Early Literacy

• The policy statement includes the following key recommendations for how pediatricians and pediatric advanced care providers can promote literacy development at health supervision visits from the newborn period at least through kindergarten.
• Conduct developmental surveillance to recognize early signs of reading difficulties through effective screening and interactions with families during clinic visits.
• Encourage all parents/caregivers to read aloud with their young children with engaging and interactive styles that enrich early relationships, enhancing social-emotional development, supporting resiliency and building brain circuits.
• Support parents to initiate reading together starting in the newborn period, including, when possible, in the neonatal intensive care unit.
• Model techniques that use books to prompt reciprocal, responsive, positive experiences.
• Provide high-quality, developmentally and linguistically appropriate, and culturally diverse books at health supervision visits for all young children, especially those from low-income families.
• Emphasize the value of books that represent diverse cultures, characters and themes for all children.
• Partner with other child advocates to influence national messaging and policies to promote reading aloud starting in infancy as an important component of positive parenting.

• Model good reading behavior
• Travel with reading material
• Read to children regularly
• Talking and interact with your child 
• Make reading a regular part of your child’s 
• Get a library card. Visit the library on a regular basis. Enroll children in the library’s summer reading program. 
• Young children have short attention spans, so try reading for short periods of time, several times a day (Bernstein, 2010)
• Early Literacy Toolkit (coming soon!) 

• 10 Tips to Help Your Child Fall in Love with Reading
• Tips to Help Your Child Enjoy Reading Aloud 
• Recommended Reading: Books that teach Character and Values
• How to Share Books with your Baby
• Playful Reading Tips
• Brush, Book, Bed
• Beyond Literacy: Shared Reading Starting in Infancy Offers Lifelong Benefits 
• Using Their Words: Helping Preschoolers Get a Good Start in Reading and Learning
• Diverse Book Finder
• Book Milestones

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• The AAP policy on relational health recommends Reach Out and Read (ROR) as a universal primary prevention strategy to support positive caregiver/parent-child relationships. 
• In the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress, 37% of fourth graders were reading below the “basic” level and only 33% were at or above the proficient level. 
• Children who face risks connected to social drivers of health and medical risks may need additional support around reading development. 
• Recently, it has been suggested that emergent literacy be considered a distinct (fifth) domain of child development for pediatricians to monitor as children grow. 
• Positive childhood experiences (PCEs) buffer the impact of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) on children in stressful circumstances, promote children flourishing and support lasting family resiliency.   
• Early literacy promotion based in pediatric primary care is an opportunity to support parents in nurturing their children’s social and emotional development and relational health. 
• Of the 3450 US-published children’s books received by the Cooperative Children’s Book Center in 2022, 15% were about African American people, 11.7% were about Asian people, 8.6% were about Latino people, and 2.5% were about Indigenous people.