New parents, just in case you didn’t already feel overwhelmed with caring for your infant – or guilty enough about giving them the best start in life – here’s one more stick to beat yourselves with.
A study from Marshall University Joan C Edwards School of Medicine in West Virginia has built on the existing and accepted research that reading to toddlers boosts their language skills. However, this latest study found that reading to babies – a minimum of one book a day (though they don’t say how long the books must be) from just two weeks old gives the little ones’ language abilities, such as speaking and comprehension, a noticeable lift by just nine months.
Although we understand the study was done using one language, we wonder if the results might be extrapolated to, say, two languages, so children could get an extra-strong start in bilingualism.
