The Benefits of Nightly Reading

The benefits of nightly reading are many and well documented. Read through to the end to see some of the benefits that children gain from well-managed nightly reading!

1. improved Concentration.

Speaking is a natural part of being human. Put a kid around a group of people for a long enough time, and that kid will quickly pick up oral language. Not so for reading. Believe it or not, reading is not a natural function of the human brain. The brain simply didn’t evolve for that. The act of reading requires the brain to find some tricky ways of getting different processing centers to work together in order to perform the feat.

Think of your brain kind of like a computer network. A squishy, meaty computer network that is able to rewire itself on the fly in order to do cool stuff. Each “computer” on the network performs a different function. It is composed of a variety of processing nodes/centers that are evolved to perform highly specialized functions. Some areas are for processing vision, others for speech. Some handle pattern recognition, while others control motor functions like walking and typing. Because the brain lacks a “reading center”, it has developed some neat tricks to allow us to be able to see these little symbols, recognize patterns of them, and extract meaning from them.

Your visual center, associative learning center, speech center, and more all have to coordinate their efforts in order for the brain to process the written word. This being the case, it follows that extensive reading trains the brain to be able to focus for longer and longer periods of time in order to perofrm this amazing feat. It requires a lot of focus to do well, and the more you do it, the better your brain is at devoting resources to this difficult and unnatural task.

Keep this in mind, as the next few items will build off of this idea.

2. Improved Analytical Thinking Skills.

The constant strengthening of the connections between different parts of the brain creates higher and higher bandwidth within the brain. Ideas are able to flow through the brain at higher speeds. This means that new information can be observed, broken down into component parts, processed, re-synthesized into new concepts. The outcome is that information is incorporated into the brain as knowledge, memories, and skills. And, at ever-increasing speeds.

The benefit for analytical thinking is an improved ability to comprehend new ideas by strategies developed by the brain to process these new ideas. And this is a benefit that grows exponentially the more you expose your brain to more and more complex ideas, especially in written form. Your brain is in a constant state of absorbing and replacing information. But, with reading, the process happens at a much deeper level than with looking at images.

Because of the aforementioned need for the brain to coordinate the functions of so many parts of the brain simultaneously in order to perform the act of reading, it has the further benefit of…

3. Improved Memory.

All of that analytical thinking and intense concentration is like drinking a super-concentrated protein shake and hitting the gym for some HIT. It is constantly creating and maintaining new connections in your brain. Your brain is no different than any other part of your body. It needs clean oxygen, clean water, nutrition, and exercise to function well. How do you exercise your brain? Do you crack open your skull and give it dumbells to curl? Only if you are a villain in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon from the 80s.

No. Nightly reading is what will do the trick as far as exercising your brain is concerned.

Check out what Ken Pugh, PhD has to say about it: “parts of the brain that have evolved for other functions—such as vision, language, and associative learning—connect in a specific neural circuit for reading, which is very challenging.” […] “A sentence is shorthand for a lot of information that must be inferred by the brain. […] Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language—when you watch a film or listen to a tape—you don’t press pause.” says Ken Pugh, President, Director of Research, and a Senior Scientist at the Department of Psychology at the University of Connecticut.

In short, the benefits of nightly reading for your memory happen by causing you to pause and think more deeply. And, as mentioned above, this helps to create and strengthen connections within the brain.

4. Larger Vocabulary.

Reading has an affect on a person’s vocabulary that speaking, listening, and watching simply do not have. Looking at those little squiggly lines on the page, activating all of the different processing nodes within the brain, and comprehending the meaning extracted from reading those words means that you are being exposed to vocabulary that your brain simply cannot ignore. You can and do filter out a lot of the things you hear when listening to people speak, generally only focusing on key words or phrases that help give you an overall understanding. But active, engaged reading forces you to notice those words, because your brain is doing all that hard work decoding what the letters mean.

Not only that, but when you read a wide variety of content, you are being exposed to words, grammar, and phrases that people surrounding you simply may not use in daily conversation.

I’m sure you’ve met a galaxy-brain at some point in time, and possibly even felt intimidated by the complexity of how they speak. Think about how your average conversation would go if you were to meet someone like Cardi B, compared to a Nobel Prize-winning chemist, physicist, astrobiologist, etc.

Speaking of people whose tremendous intellect has propelled our species to heights completely unfathomable only a few generations ago. reading also gives the gift of…

5. Expanded Creativity and Imagination.

Hopefully, by this point, you are realizing all of the benefits of nightly reading and how they are interlinked.

How is it that the previously mentioned Nobel Prize winners could dream up the theories that became the basis of their amazing scientific research? And what about with world-famous entrepreneurs? There is one thing that links all of these people together. It is their voracious appetite for the written word.

If you were to read interviews, biographies, or memoirs for any of the real world-changing personalities of the past couple of hundred years, you will find that each and every one of them shared an insatiable lust for reading. The most productive among them will finish several entire books a week. And that is ON TOP OF being so hugely productive, that they are able to shape our world like so much wet clay.

Now, how many books do you reckon your average gas station attendant finishes in a week? If the statistics are anything to go by, not many. Last year, 27% of American adults didn’t even pick up a book in the last 12 months, let alone finish one. Is that to say that gas station attendants are particularly unintelligent? Not at all. It is to say, though, that there is a definite link between non-reading and low achievement. And the ability to visualize success is a critical component to being able to achieve success. That is a function of creativity.

Think back to the last time you read a really great work of fiction. It could be a sci-fi novel, a romance novel, a book of short stories. It doesn’t matter. Because of the way different parts of the brain work together while reading, you can’t help but begin to visualize what you are reading. Do this enough, and it becomes a habit to visualize things in great detail. A skill that is critical to being and executing great creativity.

Let’s talk about pizza. what toppings do you like? what’s your favorite sauce? What kind of crust do you like?

I would bet money that, while you were reading that teeny tiny little paragraph there, your brain conjured up sights, scents, memories, tastes, and more. Your mouth may have even begun to water as you imagined it. When you read, you are training your brain to conjure up all of these sensations and more at higher and higher resolutions.

And all of these things come together for the grand finale for children, who, at the end of the day, are the target beneficiaries of this website. And that is…

6. Better Academic Achievement.

When you engage in extensive and deliberate reading, you are rewarding yourself with an ever growing set of cognitive tools that, when applied to study, guarantee you higher achievement and better outcomes over time. When you develop strong, well guided reading habits as a child, you are setting yourself up for success in all things, and for the rest of your life.

With strong enough reading and analytical skills, you are gifting yourself the ability to learn completely independently of any teacher. Teachers then become an added bonus, rather than a requirement for learning. They become someone to ask questions to and get advice from. A trusted advisor, rather than a nanny on whom you are dependent. The act of learning becomes fun, automatic, and highly efficient.

So, give yourself the gift of an infinitely brighter future. The benefits of nightly reading are undeniable and should be a central part of your daily routine.

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Downloadable tutorials are in the works to help you get that leg up. Live tutoring will soon be available to receive training in the critical skills of metacognition, phonics, and reading comprehension.