You are like most parents – you want your kids to be successful in the future. What if you would be told that there are are ways that you can increase their chances, would you do it?
Do you want to know how they can become more successful? You can enhance their chances of having the ability to read other people and analyzing how people are going to react to the different things that they do.
To raise successful kids, you need to spend more time with them. As a busy parent, you may find this hard to do but the more that you spend time with them, the better it would be.
You are going to read to your kids a lot. You may have to do this once every day. The more that you make it as a part of your routine, the better it would be for you and your kids. It is bound to be productive and beneficial.
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Basics of Reading to Your Kids
It has always been recommended that parents should read to their children at an early age. Even infants can benefit when they are read to. Even if they do not understand the words yet, there are some benefits you can get when you read aloud:
– You allow yourself for bonding with your child by speaking to him/her.
– You demonstrate how communication works.
The more that your kids grow, the more that you will see the benefits of reading. Those who are read to every single day tend to develop their vocabulary more. The more that they are aware of the words that they can use, the more inclined they will be to read. The better that people know, the more that they will be successful in finishing school.
When kids finish school, they have better chances of reaching successful jobs. They can become more stable in life and build better relationships with people.
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Read With Your Kids
There are a lot of people who would like to read to their children, but they do not usually read with their children. This is the main difference in how parents read to their children. When you read with their children, you allow them to see the same pictures that you are seeing. They become more exposed to the various words.
One of the biggest mistakes that people make is they use reading to their children as some bedtime ritual. They do it to let their children sleep. You need to make sure that you read with your kids. Allow them to enjoy the story too instead of going to sleep.
Developing Intellectual Empathy
People who read with their children allow their children to become exposed to the character’s various roles in the story. They get to realize the different emotions that are felt by the characters. When you read fiction literature to kids, it may be too much for them. Try to stick with books that will allow them to feel like they are the main characters in the story so that they will begin to feel the story and appreciate the story better.
What children should develop is intellectual empathy. This is the ability to perceive how other people think even from a distance. This is different from emotional empathy wherein people need to be in front of others to begin feeling emotions. Both types of empathy can be useful but intellectual empathy can take people further in life.
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Allow Them to Choose Their Adventures
When you want your children to understand intellectual empathy, you should make sure that when you read to your children, you are going to make some dramatic pauses so that your children will have time to absorb the story. This will allow your children to get into the mind of the character so that they will understand the simple conflicts that characters are going through.
It will help if you choose books that are good for their brain development. Once again, books that are too advanced for them might make them turned off with reading, but books that they can relate to will be understood better.
You need to ask your children some questions that your children can answer the best way that they can. You can allow them to understand the emotions that the characters are feeling so that they can feel the same.
There are also some parents who encourage their children to change the ending of the story if they can. This will allow them to realize that in life, there are different choices to choose from.
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The Real Benefits
Like mentioned earlier, the real benefit that your children can get is to become successful in life because they can read how people will react to them and the choices that they make. This allows them to be wary of other people’s emotions.
It should be remembered that it does not mean that just because you did not read to your children, they are already bound to fail. Rather, they will just not get the needed benefits that reading with them can make.
Allow your children to reflect on the story that you read with them. This will allow you to know how they feel about individual events. They can also change the endings if they think that this is necessary.
When you teach your children how to read, you will not only teach them how to become advanced readers; you will also allow them to become empathic people intellectually. This means that they can be in better relationships because they understand how people feel given different situations. When you read with your children, you are allowing them to become better people.
