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Home › Articles › Your Children › E-X-E-R-C-I-S-E

E-X-E-R-C-I-S-E

Health and Fitness by the Book

By Lisa A. Goldstein

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Two things are important early on in your child's life: being read to and learning about health and fitness. Why not combine the two?

Reading aloud to children helps stimulate brain development, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, yet only 50 percent of infants and toddlers are routinely read to by their parents.

Benefits of Reading
By reading books to your child, you can help increase his or her vocabulary, says Iman Sharif, a health literacy expert and associate professor of clinical pediatrics at Children's Hospital at Montefiore in New York City. "Better vocabulary skills are a very strong predictor of success in school," she says. "Books also introduce children to subjects and ideas that they may not get to see in their usual environments."

Indeed, reading does more than nurture pre-reading skills. "It promotes and models good habits," says Claudia Weger, assistant executive director of the Ossining Children's Center in Ossining, N.Y. And these habits will be the foundation for your child's lifelong good health.

Books are good teachers, read by good teachers – you. Abby Scheer of Syracuse, N.Y., has been reading to her toddler twin girls since they were born. "They naturally look to books as sources for learning and discovering things about the world," says Scheer.


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