Children are perceptive, curious, and much smarter than given credit for. The way they understand, perceive, and recognize emotions and people, stay with them for life. It’s essential that good value and ethics, which contribute to making the right person, are instilled into them from the beginning.
It’s also essential that they receive tools that broaden their mind and make them more capable of understanding the world around them. Many parents struggle with this; however, because raising a child can complex and taxing. There is no right or wrong way to do; what matters is the effort and love put into it.
Parenting, however it is done, leaves a lasting imprint in a child’s mind. The littlest of things they do, the ways they talk and display their emotions can become significant elements of the person their child grows up to become. While there are many tools and techniques to help parents with raising a child, one of the simplest and most recommended is reading storybooks to their children. Parenting can be made more fun and easier by including reading as a daily habit, which is why storybooks are important for kids.
Stories can teach kids about values, respect, patience, and empathy, in a way that caters to their vivid imagination. It can do, in many ways, what academics and theory cannot do. It is a fruitful experience for both the parent and the child.
Here are 10 reasons why storybooks are important for kids:
1. Teaches Kids Creativity and Builds Imagination
Storybooks for children usually have pictures and an enlarged text with different fonts and graphics. They have talking objects and animals, and are set in a fantasy world which may look different from ours, but deals with the same human emotions. This helps kids become more creative and develop a thinking that is more complex and vivid. It helps them view things in the real world with a different eye. Storybooks are known to enhance children’s creative vision and develop a perspective that is unique, which is why storybooks are important.
Storybooks reinforce the importance of thinking beyond academia. It is the theory as well as a practical way of letting a kid become more receptive to ideas that are not conventional. And in doing so, it makes a kid more creatively liberal. Storybooks are full of bold colors, and pictorial representations, helping a kid understand the story with a more detailed and innovative vision in their mind. It is the best tool for instilling innovation and creativity in a child from a very young age.
2. Teaches Kids Moral Lessons and The Importance Of Values
Stories for children focus a lot on character building. Since a young mind is easily influenced, it is important that it is exposed to information and stories that are ethically good and of value. Such stories usually have a moral lesson at the end, so that children can learn about actions and their consequences. A child must gain the meaning of moral inclinations towards good or bad early on since it contributes to becoming a better person when they grow up.
The fact that storybooks can teach lessons in a fun and straightforward way is one of the biggest reasons why storybooks are important for kids. Through these stories, strength, resilience, empathy, and patience are glorified as emotions that help in solving dilemmas. Anger and hate, on the other hand, are discouraged and portrayed as negative. This forms a baseline of an understanding of human emotions among children. Parents must ensure that they teach children the importance of values before they embark on the world on their own.
3. Teaches Kids the Importance Of Critical Thinking and Problem-Solving
Storybooks teach kids logic, a concept that is new to a young mind and must be taught with patience and understanding. Stories with animal characters who talk and play appeal to children, and they get inspired by them. Such characters set examples for kid’s behaviors, and therefore their actions must be right and ethical. Their capability to inspire and influence is why storybooks are important for kids.
Stories also tackle problems and their solutions. Usually, they mirror a real-life problem in an over-simplified way that is understandable to a child, such as bullying or violence. Solutions to solve such issues are through love, endurance, and patience, all qualities that are complex but teachable through examples.
Usually, stories that have moral lessons make a child think and become more curious. Like any other story, it has conflicts and questions, which urge the child to think of a solution. This can sharpen their intuition and problem-solving ability on their own.
4. Develops Language Skills and Vocabulary
Children need to be equipped with tools that sharpen their language skills. To infants and toddlers, if parents read out stories, it helps them become more attentive and helps them understand their language. It can create interest in reading before school even starts. For kids above that age, they should begin to read storybooks on their own so that they can develop a more extensive vocabulary and improve their language skills. Readers have a better grasp of grammar.
Storybooks can teach children sophisticated words that aren’t necessarily used in day-to-day conversation. And if children deal with such words early on, they will gain a sense of familiarity with them, before eventually applying them in their own lives. Even when we grow older, novels are a great way to improve our vocabulary and make us more informed and knowledgeable. Many kids don’t display an interest in academics. That is why storybooks are important because they can make even boring concepts seem fun.
5. Makes Kids More Positive
Stories for kids never end on a negative note. They have happy and meaningful endings, thus stressing upon the fact that all problems have a solution, and all hardships can be overcome with hardwork and strength. While this may not hold in real life, children do develop an optimistic attitude, which contributes to better mental health when they grow up. Whether it is self-esteem issues, disagreements with parents, or fights with friends, kids learn that all of these problems can be solved if they tackle them through proper communication.
A positive attitude can go a long way. Even if the world isn’t as rosy as painted in storybooks, we have more strength to take on challenges and beat them if we are positive. And such an attitude doesn’t develop overnight. That is why storybooks are important for kids. They can learn to look at the “silver lining in every cloud.” Stories help children look at the world with wonder and marvel. Their vivid imagination helps them look for the magic in everything, and that kind of thinking can help children become stronger and happier adults.
6. Makes Kids More Inquisitive and Curious
The authors of children’s storybooks ensure that they hold a child’s attention through captivating characters, images, and plot-lines. When children start to understand things, they ask a lot of questions. That can help them in shaping better ideas and thoughts. It also helps in enriching their knowledge.
Children tend to be more curious than adults. But it is important that they ask the right questions, which help them in learning something new. Storybooks talk about life in an animated setting, and since children’s encounters with the real world are filtered through their parents, storybooks can provide good exposure. This helps them become more independent when they have to go to school. While children’s questions can be a lot to handle for parents, it is important that children gain a little bit of understanding of the world before they are on their own. And curiosity only grows when it is not tended properly.
7. Kids Feel More Represented in Stories and Understand Complex Things
Children may feel like they don’t have a say in their own homes. They may not understand the rules and strictness of their parents, much less gauge that they are for their good. One of the significant reasons why storybooks are important is because they make children feel represented. Children resonate with characters in stories because they mirror their tendencies to behave. This also means that they respect such characters and try to imitate them in their own lives. They also gain social skills and learn the importance of friendship.
Stories are an informative way of delivering a message that may be too complex for a child. Many studies and research indicate that children between the age of four and six were able to understand evolution through stories and even recall it months later. Stores tend to leave a lasting imprint on a child’s mind. They understand and remember them more easily than a talk. Thus, they can serve as an efficient technique for parents to teach their kids about complex things that they may not understand otherwise. They also appreciate strong emotions through characters, along with how to deal with them, because stories evoke feelings of happiness, anger, sadness, love, hate, and laughter.
8. Storybooks Are Entertaining, Comforting and Relaxing
Storybooks can be a source of entertainment for children. Whether it is read aloud to them, or they read it themselves, it is a productive way of spending their time because it makes them retain information and values without the feeling of boredom. Children have a short attention span, meaning that they need to be preoccupied with activities at all times.
Stories also provide a sense of comfort. That is why storybooks are important. As a result, many parents like to tell their children a story at bedtime. It puts them to sleep because they feel relaxed and comforted. They don’t need to move around that much, and thus when they are tired from the day, they sleep easily when they are calmed down through a story. Even adults use reading as a means of meditation because it makes them feel at peace.
9. Helps Parents Spend Quality Time With Their Children
One of the reasons why storybooks are important is that they help both the parents and their kids. Parents have an activity that captures their child’s attention and requires less effort from their part. Since so many different kinds of storybooks for children are available now, parents have a choice in what message they want to teach their children. They can snuggle in with them in bed in the morning or at night, and read aloud to them.
Many parents have little time to spend with their children during the week because of work. That is why storybooks are important; they help in creating room for some family time. In this way, parents can also talk to their children about important things, especially about the kid’s feelings. Children also grow to love storybooks this way and associate it with spending time with their parents.
10. Makes Kids Understand Differences, Diversity, Discrimination, and Culture
Children aren’t born with an understanding of cultural and ethnic differences. In fact, if not taught at an early age about the sensitivity and seriousness of discrimination in all its forms, they may receive a shock of it in the real world, especially since school and academia don’t cover it. From a young age, children should be made aware of the prevalence of racism and sexism in the world, so that they develop intolerance of it when they grow up, and not a habit. The fact that storybooks can teach children about such complicated and sensitive subjects that, at times, even adults fail to understand, is why storybooks are important for kids.
In the wake of the “Black Lives Matter” Movement, many African-American parents are speaking out about how they have to teach their children about police brutality and how to be wary of the police from a young age, in order to protect them. This has led to other people, all over the world, realize their privilege.
Children, even the ones who are privileged enough to never be affected by it, should be taught about becoming good people who don’t inflict violence, hate, or judgment on others. They should be informed that every color, race, and gender is beautiful. And storybooks are an effective way to ensure that.
You can watch this video of a parent explaining how to teach children about racism:
Click here to check out storybooks for kids that teach about race and diversity.
These were 10 reasons that focused on why storybooks are important for kids. A young mind should be nurtured and enhanced with knowledge and values. And storybooks are the best way to do that. A child who reads a lot of storybooks will become an adult who loves reading novels, thus forming a well-read and informed individual. It is never too early to impart knowledge.
Click here to read a fantastic article on why storybooks are important for kids.
Last Updated on by Steffy Michael