Book sharing time with infants is the best investment

Book-sharing time with infants gives the most bang-for-the-buck (or minute, more accurately).

Brain development is at its fastest and most fundamental in the earliest months. High-contrast books foster vision development for example. And the whole notion of connecting a spoken word, to a color, shape, or thing, of connecting meaning to a sound, is at the root of literacy.

Reading is making meaning out of squiggles on a page or screen: that starts with connecting meaning to sounds ("mama" means you, very early in life, for example, but it's not a magic word, the meaning of those syllables is learned). Later, sounds and their meaning are connected to shapes, colors, things, people. Later still, meaning is connected to squiggles on a page thru the sound we assign to it. Little black squiggles are scribbles without knowledge sound and meaning connected to them.

It's much easier to learn to read print when a child has a rich bank of known sounds and meanings to draw on. If a word’s sound and meaning is already known then learning to connect that sound, that meaning to those black squiggles on a page is just one step. Learning to read the word never heard before, of a thing never seen or experienced before is much more taxing job.

The more words heard, seen and spoken in the earliest months and years life the stronger and broader is the foundation for later Reading as we know it. Much better if that foundation strong and rich so that the last step, connecting those little black squiggles to Meaning and Sound, is a small one. Books in the home bring in more and greater variety and use of words than daily life, words you are unlikely to use in routine daily communications.