Reading is a very important habit in life and as such it should be introduced to babies as early as we can. Read to your bump and help your baby get used to the sound of your voice faster, since it will be the sound that will guide him from the beginning.

You may feel a little silly when you start reading aloud to your baby through your belly, but remember that he or she can recognize your voice and can react to certain sounds in your surrounding too! This means that you can help trigger their language skills right from the womb!

Choose a heartwarming book or story and start reading away. Try to do it in different tones, or with a pitch, when the characters are extremely happy or angry! Believe it or not, the context of all that information is being processed by your baby’s beautiful brain and you would be helping their development.

Repetition is how babies’ learn, so pick stories involving shapes, animals, colors, numbers, fantasy or any ‘kiddie-topic’ you may find, because by reading to your baby you help her decipher AAAALL the sounds she needs to learn in order to start talking!

When your baby is born, it will take some months before she start babbling. Keep the habit of reading together, even if she just wants to chew on the book you are reading sometimes, to help your baby know more about the world. By the time your baby’s 1st birthday, she will have heard all the sounds she needs! Babies are like little “antennas” that process every sound they hear and associate it with something else. This is why it is easier for them to learn more languages!

The American Academy of Pediatrics shared a great statement once: “Reading regularly with young children stimulates optimal patterns of brain development and strengthens parent-child relationships at a critical time in child development, which, in turn, builds language, literacy, and social-emotional skills that last a lifetime”.

So don’t waste any more time! Pick up a book and start reading to your little one! It will all be worth it 🙂