Read It Again, Mom
How Rereading Stories Improves Child Development
Last week, our co-founder, Mike, shared his & his mother’s experience rereading The Little Engine That Could over & over again. We’re sure that you, as parents, can relate to this experience. Yes, it can be tedious or even frustrating at times, but we want you to know that this repetition is very important for your child’s development and you are actually helping your child learn much faster than reading a different story. For children, rereading the same story:
Provides a sense of comfort & familiarity going into storytime
Increases their vocabulary faster than reading different stories
Allows for more complex understanding of the characters & messages
Help them transition from listeners to reading on their own
We hope that understanding these benefits will make it easier for you to keep turning those same pages
Comfort Leads to Engagement
Story time is very important for both children and their parents. It is a time to bond and an opportunity for children to experience new things, emotions, and ideas. Whether you read to your child or they read on their own, reading plays a significant role in developing language & literacy skills. However, it is important to remember that children’s brains are still developing and work differently than those of adults. Consequently, the experience can seem counterintuitive versus what we expect as adults.
We would, logically, think that to get something new from reading, we should read new things. This works for us as adults, but a child’s brain is not ready for that level of input. They are still learning how to intake & retain information so it can be overwhelming to have too much new information. When children are overwhelmed, the best case is that they simply do not learn anything new; in the worst case, they might be so frustrated that they are turned off to the whole experience. As children begin to explore language & literacy, a favorite story is like the “comfort corners” that we use for positive discipline, providing a safe space to calm down & to process what they are experiencing. Simply put, children like knowing what to expect and the predictability of that favorite book allows for significantly deeper engagement with the experience.
Familiarity Increases Vocabulary Learning
Studies show that children who are read the same words & concepts in the same story repeatedly (group A) had a significantly greater ability to recall them, to retain them week to week, and to distinguish them from other similar concepts compared to children who heard the same words & concepts in different stories (group B) (Horst, Parsons & Bryan, 2011). In the first week, when asked shortly after hearing the story, the children in group A were able to correctly identify the word ~75% of the time compared to ~40% in group B. By the third week of testing, the children from group A were correct ~95% of the time, whereas the children in group B only got to ~65%, less than group A in the first week. Studying retention week over week showed that children in group A performed 150% better than group B, indicating that the group A children had the words more firmly in their brains.
Learning a word also means being able to distinguish between that word and another representing a similar concept (think “pen” vs. “pencil”). The group A children distinguished the correct word better than group B, both in the short term (recall) & long term (retention). In fact, with respect to retention, the children in group B performed worse than random chance, indicating that hearing the same concept in a different story actually made it more difficult for children.
While it can be tedious, the science clearly shows that reading the same story is more effective in improving language acquisition & literacy skills.
Take It From Plot to a Deeper Understanding
One of the core benefits of reading to children is that it allows them to have a real world experience in a controlled environment where they are not consumed by the emotions of the experience. As a simple example, it is not productive to describe “sadness” to a child who is actually sad at that moment. However, explaining a character’s sadness in a story allows them to become familiar with the experience before going through it. However, children are not typically reading for this kind of engagement when first hearing a story because they are preoccupied with what is happening in the story.
When children are sufficiently familiar with a story, they are able to look beyond the plot and explore the characters & messages of the story. When asked questions about these concepts, their answers become increasingly more complex and incorporate more ideas (Morrow, Frietag & Gambrell, 2009) - just ask Mike how many book reports he wrote on The Wind in the Willow. Asking the right questions is important and next week, we will explore how you can make story time a more interactive experience - between you & your child and between your child & the book.
Give Them Confidence to Read on Their Own
As children take the next steps of reading with a partner and on their own, the familiarity of their favorite story gives them additional confidence. Again, the familiar story helps to mitigate any potential frustration children may feel with the difficult challenge of reading. We might think that children are just reciting the story from memory, but there is actually something much more significant going on. Children are actively associating what they already know with the words & pictures on the page (Collins and Glover, 2015). They are thinking of an idea in terms of a specific word. This kind of association & context cues are some of the cornerstones of learning to read.
So Keep Reading Again & Again
Clearly, hearing & reading the same book repeatedly provides significant benefits over reading many different books. You can certainly sprinkle new ones in from time to time, but make sure that the favorite is a consistent presence in story time. Remember that you can keep it fresh for yourself by looking for new things in the book to focus on & discuss with your child. If you’re wondering what to ask your child, don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Join us next week as we take a look at the different engagement strategies and give you tips on how to increase your child’s understanding of the story & the world around them - both on & off the pages.