Reading to children builds lifelong skills from birth, expert says

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Dr. Dipesh Navsaria, a pediatrician and professor at UW-Madison, said reading helps children develop critical thinking skills that extend far beyond childhood.

"They learn new words, they learn how to extrapolate from context so a word they may not know they can figure out from the context of the other sentences. All these skills we use in our whole lives and they start in early infancy," Navsaria said.

But the benefits extend beyond vocabulary building. Navsaria said the time spent together during reading is equally important for child development.

"There's also what we call relational health, the health of relationships, and book sharing is an amazing scaffold for parents and youn