The Importance and Benefits of Reading

Reading is an important and integral part of the upbringing and development of a child's personality. It helps them increase their vocabulary, expand their horizons, form healthy imagination and critical thinking, cultivate patience and perseverance, improve memory, help understand the needs and motives of other people, develop worldview and broaden their outlook, form cultural values and teach logical construction of speech, and do many other useful things that contribute to the healthy development of the psyche of the growing generation.

The current age of digital technology development has brought many new changes to culture and society's life. Gadgets have absorbed everything and have begun to offer humanity much more than those who are now called adults had in their childhood. But with this discovery, new diseases and mental disorders have also appeared, which were previously unknown, but in our time have fallen upon the world like a tsunami wave, destroying something beautiful and natural in people.

Learning to read begins from the moment when the child begins to understand speech and respond to the meaning and sense of their parents' words. Although the child's consciousness is naturally inclined to absorb easier information and perceive short stories and tales, it is also characteristic for it to remember everything it hears and build logical connections in its mind between reality and imagination.

If it is customary in your home to read the Bible aloud, gathering at the family altar for daily worship services, then, as a rule, parents do not worry about how understandable their conversations were to their infants and unconscious toddlers. But being present at such reading, the child's brain absorbs everything it hears around, and the Holy Spirit forms the consciousness of such children according to what has entered it.

The Bible is not just a book, but God's Word, which is capable of creating something beautiful and useful for the spirit, soul and body in a person's life. As a rule, Bible reading takes place in a calm environment, creating an atmosphere of Heaven, peace and love in the home. And this has a great influence on the formation of a child's healthy psyche and has a calming effect on all other participants in this event.

The older the child becomes, the more their perception of the world and the information they receive develops. And reading useful and spiritual books greatly facilitates parents' work in raising and forming the personality and spirituality of their children.

The time comes when children become readers from listeners. This transition begins sometime in everyone's life and leaves pleasant memories in parents' minds of how their child tried to put letters into syllables, and from these syllables compose words, and from words - sentences and stories. It is difficult for us to imagine what new logical chains, biochemical processes and neural connections occur during this learning in the area of consciousness, but this process is designed by God to form from each child a developed personality capable of competently receiving and transmitting necessary information.

Learning to read and improving this skill is very important in the mental and moral development of any person. Unfortunately, in our time gadgets have made their adjustments and deprived many children and parents of those advantages that reading paper books gives, but many thinking parents consciously limit children's access to electronic means of information transmission and consciously oppose scientific and technical progress with the classical form of education, through live communication, reading and personal contact.

Personal communication within the family and circle of your acquaintances will never replenish the vocabulary and erudition of your children with those new words and knowledge that useful and safe books provide. You simply have no need to use intricate speeches and build analytical chains of events in everyday life that are offered in printed works. But it is worth choosing what is useful and necessary for children, taking into account not only their age, but also the spiritual meaning of those printed works that appear in your home.

Let the Bible and spiritual literature become your children's most beloved books.

Interesting children in reading can be done very easily with each child, if you involve them in the process of what is being read, ask them about what they understood, how they see what they heard and what they liked. Having feedback with the child, parents can understand the level of mental development and select for reading exactly what will correspond to their child's intellect.

You should not be afraid to complicate and increase the volume of information being read. If your child is interested in what you are reading, then they will let you know this without unnecessary words.

Reading develops a person's imagination, which helps them create images of what they read in their mind and then apply these abilities in all other spheres of life. Abstract thinking forms logic, analysis, creativity and creative abilities. Empathizing with book heroes, empathy for other people develops in the child and it becomes easy for them to understand what a person feels in this or that situation.

When children have learned to read independently, this frees up a lot of time for their parents and brings new knowledge and skills into children's lives that their father and mother cannot give.

It is important to take into account the child's interest in one or another sphere of life and creativity. If a boy is more inclined to understanding the technical structure of the world, then may the Lord give you wisdom about what books will be useful in this area. If a girl has inclinations toward medicine, then give her the opportunity to delve deeper into this science by selecting the right books.

Not every parent can find and buy the right book in a store. But in a library you can obtain much of what will expand children's horizons. But you should be very careful and prudent, giving the child the opportunity to independently choose books for themselves to read. Any library is Babylon, where along with the useful there is also deadly dangerous spiritual poison present, which will destroy your children and poison their consciousness. One bad book may be enough to knock your child off the path and bring lawlessness into their life. Let your eyes and ears control everything that children take and read. But it is better to not give them something useful than to let them go at the mercy of their personal taste and choice, while this is still under the control and authority of parents.

Conversations about the harm and benefit of worldly and scientific books teach children to make the right choice before they actually encounter danger in reality, and it can come from friends with whom your children may exchange their books.

Personal relationships with Christ will teach your children to listen to the voice of conscience and choose exactly what will be for their good and benefit. Having learned communication with God through the Bible, children will seek answers to many of their questions in God's word and receive them. It will be easy for the Holy Spirit to remind them of what the child studied and learned from the Bible. It is easy for God to communicate through His Word with His children and reveal to them much of what is useful and necessary for everyone who seeks and thirsts to know.

1. Please read 2Tim.3:16-17; Ps.118:11,105; Josh.1:8; Rom.15:4; Col.3:16; Prov.15:14; Acts.17:11; 1Tim.4:13; Eccl.12:10-14, in light of this chapter.

2. What other verses from the Bible came to your mind?

3. What did you understand from this chapter?

4. What benefit does reading bring to the development of a person's personality?

5. Why is reading an important part of raising and developing a child?

6. Does reading help children develop attentiveness, patience and perseverance?

7. What is the difference between reading books and receiving information from gadgets?

8. Why does reading aloud with parents form healthy psyche in children?

9. Does joint reading bring parents and children closer together?

10. Why does reading useful and spiritual books reduce the level of stress and anxiety in children?

11. How does reading help in developing logic and analytical thinking?

12. Why is it important to discuss what was read with the child?

13. Why is it important to control what exactly the child reads?

14. How does personal communication with God through reading the Bible help children?