Someone must lure them into the wonderful world of the written word, someone must show them the way. Prescott A Father Reads to His Child Early-childhood research has demonstrated the importance of reading and storytelling in young children. Reading is an ideal form of stimulation because it engages visual, auditory, interactive and attention processes in a pleasurable context.
Physicians have a unique opportunity to educate parents on the importance of early education.
Project Read, a program designed to promote early reading, uses volunteer readers who read to children while they are waiting to see their physician. The volunteer readers encourage parents and older siblings to read to young children in the family and may give each child a book of his or her own to take home. The role family physicians play in the lives of preschool children and their parents allows them to emphasize the importance of early reading long before schools have an influence. Project Read can help physicians emphasize to parents the importance of reading in young children's lives. Reading achievement at age seven has been found to strongly correlate with parents' interest in literacy and with the quality of parents' verbal interaction with their child in the preschool years.