When should a child be able to read a book?

Author: Evelyn y

Mar. 07, 2024

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By: Laura Jana, MD, FAAP & Jennifer Shu, MD, FAAP

Some parents choose to read to their newborns even before they can hold their heads up or focus their eyes on the pages. Some start even sooner—reading to their unborn children through uterine walls.

Our take on this head start? Although babies are thought to be able to hear well before they are born, we wouldn't count on it making your baby significantly smarter or more well-read. If you enjoy it, though, by all means, read away in anticipation of the day when your baby will be able to join in on the fun more actively.

The good news is you won't have to wait too long. Just as there are well-defined and eagerly anticipated "motor" milestones that include rolling (4 to 6 months), sitting (7 to 9 months), and walking (anywhere from 9 to 15 months), there are equally well-defined and important milestones of early literacy.

Showered by books

If you ask us, there's no better way to decorate a nursery than by lining your baby's bookshelf with a new collection of favorite children's books. Reach out to friends, family, and anyone else you can think of and ask them to share the name(s) of their favorite children's books. Start collecting a few just for fun in anticipation, and remember to put them on your baby registry. If you're fortunate enough to have someone offer, you can even suggest a book-themed baby shower.

Book-based milestones in babies & toddlers

For the sake of making this short and sweet, we listed some of the book-related behaviors of early childhood, many of which have been developed by one of the country's most widely respected early literacy programs, Reach Out and Read. That way, you can recognize and celebrate each book-based milestone in the months to come.

  • Around 3 months: Let the games begin. Your baby will begin to babble and imitate sounds and smile at the sound of your voice. With their head held higher than in months past, they should now be developing a better grasp not only of what you're reading to them (or at least the expressions on your face) but also the books themselves as they learn to swipe at objects and attempts to bring them to their mouth.

  • Around 6 to 12 months: Taking an active interest. Between the ages of 6 and 12 months, your baby will develop many new skills. This includes the ability to sit up tall with his head steady and grab at pages. Don't be surprised if books end up in your baby's mouth. This is not only to be expected but a good sign that they are interested in books and wants to explore them further. This is the time to invest in some durable board and bath books, if you haven't already, as they stand up the best to new teeth and drool and also contain plenty of color, simple objects, and photographs of faces that babies seem to prefer.

  • Around 12 to 18 months: A hands-on experience. Not only should your baby be able to sit without support, allowing him both hands free for holding books and turning board pages (albeit several at a time), but they are likely to demonstrate their already well-developed love of reading by carrying their books around, eagerly handing them to you to read, and answering your questions of "Where is the…?" by pointing to pictures with one finger. At this age, toddlers also learn to recognize when a book is upside down. If you've never thought about it before, this is actually a fundamentally important step toward reading!

  • Around 18 to 24 months: Taking charge. By now your baby will not only have turned into a toddler but also a true book connoisseur adept at turning their own board-book pages. Paper pages may still take a while to fully master. Ask "What's that?" and your toddler is sure to respond by naming familiar pictures. Pause before completing the sentence in a favorite book, and your toddler will finish it for you. Listen in and you'll even hear them taking over your role as storyteller as they start to recite the stories they knows best to their own loyal listeners (ie, dolls or stuffed animals).

More information:

About Dr. Jana

Laura A. Jana, MD, FAAP, is a pediatrician and mother of 3 with a faculty appointment at the Penn State University Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center. She is the author of more than 30 parenting and children's books and serves as an early childhood expert/contributor for organizations including the Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Primrose Schools, and US News & World Report. She lives in Omaha, NE.

About Dr. Shu

Jennifer Shu, MD, FAAP serves as the medical editor of HealthyChildren.org and provides oversight and direction for the site in conjunction with the staff editor. Dr. Shu is a practicing pediatrician at Children's Medical Group in Atlanta, Georgia, and she is also a mom. She earned her medical degree at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond and specialized in pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. Her experience includes working in private practice, as well as working in an academic medical center. She served as director of the normal newborn nursery at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire. Dr. Shu is also co-author of Food Fights and Heading Home with Your Newborn published by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).

Ashlie (she/her) is an educator, librarian, and writer. She is committed to diversifying the reading lives of her students and supporting fat acceptance as it intersects with other women’s issues. She's also perpetually striving to learn more about how she can use her many privileges to support marginalized groups. Interests include learning how to roller skate with her local roller derby team, buying more books than she'll ever read, hiking with her husband and sons, and making lists to avoid real work. You can find her on Instagram (@ashlieelizabeth), Twitter (@mygirlsimple) or at her website, www.ashlieswicker.com.

To understand when kids start reading, you need to know what reading is. A general explanation is the action of reading words correctly, but there is more to reading than that. Reading Rockets, a very respected reading research site, defines reading as “ making meaning from print .” This larger definition allows us to pull in the valuable skills of younger children, and involve young kids in the process of building their reading lives. Below, I’ll directly answer the question “when do kids start reading?” while giving tips for balancing the sometimes difficult journey to building literacy skills with the challenge of making reading an enjoyable and fulfilling pastime.

A lot of caregivers want to know: “When do kids start reading?” Of course, there is a basic answer, and then some nuance that complicates but clarifies things. An understanding of general times when milestones are hit can be equally helpful and stressful. As tempting as it is to know where your child is “supposed to be,” there is a huge spectrum of times that things click in, and even people professionally familiar with child development can find themselves frantic when it comes to their own children. The timeframe in which kids start reading is no exception.

Making Meaning For Pre-Readers

Can toddlers read? Well, yes. Ages 2–4 are very low stakes times in a child’s reading life, and an excellent time to make reading an enjoyable part of daily life. When sharing stories with young children (might I suggest board books?), you can help them make meaning by discussing the illustrations.

Asking questions aloud and answering them for yourself (“Where did the kid go? Oh! They’re behind the tree!”) can help your child understand what is happening in the story. This also teaches them to evaluate a story as it’s being told. Predictions, character identification, and story part recall are a huge part of early elementary literacy. Practicing these skills as a young child can go a long way. This is also a great place to plug in social emotional education. Point out characters with sad and happy faces and connect the emotion to story events. Even one small comment each time you read a story adds to the richness of your child’s reading life, and very soon you’ll see them copying these habits while they look at books.

The Mechanics of it All

This is where things get real in the reading world, and often where struggles can pop up. Being able to read is a combination of knowing how to use phonics to decode certain words (cat being the sounds /c//a//t/) and having sight words (“the” doesn’t follow sound rules) memorized. A phonics-based approach to reading will have students learning sounds, then putting the sounds into words, then putting the words into sentences. I’ve written before sharing tips to help beginning readers.

The tricky thing about this part of a reading journey is that people spend years going to school to understand the process of phonics education. Simply being able to read is not enough to know which words a beginning reader will be able to sound out, which words have phonics components they haven’t learned yet, and which words simply don’t follow phonics rules at all. To add to the confusion, some readers are able to decode (unlock words) very quickly without relying too much on phonics rules and others heavily rely on phonics instruction to make reading work. It’s different for every reader and far from simple. I again refer to Reading Rockets: it is generally an awesome resource for caregivers and educators, but also has information about why kids struggle and ideas for helping readers at different stages in this process.

Becoming Fluent

Reading fluently is the next step in the reading journey. Fluency measures speed, accuracy, and expression. A huge component of building fluency is repeated readings: having beginning readers read the same thing over and over, building confidence and becoming familiar with the text. Speed and accuracy will improve as the student feels confident in the actual words. Expression comes as the student understands what is happening in the text.

Being read to improves expression and general fluency so much. This brings us back to the “making meaning” definition of reading. You might be able to decode a word or say a sentence, but without understanding what is happening (the skill of comprehension, which is all of reading instruction after 3rd grade), you won’t understand what kind of expression to use when reading it aloud. Listening to audiobooks has been huge in my household. Even when my children struggle with different mechanics of reading, I am shocked at how much expression they pour into what they read, until I remember this skill has been modeled for them constantly as they grew up. 

So, When Do Kids Start Reading?

Generally, kids start decoding and understanding the written word between the ages of 4 and 7, or between kindergarten and second grade. However, there are SO MANY reasons that reading skills might develop on a different timeline. The work families can do to support a love of reading starts much earlier and can be influenced long after that range. Valid advice no matter where your reader is: foster a positive association with reading by looking for pleasure reading titles and reading to and with them.

Hopefully this was helpful. Learning to read and support beginning readers is not a simple process by any means. My biggest piece of advice is to bring it back to relationships. No matter the age or stage, if reading together is becoming stressful, take a break and read one of their favorites aloud. A positive association with reading will take a student a long way. 

You might also be interested in:

When should a child be able to read a book?

When Do Kids Start Reading?

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