Why It's Important to Read Aloud to Your Kids — Even After They Can Read Themselves

Reading aloud to your children is a parental superpower — you can continue to build where the school learning stops.

- Robyn Cox

Is reading to your kids a bedtime ritual in your home? For many of us, it will be a visceral memory of our own childhoods. Or of the time raising now grown-up children.

Perhaps it involves a nightly progression through the Percy Jackson series or the next Captain Underpants book. Or maybe there's a request to have Room On The Broom again (and again).

But for some households, reading aloud is not a regular activity. A recent British report by publisher Harper Collins found many parents are not reading to their kids. Fewer than half (41 per cent) of zero to four-year-olds are read to frequently. More than 20 per cent of parents surveyed agreed reading is "more a subject to learn than a fun thing to do".

The report also found that some parents stop reading to their children once they can read by themselves. As The Guardian reported, some parents assume "it will make (their child) lazy and less likely to read independently".

Here's why it's important to read to your children — even after they have learned to read.

WHAT'S INVOLVED IN READING SKILLS?