Parent-Child Shared Book Reading and Children’s Language, Literacy, and Empathy Development

Abstract

The essay examines the impact on children’s development of shared reading with parents. In particular, the work explores the relationship between the frequency and type of shared reading on one hand, and language, literacy and empathy skills on the other. In this connection, the piece presents the results of some research involving 78 children aged between 41 and 65 months and their mothers. Based on a series of procedures and measurements described in the essay, the research enabled us to verify that mothers who read books more frequently with their children have children with higher levels of empathy development than those children who spend less time reading together. Furthermore, it emerges that, if mothers do not extend or develop their conversation during reading, the children are less involved and less attentive. Lastly, from the study it emerges that there is a connection between parents’ discourses comparing the situations contained in the books with the children’s lives and the empathy skills that they develop.