How Can Reading Help in the Personality Development of a Child?

A child’s personality develops by continuous interaction with the environment around them, with development starting at birth and continuing throughout their lives. However, the first 5 years of the child’s life are considered to be the most important when it comes to their personal development and this determines how their personality will be throughout their childhood and into adulthood.

How does reading help?

Education supplies children with the tools and foundation stones for them to begin to develop as individuals. Their physical, mental and social environments are what shape them into the children that they are and it goes without saying that each child’s personality will be different, and this is what makes them unique. It is already known that a child who reads is likely to perform better at school.

In the UK, there seems to be a correlation between household wealth and academic success. The Reading Agency states that by the final year of compulsory schooling in England, the reading skills of children from disadvantaged backgrounds are on average almost three years behind those from the most affluent homes.

However, this doesn’t need to be the case. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds, like all other children, are able to access a library in their school or local area. By taking home a book every week, could help the child not only start to perform better academically but also develop their personality and understand the world around them better.  

That being said, The Reading Agency has given another important statistic that could help reassure parents who aren’t highly educated, or from a disadvantaged background: “reading for pleasure is more important for children’s cognitive development than their parent’s level of education and is a more powerful factor in life achievement than socio-economic background.”

Social sensitivity

Children who read are more likely to develop social sensitivity. This means that they can understand the feelings of people easier as it might be a situation that has been covered before in a book they have read. This also helps the child to understand situations from a different person’s point of view.

Books can help children to understand different people’s lives and lives that are very much opposed to their own. This helps the reader to develop empathy as well as developing knowledge and understanding of scenarios that have never and might never experience personally.

Decision making

The world of literature can often help a child with their own decision-making. They might have read about a certain situation in a book, and then when that situation becomes a real-life scenario for them, they might have a better grasp at tackling it independently. This decision-making ability doesn’t need to be in life-or-death scenarios, but just with their day-to-day thought process such as ‘Which t-shirt should I wear today?’. 

Judgemental

Reading makes your child judgemental. Upon first reading that sentence, it might seem like a negative thing, however, it is fantastic for your child to have their own opinion instead of regurgitating the opinion of their family/friends to other people.

Children who read non-fiction, as well as fiction, might also start to back up their opinions with fact, which not only then allows them to use their intelligence in situations it also helps them stand up against those who are debating solely from their own opinion.

Problem-solving

Reading enables your child to become a problem solver. The plot of most fiction books has a great dilemma in which the character must tackle and solve. By taking experiences that have been read and using them in real-world scenarios, it can help your child to overcome problems quickly and intelligently.

They might come up with a solution to problems that no one else in their class has thought of, and this is because they are constantly relating problems and experiences not only to their own lives but to the lives of the characters whom they have found themselves immersed in.

Vocabulary and speech

Not only the above, but reading helps to improve the vocabulary and speech of a child. This isn’t something that directly relates to their personality in regards to the ‘character’ of a child but is something very important in regards to their development as they grow. 

The Bottom Line

As we have discussed many times on our blog, there’s no negative side effect of reading. Reading is one of the most wonderful tools we have, and unfortunately due to the rise of technology and social media, many children are losing out.

Your child doesn’t need to have their head in a book 24 hours a day for reading to be able to shape their personality. Even just reading for an hour a day before bed, or after school, will help your child to deal with new experiences and see how challenging problems are tackled, from the comfort of their own home.

Fiction is often seen as being the type of writing that is just for fun, with non-fiction being where children learn the most. Yes, children can learn many facts and knowledge from non-fiction, but for their personalities to blossom they need to be reading fiction too.