Family dinners are more than just a time for everyone to connect, it’s an opportunity to boost your child’s appetite for words. Research shows that dinner conversation is a tremendous way to expand your child’s vocabulary because children learn more sophisticated words from their parent’s stories. In fact, words that go beyond the 3,000 most common words are 10 times more likely to show up in dinner conversation than in storybooks. As a result, children with rich vocabularies learn to read more easily because they can better interpret the words they are reading. The studies also found that children who tell more stories at dinner excel at reading comprehension and have better narrative skills. Just make sure their mouths aren’t full when they open up to speak.
This article was originally published on September 23, 2015
