Three Reasons Paper Books Should Still Be A Part Of Your Child's Life

If you're a parent who is evaluating the entertainment choices made for your child, you have no doubt seen much of the electronic, multimedia, and recorded entertainment that is available. In the midst of all of this, here are three reasons why you should be sure that paper books are also a part of the entertainment you show your child.

Better Detail Recall

While children's books might seem like they don't have a lot happening in them compared to an adult-sized book, reading children's books on paper lets your child absorb more detail. Two studies have shown that ebooks and multimedia presentations adversely affect detail recall. In 2014, the Guardian reported on two Norwegian studies, one involving the general public and the other involving high school students, that showed those who read stories in electronic formats had worse recall of the stories than those who read the stories in paper form. While this might not seem as relevant to a younger child, if you get your child used to reading paper stories, he or she stands a better chance of having better reading comprehension.

Tactile Learning

Paper books, especially pop-up books, present a more tactile learning experience than ebooks and TV shows provide. This is not to say that ebooks and TV shows are no good for children; in fact, giving your child a range of entertainment choices can expose them to stories and information they might otherwise have ignored, like science shows that perform experiments for kids to see, or folktales that rely on gestures and facial expressions of the storyteller. But a paper book gives them something to hold and also gives them a better idea of how their reading skills affect how quickly or slowly they move through a story.

Practicing Patience

As a child's reading skill develops, he or she is going to take on harder and harder books, including books with more complex language styles and more complicated sentences. If a child does not have practice in reading sentences that are longer and not interrupted by multimedia modules, those harder books may turn out to be frustratingly difficult. Reading a paper book lets a child get used to relying just on the words and pictures in the book (i.e., that one source) to tell the story.

Electronic and multimedia formats now play a huge role in kids entertainment, but adding in paper books strengthens skills that will also benefit your child.

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