Reading out loud with children is one of the most powerful things an adult can do for them

This blog is a bit of a departure from our normal content and may not be what you would expect from a fair trade retailer. I am writing this one as a father and grandfather who cares about reading and the positive effects it can have.

Reading stories with my daughters, both in person and over video call, was one of the most enjoyable aspects of being a dad and we built so many memories together as we did it. That's one of the reasons we are launching Letters From Gaius for Advent this year (2026) to promote family reading time.

Letters From Gaius will appeal mostly to our faith-based customers but, whatever your reading taste, it is surprising what a positive effect reading out loud with the children in your life can have.

Don't just take my word for it, though. The evidence is compelling.

Being a parent of school-age children is exhausting. There's the school run to do. You need to make sure they've done their homework, packed the right sports kit and picked up their packed lunch. And then there's the emotional support, the exam prep and paying for the school trips. It keeps you busy. It can be stressful. But, deep down, you know it is about giving them a future.

But, there's also the "quiet" part where you sit down with the child you love and just a read book out loud, together, for ten or fifteen minutes.

This part costs you time, rather than money or energy but, according to the evidence, it's one of the most powerful things any adult in a child's life can do.

Typically this is one of mum's jobs but there is good evidence that it doesn't need to be. It's about adults who read. Grandparents, uncles, aunties, step-parents, foster carers, childminders, the family friend who comes for tea — the benefit travels with whoever happens to be holding the book.

We've pulled together what the research actually shows below. Researchers do love their jargon, though. So, where the studies use it, we've translated it into layman's terms for you.

What the evidence actually says

1. Books are full of words that don't show up in conversation

Everyday chat with a child is vital and helps bonding, but it's a bit repetitive. Most of us cycle through the same few thousand words: dinner, shoes, careful, lovely, come on, nearly there etc.

Books don't do that. Even a simple picture book will use vocabulary like scurry, reluctant, harbour, ancient — words they'd be unlikely to bump into over breakfast.

A team at Ohio State University decided to count. They took 60 of the most commonly read children's books, worked out how many words were in each, and multiplied that by the years before a child starts school.

Why does that matter so much? Because reading is largely a matter of recognition. When a child meets the word reluctant on a page, having heard it fifty times before at bedtime, it's like greeting an old friend. But, for a child who has not been read to, it is like having to solve a tricky puzzle.

2. You can see it happening in the brain

In 2015, researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital did something fascinating. They put 3- to 5-year-olds into an fMRI scanner — a machine that shows which parts of the brain are working hard at any given moment — and played them stories to listen to.

Children who were read to more at home showed noticeably more activity in the parts of the brain that handle meaning, following a story, and making mental pictures.

In plain terms: a child who is read to is getting practice at building pictures in their head from nothing but words. That's the very skill that, in later life, will allow them to read a page and actually see it in their imagination — rather than just hearing the words.

3. The benefit doesn't wear off

Two economists in Australia followed thousands of children over several years and asked a simple question: do the benefits of being read to, as a small child, survive into later life?

They do. Children who were read to at ages four and five were doing better on reading and thinking tasks all the way up to ages ten and eleven — five or six years after the reading in question.

Researchers are professionally suspicious of results like that, so the authors ran the numbers again and again in different ways, deliberately trying to find a fault with the results. They couldn't find one.

4. We know it's reading together that's making the difference

Families who read together a lot tend to differ in all sorts of other ways — income, education, how much spare time they have etc. So how do we know it's the reading that's making the difference?

Researchers gathered up 19 of these trials — covering nearly 2,600 children — and pooled the results into a single analysis.

The children whose families were supported to read more together performed better in both main language categories:

• Expressive language — the words a child can actually use. Effect size 0.41.
• Receptive language — the words a child understands when they hear them. Effect size 0.26.

The study had another important finding. The families who only read together occasionally saw very little benefit from it (0.19 — barely anything). The families who read together regularly benefited more than twice as much (0.54).

5. It's not only reading that improves

This relatively unknown finding offers a great deal of hope to parents supporting struggling children.

A project at NYU worked with low-income families from the birth of their child onwards, helping them read aloud and play together. It was another of those coin-flip trials, so the comparison is a fair one.

When the children were assessed at four and a half — a full eighteen months after the support had ended — the reading group showed fewer behavioural difficulties across the board: less aggression, less hyperactivity, better attention. Among children whose hyperactivity had been at a level a clinician would flag as significant, symptoms dropped by around 69%.

Which, when you think about it, shouldn't be that much of a surprise. Reading aloud offers a warm, close, predictable, ten-fifteen minutes with an adult who isn't looking at their phone all the time. So, of course it makes children more relaxed and peaceful.

It has a similar effect on the adults, too.

6. Meanwhile, reading for pleasure is having a hard time

The National Literacy Trust asks over 100,000 UK children every year whether they enjoy reading. In 2026 the answer improved for the first time in five years — 36.1% said yes, up from 32.7%, which had been the lowest figure in two decades.

That's genuinely good news. But it also means almost two out of every three children still don't enjoy reading in their own time,

This is where adults can make a real difference

A book read to you by someone who loves you is a completely different proposition to struggling through a book you've been made to read. It's the one version of reading that almost no child turns down.

The idea is that, by giving the child repeated, positive reading experiences, you help them build the desire and confidence to read on their own.

How to do it well

There's one technique the research keeps returning to, and it has a slightly off-putting name: dialogic reading. All it means, though, is reading as a conversation rather than a performance.

Instead of getting to the end of the page and turning it, you stop. You ask an open question — the kind that can't be answered with yes or no. Then, and this is the hard part, you wait. And you follow wherever the child takes the conversation, even if it's somewhere odd.

It sounds like:

• "What do you reckon happens next?"
• "Why's he gone all quiet, do you think?"
• "Have you ever felt like that?"
• "Which one would you rather be?"

When researchers pooled 64 studies of this approach published between 2000 and 2025, the overall benefit to children's reading was substantial — an effect size of 0.76.

You don't need to do it on every page. A couple of questions per session is plenty.

A few points worth making

The short version

It costs nothing, it works, and it's one of the few times in a child's life when who they're doing it with matters more than what they're actually doing.

Sources

1. Logan, J.A.R., Justice, L.M., Yumuş, M. & Chaparro-Moreno, L.J. (2019). When Children Are Not Read to at Home: The Million Word Gap. Journal of Developmental & Behavioral Pediatrics, 40(5), 383–386.
2. Hutton, J.S. et al. (2015). Home Reading Environment and Brain Activation in Preschool Children Listening to Stories. Pediatrics, 136(3), 466–478.
3. Kalb, G. & van Ours, J.C. (2014). Reading to young children: A head-start in life? Economics of Education Review, 40, 1–24.
4. Dowdall, N. et al. (2020). Shared Picture Book Reading Interventions for Child Language Development: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Child Development, 91(2), e383–e399.
5. Mendelsohn, A.L., Cates, C.B., Weisleder, A. et al. (2018). Reading Aloud, Play, and Social-Emotional Development. Pediatrics, 141(5), e20173393. (Open access.)
6. National Literacy Trust (2026). Children and young people's reading in 2026.
7. Effects and moderators of dialogic reading on children's reading literacy: A three-level meta-analysis on studies from 2000 to 2025. Learning and Individual Differences (2026).
8. Fatherhood Institute (January 2026). Written evidence to the UK Parliament Education Committee, Reading for Pleasure inquiry (RFP0084) — citing Norman, H. & Davies, J. (2023), What a Difference a Dad Makes, Leeds University Business School.
9. Whitehurst, G.J. et al. (1988), summarised in What Works Clearinghouse: Dialogic Reading intervention report.
10. Kinship / Learning with Grandparents. Project report.
11. Reach Out and Read. Reading Aloud, Play, and Social-Emotional Development — research summary.