The Million-Word Gap: How Reading to Your Child Shapes Their World
It’s a timeless image: a parent and child, heads close together, sharing a story before bedtime. It feels warm, simple, and loving. But beneath the surface of this quiet moment lies a powerful force with a profound and measurable impact on a child’s future. Recent studies have uncovered a staggering reality known as the “million-word gap”—a vast difference in the number of words children hear by the time they enter kindergarten, based on one simple factor: how often they are read to. ...