While you might be reading bedtime stories to help your child settle before lights out, you may be doing much more than just a nightly ritual.
A new study released by Ohio State University shows that young children whose parents read them five books a day enter kindergarten having heard about 1.4 million more words than kids who were never read to.
Jessica Logan and her team launched into this research after findings from an earlier study indicated that one-fourth of children are never read to and another quarter were only read to once or twice a week.
In collaboration with the Columbus Metropolitan Library, Logan and her colleagues determined the average number of words in board books and picture books, and then calculated how many words a child would hear from birth through his or her 5th birthday at different levels of reading. The findings were stunning.
By the time children are 5 years old, if they have: