Reading to children

is not merely good for them. It is essential.
T... and H... across the road are read to each night. Their mother will be away for a short while to be with her own mother who is facing the last few days of her life. It's a sad time. 
T.... is at the age where he "sort of" understands what is happening. He told me quietly that he didn't like his mother being away but knew she had to go and he wondered if his father would still have time to read to them. 
I told him that his father would try to make time and that I would help. No, I won't go over at bedtime but I will help in other ways. Bedtime and the bedtime story are a special time for T... and H... and it is even more important when things are a little up and down.
T... also wanted to know if I had read to my children. 
I explained that I did not have children. He considered this carefully and then asked,
    "Well did you read to somebody else's?"
The answer to that T... is "yes". I have done often and I will do it again.
When Ms W was young and still not boarding at school and her father was struggling to care for her and grieving the loss of his wife I read to Ms W when he could not. He tried to do it as often as he could but it wasn't always possible. So Ms W would cuddle into me instead and we would read together. She loved books then as she loves them now. Ms W is the only teen I know who genuinely prefers books to screens of any sort. Her idea of a holiday in this country is a remote place, a pile of books and her drawing materials. 
    "My friends think that is weird," she says.
No, it's good. She is self-sufficient. 
Long before that I also read to the only primary school class I ever taught. (I went into the school library after that where being read to was expected.) The only time we had was the last period on Friday afternoons but it was almost sacred. Nothing got in the way of that. I taught the entire class, boys as well as girls, to knit. They would get their knitting out and I would read to them. They were children who, for the most part, had not been read to at home. It was a foreign idea but one they took to instantly. They loved it. The worst collective punishment I could have given them was to say we would not have that time together. It was never necessary to even suggest that might happen. 
Whichever book we were reading would get discussed and argued about without any input from me. It helped that I actually knew some of the authors we read. Perhaps it made them feel as if the books really were written by real people. I didn't set any sort of tasks in relation to the books. I wanted them to feel that these were books which were simply to be enjoyed.
I don't know how many of them went on reading. The following year I took over the school library. Most of them came in to borrow books at lunch time so I have to assume they were reading.
I thought of all this when I was sent a death notice for someone I knew. He was a man with a severe disability, something which would have prevented most people from even having any sort of employment. His parents had read to him from the time he could look at a picture. People said they were "wasting" their time. Not at all. He went on to be a highly thought of solicitor, a partner in a well respected firm and much more. 
But there was something much more important in that tiny notice. There were three simple words.
     "He loved books."