Here’s a story about the astonishing POWER of books.
Premature babies are often stuck for months in an enclosed crib, linked to machines.
When their parents read books to them, it both soothes them and helps them to develop. And the parents also benefit from reading to their babies.
Over 40 Australian hospitals and 14 international hospitals participated in The Little Readers Read-a-thon in September.
The program encouraged parents to read to babies in neonatal intensive care units (NICU).
Reading to children from an early age boosts their brain development, vocab and reading ability, according to a study published in 2017 in Science Direct.
However, babies in the NICU experience get less exposure to words than those on the post-natal ward: an astonishing 14,000 words less in a 24-hour period, according to an ABC report.
Parents who read to their babies soothed their distress, as well as their own.
What a result.
What books did you love to read as a child and how did they make you feel?