatever minutes of reading makes difference or not can change peoples lives. It turns out, that it does. However, concluding from the above that normally developing baby in family that communicates with him a lot will get the same benefit is incorrect. May or may not be. The other thing is, babies, toddlers, preschoolers and elementary school children are very different in a lot of ways. The effects of reading on those groups are going to be different. The effects of reading on interested and uninterested child are going to be different too. And it just so happens that many very small kids are not interested in being read to. Note that I'm not saying that reading to preschooler stories that the preschooler likes will not help to build love for reading. I'm kinda sure it will. However, the whole "reading every day is necessary for children of all ages" drum beats are overstating what is actually known about it.

ctdonath 12y ago

If you can't read, or read poorly, you cannot be a high academic achiever. Reading (prolific) to a child teaches how to read, and that reading is important & worthwhile - leading to voracious intake of academic material. It may not cause high academic achievement, but high academic achievement is unlikely without it.

pc86 12y ago
It's somewhat similar to the parenting book analogy used in (I think) Freakonomics, isn't it? It's not the fact that a parent buys parenting books that makes them a good mother or father. It's the fact that they're the type of parent who would buy those books, who cares about their children, etc, that makes them a good mother or father.
nevi-me 12y ago
At 4-5 I could read two languages fluently (at the rate of a typical 7-8 year-old), having been taught phonetics for both languages. There were a lot of words I didn't know, but I could at least look them up in the dictionary. > Reading (prolific) to a child teaches how to read ... So even though I wasn't read at a lot as a child, I was taught how to do it myself. Inquisitiveness goes a long way with a child. I started doing crosswords at 6-7, and that taught me other skills etc. TL;DR, I agree that you can't be a high academic achiever if you can't read well.

gavinpc 12y ago

In this radio piece about the Harlem Children's Zone, they reference a study that connects the sheer volume of words a child is exposed to with success later in life [0]. It may just be that reading is one way to increase the number of words in early childhood and that it correlates generally with more (nonviolent) language usage. [0] http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/going-big http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/364/g...

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> "I also find it very hard to believe that reading to your young kids causes them to be high academic achievers" My guess is that reading to them at a young age teaches them that reading can be fun. It probably means that as they get older they will look at reading as a fun activity - something they want to do - and not something boring. And I'd guess that someone who reads performs better academically than someone who doesn't.

sanderjd 12y ago
More importantly, reading is the foundation of every middle class job. Whether it is legal precedents, medical journals, technical manuals, textbooks, articles, memos, reports, or code, reading is constant.

mbesto 12y ago

It's not causative but it is definitely correlative. Source: My girlfriend's startup is in this space and they have 15 year of studies backing it up.